SimCity was the rarest of games – it transcended the traditional gaming audience and broke out into the mass market, garnering coverage and accolades in the mainstream media and ending up on the computers of many folks who wouldn’t normally play games. Other titles have broken through in this manner – The Sims and Myst serve as prime examples. What’s unfortunate is that few folks outside of hardcore gamers have heard of Transport Tycoon. It was published a few years after Simcity and was clearly inspired by the sort of open ended ‘electronic tinker toy’ gameplay of SimCity. In Transport Tycoon, your focus is on constructing the transportation networks that connect cities. As you build up your transportation network the cities you’re connected to evolve and grow, and competitors emerge.

Despite not breaking out into the mainstream, Transport Tycoon developed a hardcore fanbase that exists to this day, and some of these folks have banded together to produce an enhanced open source port of the original game that runs on all the major operating systems.

It’s a little convoluted to get up and running since the installation requires a copy of the original Transport Tycoon Deluxe. Fortunately that title is long out of print, and so you can download a copy of it from the Home of the Underdogs. If this troubles you, you can also acquire a copy for under $5 on ebay. Either way, you need it simply for the graphic files – openttd uses the original game graphics.

I’d recommend this game to anyone – the port is really impressive, adding features, enhancing some of the original systems, and basically bringing the game into the modern age. Plus they have an extensive set of enhancements they’ve been adding as time passes. Check it out, it’s well worth it. And if anyone feels like taking me on in multiplayer, I’m game.