Anonymous edits have been disabled on the wiki. If you want to contribute please login or create an account.

RollerCoaster Tycoon 2

From PCGamingWiki, the wiki about fixing PC games
RollerCoaster Tycoon 2
RollerCoaster Tycoon 2 cover
Developers
Chris Sawyer
Expansions Frontier Developments
Publishers
2002-2003 Infogrames
2003-present Atari
Re-release Sold Out Software
Release dates
Windows October 14, 2002
Reception
Metacritic 74
Taxonomy
Monetization One-time game purchase, Expansion pack
Modes Singleplayer
Pacing Real-time
Perspectives Bird's-eye view, Isometric
Controls Point and select
Genres Building
Themes Amusement park
Series RollerCoaster Tycoon
RollerCoaster Tycoon 2 on HowLongToBeat
RollerCoaster Tycoon 2 on IGDB
RollerCoaster Tycoon 2 guide on StrategyWiki
RollerCoaster Tycoon 2 on MobyGames
RollerCoaster Tycoon 2 on Wikipedia
RollerCoaster Tycoon
RollerCoaster Tycoon 1999
RollerCoaster Tycoon 2 2002
RollerCoaster Tycoon 3 2004
OpenRCT2 (Engine fanport) 2015
RollerCoaster Tycoon World 2016
RollerCoaster Tycoon Classic 2017
RollerCoaster Tycoon Adventures 2019

RollerCoaster Tycoon 2 runs on a slightly improved RollerCoaster Tycoon engine. The core gameplay is identical to the 1999 original - it is an isometric amusement park building game. The game features additions like a scenario editor, new rides and themes, retouched UI, and the ability to build rides and scenery at any elevation, including underground.

After release, the game received two expansions by Frontier Developments in 2003 - Wacky Worlds and Time Twister. Both added new scenarios, themes and rides which are reskinned variants of existing ones (sometimes with different vehicle stats), but unlike the expansions for the original, they did not change the gameplay in any way.

While the game has no compatibility issues with modern systems, the community has de facto moved to playing OpenRCT2, an open-source rewrite of this game with many fixes and quality-of-life improvements compared to the original game, which requires its files to run.

General information

RollerCoaster Tycoon Wiki - A wiki dedicated to everything RollerCoaster Tycoon related
NEDesigns - park and scenery showcase site for Loopy Landscapes and RollerCoaster Tycoon 2
GOG.com Community Discussions for game series
GOG.com Support Page
Steam Community Discussions

Availability

Source DRM Notes Keys OS
Retail
Disc check (requires the CD/DVD in the drive to play)
SecuROM DRM disc check. See Play without a CD for a workaround.
Windows
Amazon.com
DRM-free
Triple Thrill Pack.
Windows
GamersGate
Icon overlay.png
Triple Thrill Pack.
Windows
Gamesplanet logo.svg
Icon overlay.png
RollerCoaster Tycoon Mega Pack
Windows
GOG.com
DRM-free
Triple Thrill Pack.
Windows
Green Man Gaming
Icon overlay.png
Triple Thrill Pack.
Windows
Humble Store
Icon overlay.png
Triple Thrill Pack.
Windows
Steam
DRM-free after installation through Steam client (notes may include more details)
Triple Thrill Pack.
Windows
Discord (unavailable)
Discord
Triple Thrill Pack.
Windows
A free demo version is available from GameFront.
A faithful, higher quality icon can be found on SteamGridDB.

Version differences

The Gold Edition (known as Combo Park Pack in North America) includes the base game and the Wacky Worlds expansion pack.
The Deluxe Edition (known as Triple Thrill Pack in North America and on digital stores) includes the base game and both expansion packs.
There is also a retail release bundling both expansion packs, but without the base game.

Monetization

Type Notes
Expansion pack The expansion packs include new scenarios, scenery and reskinned rides.
One-time game purchase The game requires an upfront purchase to access.

DLC and expansion packs

Name Notes
Wacky Worlds
Windows
Time Twister
Windows

Essential improvements

Patches

An official patch was made for players who have issues with the SecuROM copy protection, but does not bring any other changes. It's available as an installer and as a ZIP file.
The Wacky Worlds expansion had an official patch that fixed some of the scenery items and entry points in several scenarios. It is available here.

Official add-ons

Panda World scenario
Pink water (to be used with scenario editor)

Play without a CD

Edit registry files
  1. In the Registry Editor, go to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Wow6432Node\Infogrames\RollerCoaster Tycoon 2 Setup.
  2. Change the SetupPath string value to point to your game directory (copying the Path value is the easiest way).

Game data

Configuration file(s) location

System Location
Windows <path-to-game>\Data[Note 1]
Steam Play (Linux) <Steam-folder>/steamapps/compatdata/285330/pfx/[Note 2]

Save game data location

System Location
Windows <path-to-game>\Saved Games[Note 1]
Steam Play (Linux) <Steam-folder>/steamapps/compatdata/285330/pfx/[Note 2]

Save game cloud syncing

System Native Notes
Discord
GOG Galaxy
Steam Cloud

Video

In-game options menu.
In-game options menu.

Graphics feature State WSGF Notes
Widescreen resolution
Max resolution is 1280x1024, making 1280x720 the highest native widescreen resolution.
Multi-monitor
OpenRCT2 supports this.
Ultra-widescreen
OpenRCT2 supports this.
4K Ultra HD
OpenRCT2 supports this.
Field of view (FOV)
Windowed
Use the RCT2 windowed mode hack.[1]
Borderless fullscreen windowed
OpenRCT2 supports this.
Anisotropic filtering (AF)
Anti-aliasing (AA)
High-fidelity upscaling
See the glossary page for potential workarounds.
Vertical sync (Vsync)
OpenRCT2 supports this.
60 FPS and 120+ FPS
FPS locked to 40, although this lock can be removed with OpenRCT2.
High dynamic range display (HDR)

Input

In-game key map settings.
In-game key map settings.

Audio

Audio feature State Notes
Separate volume controls
Surround sound
Subtitles
Closed captions
Mute on focus lost
Royalty free audio

Localizations

Language UI Audio Sub Notes
English
The UK and US English releases differ slightly in certain names and terms. The digital releases have US English.
Simplified Chinese
Retail only. Translation by «Biggamer(天人互动)». The expansion packs are translated by «Eastern Audio and Video Publishing House(东方音像出版社)» (it is not yet known whether they have obtained copyright)
Traditional Chinese
Retail only.
Dutch
Retail only.
French
German
Italian
Polish
Retail only.
Brazilian Portuguese
Retail only (Atari Brasil).
Russian
Spanish
Swedish
Retail only.

Issues fixed

Moving camera with mouse erratic in windowed mode

Set high DPI scaling override for game
  1. Navigate to <path-to-game>, right click RCT2.exe and go into Properties
  2. Open Compatibility tab and click on Change high DPI settings
  3. Enable Override high DPI scaling behavior and choose Application in dropdown menu

Other information

API

Technical specs Supported Notes
DirectDraw
Executable 32-bit 64-bit Notes
Windows
OpenRCT2 supports both 32-bit and 64-bit.

System requirements

Windows
Minimum Recommended
Operating system (OS) 98
Processor (CPU) Intel Pentium II 300 MHz
System memory (RAM) 64 MB
Hard disk drive (HDD) 800 MB
Video card (GPU) 8 MB of VRAM
DirectX 8.1 compatible


Notes

  1. 1.0 1.1 When running this game without elevated privileges (Run as administrator option), write operations against a location below %PROGRAMFILES%, %PROGRAMDATA%, or %WINDIR% might be redirected to %LOCALAPPDATA%\VirtualStore on Windows Vista and later (more details).
  2. 2.0 2.1 File/folder structure within this directory reflects the path(s) listed for Windows and/or Steam game data (use Wine regedit to access Windows registry paths). Games with Steam Cloud support may store data in ~/.steam/steam/userdata/<user-id>/285330/ in addition to or instead of this directory. The app ID (285330) may differ in some cases. Treat backslashes as forward slashes. See the glossary page for details.

References