I have a story to share with anyone under the age of 20. It’s about a time before online gameplay; if you wanted to be sociable you had to actually have at least one friend and a spare controller. A time where Sega actually made market leading consoles, and Nintendo made consoles that appealed to gamers and not their mums. A time when your handheld device choices consisted of either on which required fifty seven batteries for twelve minutes of play, or one where you coped with playing in poorly lit areas by increasing your green. This was the reality of gaming in the early nineties. And in case you wondered, it was AWESOME.

Coming from a broken home, I was lucky enough to have both a Super Nintendo and a Megadrive when I was growing up, although I never really had a huge selection of games for either. Reason being was that my elder step brother was a computer geek, and always kept our house stocked with a fairly decent PC for the times. This meant that a lot of my time was spent on the PC instead, and alongside Sega Rally, Street Fighter and Flight Simulator (you know I was the most bad ass kid in school), the game I loved to play the most was Theme Park. Released in 1994 by Bullfrog Games, it was a simulation game where (and try and stay with me here), you attempt to build a successful theme park. I would spend hours trying to build successful parks, well thought out rides and plans, only to flatten the lot and replace it all with a giant water ride. It was the game that I’d always go back to, and the one that absorbed the most of my life until Championship Manager rocked up and waved goodbye to my social life.

In time, Theme Park was replaced by Rollercoaster Tycoon, then by Zoo Tycoon, and so on and so forth until I could no longer afford a decent PC, and my interest in PC gaming waned. The problem that I have found more recently is that, as I lack even a small amount of technical knowledge, I am unable to go back play them as they simply wont run anymore. This is disappointing, and made even worse by the appalling state of the Theme Park app that appeared recently, desperately scrabbling at your wallet like the skankiest of gold digging girlfriends. I thought that the games of my youth were gone forever, until one day I was scanning Amazon (other sites are available, but use Amazon as its better) for DS games and what do I find but Theme Park for the Nintendo DS. £2.78 of my hard earned money later and I lovely nugget of nostalgia was gracing a device previously only used for enabling a closet Pokemon obsession.

Released in 2007 to literally no fanfare whatsoever by EA, the game is almost an exact mirror of the original. The disappointing exception being the addition of an advisor, whichever iteration of whom you pick will appear at far too frequent intervals telling you that the price you’re selling chips for is ridiculously cheap. This adds nothing to the game but fortunately you are able to phase it out relatively easily. Other than that, the game stays faithful to its namesake, from being forced to start with a theme park filled with only a bouncy castle and a man dressed as a fish to the negotiation screen with the slenderman-like arms stretched across the screen trying to agree the price of wages.

What is particularly good about this game though is that it works incredibly well with the DS’s touchscreen, the ability to use the stylus giving similar freedom of input accuracy as you would experience with a mouse. It really is a wonderful kick back to a much easier time in the history of gaming, before the need for realistic graphics and spectacular grandiose plotlines overtook the simple pleasure in seeing the number of people walking around the OCD inspired perfect grid of your park.

I was really happy that I was able to get this game and play it again. It made me happy. Games these days rarely make me happy, normally there is such a level of concentration required to progress through a title that there isn’t time to sit back and smile. The last time I really smiled when I was playing a game was Portal 2, and you’d have to be made of the most boring, tedious, humour deprived stone not to smile when playing that. I’ll tell you something else, while I was searching through games available on the DS, I found the original Sim City as well. I had no idea that Nintendo had gone this route, I thought it was all Pokemon and brain training. I applaud them for it, and I would strongly encourage anyone who owns a DS to take it out of its drawer, get it back off your mum, throw away the professor Layton cartridge and go back twenty years to have some fun.

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