Quick review of "Ultimate Ride"

Ultimate Ride is now in stores  I swung by my local Best Buy and picked up a copy for $30.  For those who want me to it to RCT, don't.  It's apples and oranges, people.  It's not a park sim, it's a coaster sim.  Basically it picks up from where Disney's "Coaster" left off about six years ago.  Full 3D graphics are nice.  Coaster train designs are a little goofy.  Pre-loaded tracks lean toward flying coaster designs more than anything else.  However, it's still pretty cool.  You an play in two modes: Build or Imagineer.  Build is your basic sandbox mode where Imagineer is more of a tutorial with certain requirements (keep G's within tolerances, use certain number of loops, follow prescribed path).   Unfortunately, there are way too many cutesy aspects like the different environments, goofy trains and props, although the Mountain terrain is pretty darn cool.  The gravity seems to be a little off as well, but I can live with it.  A cool feature is that you can use an MP3 as background music. A shuffle feature would be nice, but I'll take what I can get. Overall, I think it's worth buying just for the 3D alone.  Ultimate Ride is far from the be-all end-all coaster game for the PC, but it's a very worthwhile coaster sim.
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Scott W. Short
mailto:scott@midwestcoastercentral.com
http://www.midwestcoastercentral.com

Wasn't Disney's "Coaster" actually from late 80's? I actually have it somewhere on a floppy!

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Jeff - Webmaster/Admin - CoasterBuzz.com
"From the global village... in the age of communication!"
Watch the grass grow!

Yes it was, ran it on my 486. (66 MHZ was BIG at the time :).

I still have it. It fits on one disk so the program is less than 1.44 MB. Heck I can't fit almost any RCT saved games on a 3.5" disk.

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Save Cheese on a stick!

I actually ran the thing on my old PS/2 model 25. It didn't even have a hard drive! Its 3-1/2" disks weren't even high density, so you were stuck with 720k per disk. It had an external 5-1/4" that did a stunning 360k.

The physics model on the original game was pretty poor, but the fact that it did what it did on those old machines (mine ran at like 8 MHz I think) is amazing.

Scott: What is the track building system like? If it's pre-fab pieces are they at least somewhat smooth and acurate in shape? The screenshots I saw at first weren't very realistic looking.

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Jeff - Webmaster/Admin - CoasterBuzz.com
"From the global village... in the age of communication!"
Watch the grass grow!

I have it too. To add ShiveringTim's review, the grahics are better than the graphics of Sim Coaster. You can build either wood, steel looping, or suspended (inverted) coasters. Track pieces consist of straight, curve, loop, "S" curve, and corkscrew segments, very similar to Disney's Coaster. You have control of height, radius of corners, banking/twisting of track, as well as accelerated and brake section of track. The corkscrew and loop pieces seem to be fairly smooth, although if you try to adjust them from the default settings seems to make it a litle "jerky" sometime. Trying to recreate real coaster is not going to be easy to do, and I don't think it is possible to make any type of cobra roll or any other inversion than the basic loop, and corkscrew. Some of the coasters they had pre-made are very unrealistic, reminds me of the coaster "simulators" you find at some parks and arcades. The physics engine seem a little "off" although there is a option to turn off the friction setting.

Overall I would say its not a "bad" program, but don't expect anything like Scream Machines or NoLimits, as this seem geared more for the general public. Think I would wait until someone run it on sale for about $20 though.

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The track building system is very similar to the old "Coaster" but with well recieved enhancements.  You're still limited to straight, curves, loops, and corkscrews, but you can adjust the length, radius, bank, pitch, inversion height to an not-quite infinite number of settings, but pretty close.  Also, your curves aren't limited to 90 degrees any more.  I think they range from a minor correction of 2-3 degrees to a wide sweeping curve.

As for the old Coaster, all I remember is that I bought it when I got my 486 back in '93, so I guess it's 8 yrs ago, not 6.  See what happens when you sit in front of a PC all day playing games :)

Speaking of Coaster, that's one thing that they didn't bring forward.  No more judges and ratings.  There is some sort of award system for progressing through the Imagineer mode, but I didn't buy the game so the PC can tell me I'm doing a bang-up job.

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Scott W. Short
mailto:scott@midwestcoastercentral.com
http://www.midwestcoastercentral.com

It's older than that! The game was originally released in 1985. I actually remember playing it in junior high (grade 7 or 8). It's amazing they were ever able to squeeze that much out of the ride. Of course, it's obvious they weren't getting bogged down it physics. ;)

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Jeff - Webmaster/Admin - CoasterBuzz.com
"From the global village... in the age of communication!"
Watch the grass grow!

I remeber the throttle and braking on the train itself in the old game. Whenever it looked like my train would valley I would just step on the gas. :)

I think one of the better qualitys of the old game were the judging of the coasters by those freaks. They remind me of real "coaster people" like the airtime whore (cowboy), the ACE classics lover (old granny), the pacing lover (nerd), the speed whore (blonde) and the inversion freak (surfer dude). To bad sometimes 12 bunny hops in a row did not even spark the cowboy.

I could never build a coaster to suite all of their tastes, just like us. There is not one coaster that everybody loves. :)

http://www.theunderdogs.org/game.php?id=207

That is the old disney game you're all talking about. Too bad they blocked it from downloading it. (The website just has full games that are old and abandon like the company is gone.. etc..) I managed to download a copy a few months ago before they banned it.

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Favourite Coasters

1:Roar
2:Riddlers Revenge
3:Revolution
4:Goliath
5:Medusa
6:Viper

Found the original game and DC-Edit at the same page:

http://www.coasterhost.com/games/disneys_coaster.htm

*** This post was edited by Beeman65 on 9/26/2001. ***