How Accurate is RollerCoaster Tycoon 2's Manual?

[@LonelySpaceDetective]

Some of these like "trees provide shade" strike me as just the writer adding flavor to the text, but the others like "elevated rides can spark interest in other rides" that don't seem like things a person would normally assume make me wonder how much of these are in actuality mechanics that were planned to be implemented in the games, but were cut either before the manual went to printing or without the writer's knowledge.

[@607]

The most plausible hypothesis to me is that the writer of the manual had no access to the code or the design, and just played the game to figure out how it worked. In that case, though, it is quite impressive that they found out about the excitement bonus for scenery items, path or coaster track just above a coaster track.

[@SemiHypercube]

It truly wouldn't be an older game without a manual that contains misinformation

[@21stcenturyrambo16]

Or beta/alpha screenshots

[@Minkybyl]

Nothing is quite like using Dev-only items in early MMO boxart.

[@mario64remix]

That's right, because if it were a newer game there would be no manual at all.

[@ToTheGAMES]

@@Minkybyl Teemu's!

[@claudiodiaz9752]

@@mario64remix Touché.

[@Deurklink]

There are actually a few half tile objects (and quite a few in the expansions). Take the jellybean for example, you can place two of them on a tile on opposite sides. When you try to place them though, the cursor does highlight the entire tile.

[@MarcelVos]

Oh wow, I never knew and never tried because they highlight the entire tile.

[@kommo1]

@@MarcelVos So now you have to make a mistake video on your mistake video.

[@MarcelVos]

@@kommo1Yup, no-one is immune to making mistakes.

[@Irobert1115HD]

@@MarcelVos you should make a video where you for one dissprove every myth from the manual in one park and for two: try to get chris sawyer to see it and react to it if possible.

[@SadMarinersFan]

@@MarcelVos Marcel in his next video: "I have made a severe and continuous lapse in my judgement, and I don't expect to be forgiven".

[@Bismuth9]

On the other hand though, imagine if the manual was full of things like "Lighting and flowers - they're useless, don't bother."

[@LegionEagles22]

bismuth jumpscare!? I love your videos, it makes sense you'd like these ones based off the content you make

[@Duvelthehobbit]

I think certain things mentioned in the manual aren't mistakes per se, but are nudges to get the player to do certain things. The one about food variety, I can see them put it in the manual so that players don't only put down the same food and drinks stalls and get the worst food in the country award.

[@manologamerss5801]

If the manual didn't have so many inaccuracies I'd believe you, but with the stuff written there, do you REALLY think the person who wrote this knew how the worst food award worked?

[@mercury5003]

​@manologamerss5801 it's probably a bit of both.

[@Zack_Wester]

@@mercury5003 that or that was a feature planed that then got scraped for one reason or another or a miss communication.

[@coasternut3091]

Maybe they said "guests have different tastes" to get you to build more types of stalls. It may be incorrect but building multiple types does get you the "Best Food" award

[@Gameprojordan]

That's what it is. But Marcel did kind of elude to that when speaking about the water rides not actually cooling down guests, but the manual stating that to incentivize you to build water rides in parks with a hot/warm looking environment

[@coasternut3091]

@@Gameprojordan they are probably trying to give everyone a gentle nudge in the right direction. I don't really see a problem with "lying" to help people

[@ABUBBA22]

Also, I wonder what stage of development the game was when the manual was written? I can decently see a food preference stat being planned and scrapped.

[@TheExileFox]

The "no entry sign" doesn't entertain guests, but it can be great for entertaining the player :D

[@ShaimingLong]

I have been surprised in retrospect that the signs are useless outside that purpose. I could have sworn Theme Park let you point guests towards placed shops and rides by connecting signs to them.

[@eccentricbass3730]

If anyone here works in marketing and works with copywriters, you can totally see how this could happen. Chris likely had little involvement in the manual. Someone at the publisher either wrote it after playing the game, or at his direction. However adding fluff to whatever is being written is par for the course here. This isn’t documentation, after all.

[@keiyakins]

... yes it is? I mean, it's documentation for a kids toy who cares if it's not perfect, I get that level of disregard some people have, but it's still documentation.

[@nolifenerdwhohasnevergotten]

Yeah and to be fair to the copywriter, the game is very in-depth and most of the assumptions they made about the game make sense! If anything it speaks to how detailed the game is that they'd just assume the game factors many of these things in.

[@SImrobert2001]

This was also at a time when the manuals had to be created when the game itself was created as a hard copy. I've seen game manuals where it refers to items that were removed from the game from the time the manual was written and the game itself was printed to disk. It could be that these were something Chris Sawyer talked about, or was later removed by the time the game went to disc. On top of that, the game manual itself seems to be speaking as sort of "in character" with the game. "Guests are entertained by music" likely references the "The music is nice" thought. Its encouraging the player to experiment with music.

[@kotzpenner]

Same in Stronghold 1, the manual for example says dairy farms produce more food over time than apples, but in the end they do worse.

[@Omegacalgar]

@@kotzpenner well, crap.

[@88porpoise]

Most likely it is a combination of three things: 1) Just mistakes and errors 2) Planned features that were scrapped 3) Include things no regular person would ever notice were wrong that increase the immersiveness. How much of each of those are there, I dont know.

[@alt0248]

Tbf, games lie or give in complete information all the time to increase immersion. Senua has the infamous lie that it will delete your save to make the stakes higher. But I like the feeling when a game gives unnecessary details for immersion or hinting at secrets you can never actually get to. I feel like I'm just being told this isn't my world and I don't have time to explore it all, enjoy what you can.

[@TimeToGetAlone]

I think the Clear Scenery one is technically correct since they're referring to an area being the thing larger than one tile, rather than the scenery items themselves. It's just worded in a confusing way by mentioning trees and walls second, making it slightly ambiguous. The latter part of the section clarifies that the items themselves can't be larger.

[@JamesGreenz]

Ah, you beat me to this, yes that’s totally how it’s written

[@keagancollins3243]

I didn’t realize guests don’t puke in bathrooms. I’ve been putting bathrooms by the exits of my high nausea rides for nothing ever since I first played RCT1 as a kid

[@BxPanda7]

I have been doing the same, and I'm like 99.99% sure I remember them puking in the bathrooms when I was playing RCT1 with my cousin as a kid, he's the one who told me about it and we found it really funny, was this perhaps removed in RCT2 or with an expansion pack for some reason ? At the time I was playing the very first (German) release of RCT1.

[@aw2740]

@@BxPanda7 Or this is an example of the so called 'Mandela effect'

[@user-xsn5ozskwg]

Man, this just makes me miss printed game manuals. Misinformation be damned, it was always so nice as a kid getting to pore over screenshots and insights crafted to be so accessible and enjoy the really nice renders and art.

[@Trancefreak12]

I used to look at manuals when not playing the game just to admire the graphics (a lot of manuals had higher res or higher poly renders of objects than displayed in-game) and let my imagination run free.

[@macdjord]

I remember the Homeworld manual. That thing was a work of art! So much lore and background...

[@arkadyshersky8704]

pore

[@user-xsn5ozskwg]

@@arkadyshersky8704 Oh, you're right!

[@jacquelineking5783]

Eh I don't miss them. I looked at it on the ride home and then just played the game.

[@ToTheGAMES]

11:02 Yellow shirt guy LOVED falling down, he started cheering after beeing dropped, lol!

[@perdhapley4809]

There’s dedication, and then there’s having better knowledge than the official manual.

[@machecor]

I feel some of them have a basis on truth, but are altered to discourage certain levels of exploiting game mechanics. Say, the scenery ones. You know any scenery, be it flowers or Roman temples, raises excitement. But the manual creators didn't want you to spam a single kind of flowers, but make it diverse and aesthetically atractive. So, they nudge you to make you think there is an "attractiveness" factor that isn't there, but you see your excitement grow and believe that's true. The same with the rides variety: even in parks that aren't "10 different types of rollercoasters", they want you to think more like a normal theme park developer and less like a later youtuber spamming microcoasters. And to be fair to them, I believed them until I started to see your videos and realized big coasters didn't work differently than your half a corkscrew.

[@InzeDev]

I'll betting the whole reason they made the example coaster station so short was because a longer station wouldn't fit on the page, and downscaling photos wasn't as easy back in the day so the easiest solution was to include a footnote that said "hey don't actually do this."

[@tracyjackson7419]

That's what I thought too! The station is small, but if it were longer then the ride itself would have to be shorter and they wouldn't be able to showcase as much.

[@arkadyshersky8704]

That's not true at all. You can put an image on the page at any size. In fact, it was scaled UP from the game's resolution for the manual.

[@vitorluiz7538]

I was thinking the reason it was so short was to not handhold the player and get them started into modifying the example. “Yes, we gave you this model but it has an issue. Can you make it better?”

[@mack.attack]

..........downscaling photos was not difficult at all. People have been laying out documents for a long time.

[@InzeDev]

​@@mack.attack There seems to be a misunderstanding of what I mean. I'm not saying resizing the image would be impossible, or even difficult. I'm saying it was not the easiest option. Production workflows don't care about doing a good job, they care about getting a job done in a timely manner. While it's correct that vector graphics have existed since the 1960s, It's likely that the graphics department in charge of the manual did not have a large budget and might not have had access to software that makes this process practical. It's more than likely that whoever was in charge of the manual realized that it'd be too inefficient to get an image of an acceptable size and readability with a longer station so they found an easier, faster solution to reduce the image width, and all it took was writing a small note rather than fiddling with whatever subpar image editing software the company didn't want to spend money on in the first place.

[@stargate525]

I wonder how many of these are cut mechanics that Chris Sawyer didn't have time or resources to implement.

[@banditkeithkingofduelmonsters]

I always though the puke on the ground was Pizza back in the day. I just thought they were throwing pizzas they bought from the pizza stall on the ground but couldn't figure out why they did this when there wasn't a pizza stall in the park.

[@jefffinkbonner9551]

Why is this so funny?! 🤣🤣🤣

[@davidmoore1253]

Considering how many ways you can exploit the game, I suspect the manual deliberately obscures some game systems, aiming to encourage players to think about realistic factors affecting their park rather than only in-game ones.

[@kommo1]

I think they did the 2 tile station to keep the ride reasonable small and fit it into the screenshot. Gotta remember that the OG did not have 4k Pixels to work with.

[@Acorniius]

I was gonna comment to say exactly this

[@korumann]

"Attractive scenery improves your park" -absolutely true "Any scenery improves your park" -also true, but probably a bit more informative.

[@YippingFox]

When talking about the food near a high intensity ride, do nauseaus guest actually purchase food? If not, this tip is at least semi-accurate... (1:45)

[@MarcelVos]

Very nauseous guests indeed don't buy food, which I didn't think about. Still incorrect for guests with a higher nausea tolerance though.

[@YippingFox]

@@MarcelVos More then fair. It seems there are a lot of poorly worded tips and explanations either way.

[@Isithnica]

3:25 - i believe this is just a wording thing, with the "larger than a single tile in size" meaning "areas of larger sizes containing trees/scenery", not "large scenery"

[@ieltsadam]

Remember the big cardboard box these PC games used to come in. I remember getting RCT1, and CIV2 (I think Cossacks - European Wars also maybe was like that).... they were almost like mini board game sized. They'd have these super thick manuals. The cover art was beautiful.

[@ShaimingLong]

Yeah, I used to have a bunch of big boxes stacked on top of my wardrobe growing up. There's the often reminisced getting a game and the only time you read the manual was on the way home, yet with so many PC games the boxes were just packed with all sorts of stuff to read and go through. I may have them exaggerated in my memory, being a child at the time, but Return to Zork, Total Annihilation, Age of Empires and I think Civ Call to Power, those boxes were all big enough to comfortably hold 4, maybe 5 modern day controllers. Hell, one of the Age of Empires came with two decently sized hard backed books, a 'unit guide' and an 'empire guide' and neither of them gave you any gameplay help, it was all historically focused. Like knowing that a centurion was supposed to be a soldier in a unit of 100, oh but don't worry, centurions usually stopped at around 70~80 legionaries so it's fine if your population cap can't allow a full unit, actually helps when you've spammed out 80 swordsmen to take on Japan. The big fancy collectors editions of today were par for the course in the early 90's for PC gamers.

[@PianoKwanMan]

Yes. The art was amazing. I remember putting posters on the wall, including some GTA ones, while underage lol

[@theblode1337]

i still have my starcraft manual. it's more of a lore book if anything

[@euroshopperbier1337]

This just makes me nostalgic for the time when games came finished on a disc, in a box.. WITH a manual.

[@rubenvanbelzen1217]

Buying a new game was an entire experience, while the game was installing for like half an hour, you could read the manual. Nowadays there is much less excitement when buying a brand new game

[@Quenlin]

Back in those days you had to actively seek out patches and bugfixes instead of them being just handed to you on a platter. I personally do not miss those days.

[@rageagainstthebath]

@@Quenlin Games used to be way less buggy in 1990s and early 2000s. I can't remember ever looking for a patch fixing a specific game, except 3dfx compatibility patch for NFS3 maybe.

[@milesdelbusso6706]

regarding the tip at 3:50 I think it's meant to indicate that if you e.g. raise a tile and then immediately lower it back you will still get charged for both alterations even though the net effect is no change

[@shan2329]

Game manuals are so interesting. I always wondered who would be in charge of making them. In RCT’s case, did Chris make it? Maybe he programmed certain aspects of the game (i.e different food tastes) but ultimately scrapped it in the end, but forgot to take it out of the manual

[@BizarePlayer]

I don't know was it a common thing in game industry 2 decades ago, but many times the manual was written by 3rd party company, not developers. That's why some things may be false or manual talks about mechanics that don't even exist.

[@medes5597]

Usually an internal or external copywriter. I wrote some when I worked as a copywriter. Never saw the game. I saw some minor screenshots and a ton of notes I had to turn into readable manual text. Chris likely wrote at least some of the notes and someone else wrote it up. The errors are probably a mix of dropped features, the writer misunderstanding what the notes say, and some creative license on the part of the writer, likely encouraged by the publisher or developer to make people use certain features.

[@knightwolf3511]

i was wondering same thing because lots of games will get scrapped parts, Halo CE almost scrapped the tank for example because of the deadline also halo 2 and 3 was going to be one massive game

[@TammoKorsai]

I think whoever wrote the manual got the salty foods thing mixed up with Theme Park, which defintely had it.

[@alysb8848]

I used to work as a technical writer in a completely different section of the software industry (healthcare IT), so it's interesting to hear from other people describing game manuals as being written by third party companies and copywriters. (Obviously, there are different stakes for incorrect documentation in different industries!) I will say it would happen that removed features and changes ended up in the documentation, but since code changes that removed features were also reviewed by technical writers, we were often able to avoid that.

[@AtomiicCoasters]

I checked through the manual after watching this and one of the things I find funniest is that for almost all of the coasters featured in the "Real Roller Coaster" blurbs, almost all of them no longer exist in the form they were at the time of the game's launch In order as how they appear in the manual; Deja Vu: Six Flags Magic Mountain, Over Georgia, and Great America; removed in 2011, 2007, and 2007 respectively (They were all relocated after being removed but the only one still in operation is GAm's now at Silverwood) Medusa: Six Flags Great Adventure and Marine World (Discovery Kingdom). This one is also actually an error, as the two Medusas have different layouts, but they both do still exist (Althougb GAdv's was named Bizzaro from 2009 to 2021) Chang: Six Flags Kentucky Kingdom. After Six Flags closed KK in 2009, Chang got relocated to GAdv and repainted, where it now stands as Green Lantern (although KK would later independently reopen in 2014 and is now owned by Herschend) V2 - Vertical Velocity: Six Flags Marine World. Only a year after opening, V2 was modified with the forward spike being turned into a 45 degree spike instead of a 90 degree one because of height limitations. It was being modified at the same time RCT2 was released, so it still mentions it having two vertical towers. V2 was also repainted and renamed to Flash: Vertical Velocity in 2018 X: Six Flags Magic Mountain. In 2007, X got a repaint and new trains, being renamed to X2 Titan: Six Flags Over Texas. This is the only one that is still how it was when the game launched Texas Giant: Six Flags Over Texas. Probably the most famous revamp of all of these, in 2011, Texas Giant was retrofitted to become the first ever RMC, New Texas Giant.

[@itscs1175]

All of the locations are wrong too. Marine world is located in Vallejo and magic mountain is located in Valencia. No where near LA nor San Francisco

[@AtomiicCoasters]

@@itscs1175 I mean considering it’s a worldwide release and developed by a Brit, it makes sense to use the large cities the parks are relatively close to. It’s like how oftentimes Kings Island and Wonderland are said to be near Cincinnati and Toronto instead of in Mason and Vaughan, it just makes them easier to pinpoint on a map

[@andrastuba3085]

I feel like some of these tips are more about atmosphere than actual gameplay effect, like guests cooling down on water rides, or trees providing shade. They make those things sound nice as a descritption, but I wouldn´t assume they have a gameplay effect just by reading that.

[@nuggs4snuggs516]

I feel like the two-tile station may have been a constraint on trying to fit the whole coaster in one screenshot, given resolutions at the time

[@StalwartTirith]

I remember loving those manuals (game manuals in general really) for the little lore bits and gameplay tips. As for this, the only reason I can think as to why the manuals would say something utterly false is that the dev likely _intended_ to have the game work that way but ended up making a mistake somewhere along the way in the code.

[@henke37]

Or it's the logical assumption to make and nobody bothered to check if it was true.

[@AardvarkSnoot]

For the coverage for rain, Parkitect does account for rain coverage, but it is quite amusing to see how many inaccuracies are found in RCT2's manual. It is not any better in French, and even worse sometimes, somehow. Great video Marcel!

[@markdebruyn1212]

I actually hope OpenRCT2 is gonna implement it aswell

[@fayescarlet]

A lot of habits I have today come from the manual. O_o My park can't go without a "food court", and I still build an Observation Tower close to the park entrance so guests can "find new rides". Even if it doesn't actually work like that, I can pretend it does. It's fun for immersion.

[@Mognet_t]

I find it so funny that the game manual itself is the origin of the salty food myth. Like, kids who read the manual were spreading actual misinformation for decades. That's wild!

[@wesleynewcomb]

While it's not clear, the clear scenery tool description is correct. It's referring to the area as larger than a single tile, not the scenery.

[@veggiet2009]

Man, i miss manuals, they were part of the fun for me as a kid

[@kiffe22]

I just wanted to tell you that you produce the perfect content for watching while eating dinner in front of the PC.

[@familybroakajonny]

9:48 Well…Merry go rounds do attract a few guests to the soft guest cap soooo

[@PatD126]

The manual did say "between 0 and 1000". I wonder if the park rating can be 0. It would make more sense maybe? Because it goes from 1-999, which are all of the numbers between 0-1000.

[@K-o-R]

4:08 That's weird, the drag-land tool _is_ in RCT1 in normal gameplay. It's very easy to spend all your money with it!

[@pauls5745]

They mention the flase info about transport rides 2x. The first time in a tip, they said include transport so paths are freed up and guests may want to ride rather than walk to the different rides.. I think it was written before the game finalized. Many things hinted at a feature that wasn't exactly there.

[@RustyDroid]

4:10 The mountain tool is available in regular scenario play, but it's wildly inconsistent as to when it actually works. This is both in vanilla RCT2 and RCT Classic. Sometimes you just can't get "down" to it by reducing the tile size, and other times you can.

[@bbgun061]

I distinctly remember using it in scenarios. I never had a problem "finding" it like you said. It tended to be quite expensive, though.

[@Kotosuatz]

Yeah it was just done by minusing the size on the terraforming tool then just hold the mouse button down and move up or down to make mountains or valleys.

[@mietschj]

I wonder how many of my childhood parks went down the drain because of the long-ass queue lines and all of my handymen being too busy watering flowers to clean anything up.

[@negil]

I feel like a lot of the inaccuracies are more embellishments to make the guests seem smarter than they really are, and give you a sense that the game is more complex and closer to reality than if really is. Very few are really malicious, they're just not quite right.

[@ghable23]

I think the hunger for high exicetement/nausea rides may be due to people making longer cue lines as they would attract more guests, thus the waiting making them hungry after riding them. The coaster example and tip reading between lines is telling us they couldn't fit a coaster picture with longer station on the page.

[@TheOriginalJphyper]

To be fair about that last one, a longer station would've made the coaster too big to fit inside the picture. They would've had to either make it bigger (and thus increase the cost of printing) or zoomed out (making it harder to see).

[@slMagnvox]

kind of an interesting look at a "historic" style of videogame documentation, I remember lots of physical manuals with loads of details but also plenty of thematic suggestions that might not always 100% match game mechanics. Compared to a (sometimes intensively) peer reviewed modern wiki it is definitely a different approach to documentation

[@ShaimingLong]

I feel like a few of those mistakes were probably intentional in an effort to make the game appear to be a more comprehensive simulation than they were reasonably able to make at the time. The things like the trees providing shade, signs being helpful, guests using transport rides as transport, things that make the game seem more realistic yet aren't wrong enough to damage a casual player's experience.

[@michaelspock]

Thank you for covering this! I remember many of these myths and misconceptions from RCT1 when I was a kid (I always read the game manuals). A lot of these might have been features that didn't get implemented. It's a shame because some of those shop/food stall and guest mechanics would have been very interesting to play around with.

[@blankstare8904]

top notch video as always Marcel! I had flashbacks to reading the RCT2 manual as a kid and specifically remember thinking that trees provided shade... I guess the shade was a lie.

[@jker2012]

After some light thinking, ive come up with a theory that these tips are used to imply that there are certain rules in place so that in the players are doing things that a "proper" theme park creator would do. Its nice that some of these arent true because once these rules are learned to not exist, the player gains a sort of freedom to do whichever park they want.

[@onderjas]

The maximum park rating of 999 is indeed between 0 and 1000. 1000 is not between 0 and 1000 so the manual is correct on that bit.

[@88porpoise]

I may be wrong as it is a long time, but I think overcharging for umbrellas was actually included in TV commercials for one of thr games (they also had charging for toilets referenced).

[@psychomoth06]

I’m convinced that whoever wrote those awful manuals did so thinking the guests thought and acted like REAL people without bothering to check what they were actually coded to do.

[@rickpgriffin]

When it comes to incorrect manual information my mind always goes back to the Prima Guide for Ogre Battle 64--this one was the official guide and was probably the last one I got before the internet just started taking over the strategy guide space. It's got wrong information on almost every page. And it's not just fluff that's incorrect--stats are incorrect, items are incorrect, maps are incorrect, it only seems to vaguely represent the actual game. I know people have nostalgia for these physical guides but like... they stopped being all that useful once the games themselves were able to contain their own instructions

[@Bluelightzero]

What if all these features were coded into ORCT2 as an optional "Manual Accurate" mode?

[@Cr4z3d]

That'd be pretty neat.

[@ironoat]

For the tip about always being charged for changing the height of land an water, maybe it was trying to say that you don't get your money back for undoing a change to the land.

[@CouchPotator]

The tip about changing the terrain always costing money is probably to tell you that you can't get a refund if you try to change the terrain back to what it was originally. The mountain tool was available in RCT 1 and all it did for me was use up all of my money in an instant as I would either use it by mistake, or make my hill too big, and then try to lower it, but that would only create a crater, so I raise it back up, but now I have a weird ring valley.

[@Ibeechu]

I think you may be misinterpreting the paragraph at 3:23. I don't think it's saying it can clear objects that are larger than a single tile. I read it as saying that the tool can be used to clear large areas, instead of single tiles at a time.

[@Bengtssonsan]

3:58 That "Special Landscape Brush" is very interesting to me. It has been quite some time since I played the original RCT, but I am certain that this brush was available while playing scenarios as I remember using it rather often. I did not know it was removed in RCT2.

[@Speed74LP]

As a possible explanation why the manual has so many errors: Back then these things were large and took a rather long time to make. So they were usually ordered months ahead of release. So the Manual guys are getting a current state of the game and explanation of features which might not be implemented yet but are planned. However probably the features the manual teased about were dropped or cut because of time. And probably some changes were made too along the way. That is kinda normal for a lot of manuals back then for all kinds of games.

[@NarbsTheGreat]

I kinda wonder if some of these ideas were actually concepts Chris had but never got implemented and someone made a mistake.

[@brianverduin]

I could totally believe that the author of this either a) thought it worked these ways, b) was told it worked this way, or c) made up some fluff based in their own play test. Or option d, my personal belief: Chris Sawyer is a bit of a perfectionist, so it may be that some play testing/feedback at the tail end of development had people confused/frustrated/underwhelmed by some of these mechanics. Or just as well, the mechanics may have been buggy or not have worked well... So they may have removed some of these superfluous things from the game at the last minute. I have nothing to back that up other than I've seen this happen in software development before, and this smells just as likely as the other options.

[@musickid43]

I wonder if hungry guests used to pick a stall to go to like how they can be heading to a ride on the other side of the park. That could cause hungry guests to not ride anything.

[@PieMastyr]

luckily, i got my copy of rct from a cereal box and never even had the manual

[@banditkeithkingofduelmonsters]

I was charging $20 for umbrellas before rct2 even came out so the players did invent this.

[@MarcelVos]

RCT1's manual encourages it too. Although obviously a number of players will have thought of doing that without ever reading the manual.

[@ultimatecorgi3392]

When I was a kid, there was a rumor in my friend circle that if your park was popular or big enough, a special guest like the mayor or president would visit. If that guest died in your park, you would receive a massive penalty and all your money would be confiscated forever, or your park would get shut down. Something like that.

[@StarfoxHUN]

About the station thing, i suspect it could be because... It was the only way they could fit the coaster in that has all the elements they wanted to without overlaps and with a reasonable zoom level. Just a guess tought, but in that situation, i think i would do the same, sacrifice the station length to better show off the elements.

[@ApplePi3.]

Was probably written by someone who never played the game or maybe an early iteration of ChatGPT.

[@PowerStar004]

In many cases I think the game should be changed to reflect the manual. For example, I think the same ride penalty would make far more sense to stack - ie -25% penalty keeps stacking for the third, fourth, etc of the same ride type. Because having fifteen merry-go rounds and nothing else *shouldn't* be viable.

[@pmnt_]

The only thing that is worse than no documentation is wrong documentation.

[@Rock1290T]

We are blessed to have so much marcel vos recently!

[@bikutoso]

I wonder what the reason is for the various errors? Some could be mistakes or just misunderstanding a particular mechanic, but i wonder if it also could mention features that where planned but didn't make it to the finished game? Also the queue path confusing visitors could have been a bug that where fixed after the manual where created and before the game released.

[@zlamanit]

12:34 showing a short station and explaining that it should be longer allows the player to immediately improve on the design, which can make players happy.

[@MNGoldenEagle]

In fairness to the manual author, it was probably written by someone who was not deeply involved in the development of the game (aka Not Chris Sawyer) and had a beta build that was at least 6 months old, since the manual would need to be written, proofed, printed, and packaged by the time the game was ready for release. It's possible it was referencing things that Chris was planning to design at the time (i.e., the food on the ground, or path lights and flowers playing more of a role in the rating and appeal of the park) but never got around to. Same with the rollercoaster statistics that were missing descriptions.

[@JZHassan]

That last bit has me wondering what the best circuitous coaster with only a two tile station would be.

[@davidpaul8647]

Marcel debunking the long queue lines, guests won't got to a park with 15 merry-go-rounds and nothing else, and guest injuries was particularly hilarious because of your previous challenge parks 🤣 Tv/entertainer queue line for one ride that spans the whole park, 1-tile Forest Frontiers, and well...we all know that drowning guests or yeeting them into the underground abyss is more entertaining than a slow dinghy crash! 😆 Also you should totally do a mini-series now where you debunk that line in the manual by seeing how many scenarios are beatable with exactly 15 merry-go-rounds and no other rides!

[@BabusGameRoom]

11:05 I might be remembering wrong, but I think in Theme Park, guests (or, Peeps?) on the tube boat ride could end up falling off onto paths that went over the ride. This lead to some odd behaviours, so I guess it's better for guests to just explode!

[@tarasaurus98]

3:20 I think you may be misreading that one. It is mentioning that "areas" that are larger than a single square can be removed, not specific individual items. Basically telling the user that the + and - buttons exist and they don't need to click every individual item to remove them.

[@MegaRazorback]

I wonder if there was a guest heat temperature planned for RC2 that got scrapped very early on and they just forgot to alter the manual to reflect that?

[@josephmatthewspearsslade8900]

*Correction:* The scenery removal tool actually clears items in an area that can be larger than a single tile. You must have read that wrong yourself, ironically enough, as it should be obvious from that information that it won't clear items _larger_ than a single tile from the get-go anyways.

[@aceofarrows]

"There exists no such things as 'injuries' in the Roller Coaster Tycoon universe: Guests either survive great falls without any injuries at all, or immediately _die_ from running an _inflatable dinghy_ into the ground at _2 km/h."_

[@nthgth]

I wouldn't have believed this could be so interesting. (A common theme on this channel). I also had no idea a tall and exciting ride is easier for guests to find!

[@giventofly94]

The background music of these videos instantly makes me want to play RCT

[@MenkoDany]

Back in the day, the manuals were often written based on Beta/RC versions of the game. Sometimes, these errors would come from testers or people from the publisher who contributed to the manual only knowing what they tested or what they were told by devs "will be in the game" but really wasn't.

[@DarkWarchieff]

The Dutch translation of the game itself is also totally weird.

[@PhoenixStriker1]

I think one of the things that would most prominently explain the manual errors is the fact that whoever wrote the manual probably didn’t have a ton of knowledge on how the game’s code functions. So they either ran with it based on experience playing the game (which may or may not always be accurate) or more likely they just generally made suggestions based on real world theme park principles. But if it is the latter, it really speaks to how well Sawyer designed the game that so many general theme park design principles were still followed closely enough for the manual to not be completely useless.

[@Everyyoueverymiau]

The „No entry“ sign may not entertain the guests, but it sure as hell has entertained many of your viewers! 😂

[@Videoswithsoarin]

typically this kind of thing occurs because the manuals are created before the game is complete as manuals have to be manufactured before the game is done so they can all be packaged and sold. if a feature changes or wasnt fully implemented the manual will be wrong when the game is actually finished

[@JorenVaes]

I was 8 years old when RCT2 released. My parents only allowed me to play video games for 1 hour a day, so when I had to stop I would read the manual back to front over and over again 'dreaming' of my hour of RCT2 the next day. At the end the booklet was literally falling apart.

[@BiohazardP]

Wait, were players actually supposed to read the manual instead of just jumping in and figuring things out as they went? That might explain why my friend and I had such trouble beating so many of the scenarios.

[@almaelma11]

I am going to guess that maybe the manual was made as the game was being made and things got changed that they just didnt change in the manual. This stuff is super interesting to me! This happened with a game called Unreal that was made in the 90s but for its official strategy guide. It includes things like the cut squid enemy and an entry about the sniper being able to fire 3 shots at once as its secondary fire, which it doesnt. Just a few of the many changes! This sorta stuff is like looking into the game as it was being made. I do wish it would reflect the final game but its pretty cool in its own way too. Thanks for the video :)

[@mdmjeremiah]

I remember seeing the TV ads for the first Roller Coaster Tycoon and I clearly remember them saying that you have to put bathrooms near roller coasters for people who are nauseous. I always did that and noticed that it never did a thing and I kept thinking I was doing something wrong. I even tried to make it so they had to go the restroom when they exited and it still did nothing. It wasn't until I saw a video of yours that I finally realized that I wasn't crazy and that it was nonsense.

[@LessaCaira]

I saw your video on the fact peeps don't puke in bathrooms and I was shocked. I was like, "I could swear they did??" Now I know why I thought that, thanks!

[@fo-ef8qo]

Mr. Vos is the undisputed king of the anti-clickbait thumbnail

[@mercury5003]

Some of this comes off to me as a "rabbit in a hat" trick as an attempt to sell the illusion that the games mechanics are deeper than they actually are, such as saltier foods making guests hungry or taller rides making guests able to see other rides. Some of it seems like a way to encourage players to put more variety in their playstyle like not putting multiple of the same kind of ride. Lies of course but well meaning lies and i kind of love them.

[@hungryhedgehog4201]

interesting, it's kind of a planned vs implemented thing. Also maybe some of these were there to help sell the fantasy of running a park,

[@darkswarm13]

i dont remember what the map is called but the map at 8:46 where you spammed the merry go rounds, but i was playing that map when they found saddam Hussein hiding in that hole in 04

[@Adam-ne7qc]

I miss those manuals of old. I remember as a kid I read the RCT1 manual several times between playing sessions. It was amazing in building climate. BTW I remember much more false stuff in my manual e.g. the idea that entire families arrive to your park. Or that vandals may cause ride's breakdown (but that's perhaps my interpretation).

[@JamesGreenz]

3:27 actually this part about clearing scenery seems ok grammatically (if still a little ambiguous). it’s the “area” being cleared that is larger than 1 square, not a piece of scenery. you can remove the prepositional phrase “of trees and walls” from the sentence and it still makes sense