I have two corrections for this video. Firstly, it appears that I was right with the "best park in the country" award, as in the Dutch translation it the "value" in "best value park in the country" was not included so it became "Beste park van het land". Or at least, that's what several people have commented and it seems logical, but since I can't change the language in RCT1 I can't check it myself. And secondly, at 2:40 I included the same half of the table twice. See this video for the maximum prices of all the shops: kzfaq.info/get/bejne/edecpJmUt92UoWw.html

"there is no such thing as saltyness in rollercoaster tycoon 1 and 2". i don't know man, some of the scenarios made me angry

As someone who works in food, the idea of a massive blob of 1000 ravenous guests marching towards me gives me anxiety lmao

The myth at my school was that putting in too many flowers would lead to your guests complaining about the number of bees harassing them.

I love the rival park one. Using coasters as artillery pieces somehow benefits your park because you're besieging an invisible, unmentioned enemy... just wild.

The fact that a guest can consume a whole bucket of popcorn faster than a burger

I got told as kid that if you wait long enough in RCT1, you'll unlock the ''cigarette stall'' which will have it's own walk animation and then make guests addicted so they buy more at higher prices. I kind of want this as a mod now.

I wonder if the "crashing trains into rival parks" myth originates from people having memories about Transport Tycoon, also made by Chris Sawyer and running on the same engine as RCT, where you could cripple rival transport companies by stopping trains before an intersection and then activating them to plow over your rivals' transport busses and trucks.

The original Roller Coaster Tycoon installation/game guide might also have spawned the salty food myth. This is one of the bullet items under the Food and Drink section of Shops and Stalls (page 14). "Drink stands are more popular when placed near food stalls that sell thirst-inducing products - salty things like popcorn, for example."

You mentioned the bathroom nausea thing being in the RCT1 manual, but there were others that started there too: - The foreword by John Wardley at the beginning of the manual says "Position the camera in the best place for good expressions on riders’ faces to maximize sales." - The "Design Tips" sidebar for Mild Rides says "Elevated rides allow your guests to see other rides and areas of the park, which can spark interest in visiting them" and "Rides that provide music often add to the atmosphere of the park, cheering nearby guests" - The "seeing rides while on other rides" myth is repeated in the sidebar about water rides: "Like transport rides, well-designed mild water rides give guests a good view of the park, which can increase their interest in visiting other rides" - The shops and stalls section says "Drink stands are more popular when placed near food stalls that sell thirst-inducing products -- salty things like popcorn, for example" -- not technically false, but definitely implies that a saltiness mechanic exists - The bathroom nausea myth is alluded to multiple times in the sections about rides, and is then explicitly mentioned in the section about bathrooms: "Sometimes, guests will need a bathroom after a particularly intense ride. Consider the ride's nausea factor, too." Could probably make a pretty lengthy follow-up to this video just going line by line through the RCT1 manual and seeing how much of it is actually accurate. For example, is it true that guests will get confused if you use queue lines for regular paths, like the manual claims in the path section? While some of these myths were definitely made up by older siblings or early-2000s websites trying to pull a fast one, especially with those "might not work on all versions" disclaimers (or maybe some of the fake codes were intended to be like "paper towns" in maps, so they could tell when other RCT fansites were plagiarizing their content?), a lot of them are beliefs that made perfect sense with what we were told about the game directly from its publisher.

The original Theme Park (released in 1994 by Bullfrog) allowed you to adjust the Salt level of the fries, which did make people more thirsty, so I'd guess that is where that myth came from - not the later Theme Park Inc.

I also had an interesting Myth too. I always tried not to put food courts next to intensive rides like rollercoasters since I always believed if guests go on them while eating/drinking it will be more likely that they get nauseous and throw up.

The fact that so many of these are borderline believable is a testament to the true depth of interaction in this game

One rumor I thought as a kid was that some stalls had bigger items, so they fill trash cans faster. Like popcorn buckets being bigger than burger boxes.

The truly fascinating thing about these rumours and myths is the fact that this game is/was so good for it's time and still is that people are putting way more faith into the programming and mechanics that they expect things that would have been extremely hard to implement at the time.

I definitely thought that guests would use restrooms to throw up as a kid. I used to place a restroom on every single exit path for a rollercoaster.

My brothers and I used to surround intense rollercoasters with hedges or mazes because we thought "hiding" the coaster would increase the intensity tolerance of guests.

I don't remember if I ever thought the On-ride photos myth was true, but I always preferred to try putting them on more exciting bits because it just seemed weird otherwise regardless if it had any effect or not

The myth about salty foods causing guests to become thirstier probably was also started based on what the game manual said. Under the Food and Drink section for RCT1 it states: "Drink stands are more popular when placed near food stalls that sell thirst-inducing products - salty things like popcorn, for example." When you said that was a myth i swore I had read that it was true in some official source and had to look it up!

I think the salty myth comes from the RCT1 manual: "Drink stands are more popular when placed near food stalls that sell thirst-inducing products - salty things like popcorn, for example."

The guests not buying ice cream when it rains is so funny to me. Why that one food? I’d say the #1 food to not buy in the rain would be the candy floss, that would just melt away in the rain, haha

5:46 one note is that guests prefer benches to first aid stalls. If you have a bench in front of a first aid stall, and that bench has an open seat, nauseous guests will always sit down on the bench before going into the stall.

I learnt recently that the photo sections on rides don't matter as I added a photo spot to my popular log flume at the bottom of a big drop. Only later did I remember I'd added a reverser turntable before the drop, so this meant guests had been buying photos of the back of their heads this entire time. They LOVED it apparently haha.

I would think the salty-myth comes from Theme Park 1 where this was an actual mechanic (but with the fries stand). And the game is also older then RCT1 and 2, but looks at least somewhat similar. Sometimes games from that time merge in peoples head.

I used to believe "the red faced guests" were people who were, say, thrown from a coaster which they just had entered and then had a break down. I knew about the name cheats, but never could make them work. I also thought about how people had a food preference, so always built pizzas and burgers stands instead of ice creams. As always, great video, Marcel.

This is one of the best videos you've made I think! Some of these are hilarious! Launching coasters off the map to tank THEIR rating, that is wrong on so many levels!

The Bobsled Coaster *CAN* crash off the tracks at turns in Rollercoaster Tycoon 3. But that same game also removes the ability of the Ghost Train to crash at all and makes the Observation Tower capable of crashing if you don't build anything beyond the station.

A lot of these basically sound like playground rumors, especially the "rival park" one Also I didn't know some of those name cheats existed, first time I've ever heard of one that gives guests pizza, wanting to leave the park, giving purple clothes

The “rival park” myth came from an old facebook post where the OP reminisced about playing a scenario with a rival park and crashing coasters into it to lower the rival’s ranking. It got spread around Reddit and Tumblr, which is probably how it entered general conscious

My comment didn't make any sense, sorry about that! I meant that umbrellas had a price floor below which they were no more likely to be purchased. Thanks for including it anyway!

I remember reading somewhere that food stall placed next to each other would compete for business, being a child I thought "oh no, they will fight and do worse" so I used to make sure all my shops and stalls were on their own and miles apart from each other.

In Dutch the award was called "Beste Park van het Land", so I think this is what has been burned in your memory.

As for the "best park in the country" myth, have you considered looking at the awards in other languages? I've played RCT a lot as a kid but back then in Dutch language, and I can recall having seen that award as well.

For some reason, I have this memory of playing RCT with a wild west scenario and there being the two entertainers: a bandit and a sheriff (black hat/white hat). They would walk around entertaining guests, but if they met, they would have a "shoot-out", and one or the other would "die", then get back up and start entertaining guests again. I have no idea where this came from, but it would be cool to have the entertainers interact like this.

There's a line in the manual that says something like "don't place stalls next to each other, they will compete and lower prices". I had always assumed there was an actual game mechanic that would cause them to lower sale prices if they were adjacent, so I would always make sure there was at least one block between each stall. I will say, it speaks to how well-done this game is that a lot of these myths sound plausible. In a game where each guest has a random weight and this changes the physics of a coaster, it's really not that implausible that some foods would be salty or that on-ride photo placement would affect price.

The last rival park myth made me remember something from my childhood. My brother told me that normally your park would get some sort of penalty when guests died from a crash, but if they died outside of your property, there was no penalty. I remember his reasoning being that legally it's not your fault because they didn't die on your property lmao. So whenever I created rides to kill guests by flinging them off a hill way too fast (as one does), I would always make sure they would land outside the park fence.

I used to be very hesitant to take out loans since my dad said that it would make the guests unhappy. I don’t know what his reasoning was and I didn’t even know what “loan” meant at the time but it had an impact on how I played for years.

I think the myths regarding mowing the grass stems from the original theme park where you'd get a tax break (for 5 years I think) if you got a handyman to start mowing the grass as soon as you create your park. At least that's how I remember it (heck it was 30 years ago) and always put a handyman or two straight onto the grass when starting scenarios in RCT :)

Fighting vandals would have so much hilarious potential. Maybe nearby guests that witness the brawl would either have their happiness lowered because they witnessed needless violence, or increased because they saw a knockdown drag out fight for free and didn’t have to go to a wrestling competition.

Friend of mine told me that if you make the reverse-freefall coaster very long and place it very high, the cart can fly off into space. 2 in-game years later it would come back down with a guest and a few aliens riding it. Unfortunately that's not the case, but such an easter egg would be brilliant. I hope the openRCT2 devs can one day make that happen... Or I need to start coding a mod myself

I remember a friend in elementary school who showed me her RCT1 game and told me to build coasters that fire into the edge of the map so that it would ruin our rival park. For the longest time I still believed that there was a scenario where there is a rival park that you need to exceed.

Kinda want an OpenRCT mod to make some of the logical ones real. Like signs give a slight boost to pathfinding like a map does, bathrooms treat nausea, mowed lawns increasing park quality, stuff like that.

5:45 I always got the impression that guests never used the First Aid stall because they would never actively seek them out, only using them if their random pathfinding led them into it while sick.

a popular myth when I was a kid that I heard from multiple friends was that lightning can strike your roller coaster and kill your guests, so we would always be telling each other to close our roller coaster when it's thundering and raining lol

To be fair, there _is_ a Megapark in RCT1 vanilla (that the game doesn't even generate the scenario file for until you've finished all the others), but it doesn't have the glass dome (unless you build one) or the earthquake mechanic. I can't remember if there was a similar park for the expansions or RCT2 though.

9:55 I think this happened to me once in RCT3. I had a Bobsleigh train fly out of a banked turn after a steep drop. I switched it to an un-banked turn and the coaster no longer crashed.

I think half of these myths deserve to be put into OpenRCT2.

14:25 This remembers me Sim City 3000 in which you could have up to 4 neighboring cities and if you put your polluting industries at the edge of the city, the game would ignore the pollution that was off the map (like the pollution was going to the other cities). As a kid I saw these other cities as rivals as the game would show their total popullation in comparison with yours.

It just hit me the incredible amount of work Marcel has to do to actually create a visual representation of every topic/scene/scenario he brings up in his videos! For example 10:20 when he explains about photo stations at exiting places (video of photo station at work in an exiting place), 10:30 about photo stations in not exiting places (video of another roller coaster with a photo station in not an exciting place) and then 10:37 about photo stations not even a part of the ride (video of a custom made roller coaster where the photo station is not a part of the ride). We really should appreciate dedicated content creators like Marcel more.

The control failure myth may be related to Theme Park from 1994 - if a broken ride operates for an extended period of time without being fixed it will eventually explode, leaving behind an immovable pile of rubble

attacking the enemy park made me laugh so hard, imagine you just look to your side and a freaking kitty car is just flying towards you

"As the crow flies, not as the path walks" Absolutely lovely wording. I love that.

"There's no such thing as Saltiness in Roller Coaster Tycoon." Well sir, you definitely haven't seen my trying to get a rollercoaster to work properly.

I remember something very vividly: It was not really a myth from inside the game, but something I saw either in a magazine or online around the time of release of Roller Coaster Tycoon 2 (not sure if before or after but must have been around 2002). There was a screenshot from the game with the window of a guest open. It basically looked like it does today with two big exceptions: Firstly: the face icon of the guest, that shows the guest's mood was different, as it was wearing a baseball cap (yes, the face icon!) Secondly: There was a very basic 3D model of the guest standing in the live picture, and looking through the fourth wall and the text "What's this camera doing here?" was displayed. I actually believed, this was a new feature of RCT2 as at that time I have not played it yet. I was a bit disappointed when I finally got my hands on RCT2 some time later, as the face/mood icon looked the same. I've googled for this particular picture a few times but never found it, so I assume it was photoshopped and a hoax, but it looked hilarious anyway.

I feel like the Merry Go Round myth was some kind of mass hallucination we all had as kids. I'm assuming whatever I remember happening to it must've been in a dream.

I wonder if the "give a guest this name" thing is more of a trap street kind of thing. When they published the list in magazines, they add a few of their friend's names with fake effect, to see who copies the information. Also, i got 2/3 through this and remembered that I need to watch it a second time to catch all of the names you put in for guests... :D

what i remember about 'saltiness' from theme park world (The sequel) is that increasing it raised guest satisfaction (The happiness stat in that game) at a higher level with a rather harsh penalty to your shops supply costs (eating into your profits at a higher percentage, than if say you placed two stalls) Basically it was some sort of fine tuning for your finances and efficiencies of a stall - like in sim city when you over fund a school to get higher capacity while still paying somewhat less per month than the larger capacity school

I definitely thought the salty food thing was something mentioned in the manual, but couldn't find it there. Must have misremembered that part. I also find it kind of weird that a burger takes longer to eat than a bucket of popcorn. For me it is the other way around. Edit: Upon seeing the consumption times listed in the video, a lot of them don't make sense. Seems like the game does not take cooling hot drinks for consumption into consideration, nor how easy they are to eat in real life. I think the time eaten/drinking must purely be based on their hunger/thirst replenishing stats.

Now imagine a mod of some sort which implements all of the most popular crazy myths. That would be kind of awesome.

Flying off bobsleigh turns has to be one of the most common myths. I assumed it would because vertical gs work that way and you can get red numbers on turns that look like they almost fly off. I eventually realized that I misremembered and that they don't fly off turns. I since forgot that and was again surprised when you said that they don't before remembering that I once knew this.

You mentioned the colour shirt and ride intensity myth. I do however, wonder if there is some accidental correlation from the way RNG works. If each guest seed has some bias in some direction if the shirt and excitement rating are pulled from the same value in the RNG. So it would still be a certain low percentage, but could result in some shirt types or rider characteristics being impossible combinations. I don't know at all if that's how it works in RCT, but I do wonder about it!

I think the amount of myths and misconceptions around this game shows how well designed it is. As many of your videos show, the underlying systems are actually quite simple in most cases, but when you put them all together it becomes complex enough that people start to come up with their own explanations for how things work. Also, I definitely remember trying some of those bogus name cheats back in the day!

9:35 "Your mom looks too intense to me." "Just looking at your mom makes me sick." "I'm not paying that much for your mom." "Your mom was great."

a friend of mine told me that if you didn't hire enough security guards, a riot could break out in your park.

1:31 Are they the worst though? If a guest's hunger is barely removed, they'll buy more, sooner, and you make more money!

I am pretty sure that the original Theme Park actually gave you the option to increase salt or water down drinks, and such things did have an impact in that game. I do wonder how many myths may have started off with Theme Park.

I 100% believed the merry-go-round would explode if not fixed in time as a kid. I remember every time one would go haywire I would toss mechanics in front of it in a total panic

"guests see transport rides as just normal rides" finally, representation for the weird kids who loved riding the little trains that take you around themeparks!

On the withered flowers/handyman one: I know nearby scenery can increase a ride's excitement rating. Does flowers withering affect that at all?

This was a good one! Every time I think I know everything about a game this old, you seem to be able to throw a few new things at me. The map effects were particularly interesting. I think there would be an interesting video in displaying the exact effects of maps on peeps' behaviors. I know you shouted out Duerklink's, but the effects seem to change guests' behavior enough that there could be some interesting things in terms of the pathing effects for farther items. Would be neat to dive in to!

I believed in roller coaster tycoon 2 on the old west map with the native Americans. That if you build near their camp they would vandalize your park breaking lamp posts and benches

A few things I remember, most of these are probably myths tho 1. Changing the colour of rides increases park value and makes guests want to ride them after they stop being popular 2. Path type effects mood I.e. in hot regions concrete is too hot, in wet regions dirt gets muddy, lowering guest happiness 3. If you make it so guests can't leave an area of the park they'll always buy more food/drink 4. Guests will always pay to use the toilet no matter the cost

There may not be saltiness in RCT...but why are my guests always salty?

I'd like to see you make 12+ excitement _practical_ coasters of as many types as you can.

Some of those myths sound like good plugin ideas for OpenRCT2. Would be fun to make customized path finding where each guest only knows what he had discovered and where higher rides can reveal more park, and mountains and trees can block line of sight to rides and so on. Imagine needing GTX 3080 for game from 2002 just to compute paths for the guests lol 🤪

As a small child i had nightmares that unhappy guests would turn into "bullies", which were taller guests with big heads that would beat up the other guests. i knew it was nonsense of course but its really funny to think back on

That's so funny, I was just sitting here saying " I wonder what will be Marcel's next video" and boom there it is

"No views 22 seconds ago" guess I got here pretty early, neat

Planet coaster has saltiness, but it feels like it doesn't even matter cause the guests never satisfy their thirst

These are the ones I heard as a kid: Pressing the M on your keyboard added a 1.000 Eur every time you pressed it. If you kept your park closed a whole year, a guest would come to your entrance with a million bucks begging you to open the park. Building stalls next to popular rides makes more money. Another one was that if your ride had too little supports due to say, path or other rides passing underneath, it could collapse

I used to think that renaming a guest "Chris Sawyer" would have other guest screaming "Chris!" Or "Sawyer!" From time to time when he was nearby. I read that one time on a french forum.

I always took their lawnmowing duties away as soon as I hired the handymen. Sure it looks nice, but there's trash and barf all over my paths, and they're miles away mowing the grass.😑

For a while as a kid I thought that if a guest got too scared in a haunted house they'd immediately want to leave the park unless you had an entertainer near the exit to cheer them up again.

Marcel’s videos ask me for attention I rarely have time for these days, but it’s nice when I can relax with a few of these for an hour

Mowing lawns is a waste of your handymen's time, but fortunately if the grass is bothering you it can be reset for free by just clicking it with the terrain tool. It's a bit tedious in vanilla but in OpenRCT2 you can make your selection absolutely massive and just reset the whole park instantly

The effect of naming a guest "Chris Sawyer" has always been very endearing to me.

I played Theme Park World. Altering the 'saltiness' of a fries stall does not make guests more thirsty. It only changes the price of stock but also it more likely for guests to 'disapprove' it. I'll have to play it to research it.

Imagine having an amusement park and suddenly the park next to you launches a train into your park, killing people in your park, and YOU getting the blame for it while the other park just THRIVES XD

“I’d love to see two vandals fighting or bumper cars crashing but I fear that will only remain an dream” OpenRCT2 modders: “Hold my beer”

I totally misrememberd "Best Park in the Country" achievement too! Our brains don't like being wrong

My friend would insist that the vandalized benches were broken by morbidly obese guests that he saw breaking the benches

The Salt myth comes from the Original Theme Park. Salty Fries makes them want drink, and more Caffeine in Coffee makes people move quicker. Fat in the burgers make them need the toilet quicker, stuff like that, and while I can't vouch for the salt, High caffeine coffee does speed the customers up, so I assume the other effects are true as well.

Saltiness making guests thirsty was a thing way back in the first Theme Park that came out in '94. Theme Park Inc. is a sequel that I hadn't even heard of until now.

8:23 ik ken de zogenaamde pickpocket cheat nog van vroeger! Ik weet zelfs nog dat ik aan m’n ouders vroeg wat een pickpocket was omdat ik geen effect zag! Leuk om dit weer mee te maken. Ga zo door Marcel, ik kijk alles.

until watching you, I always thought the crash-prone phobia coasters in diamond heights had a scripted event to crash, so until VERY recently whenever I played that scenario, Id crash reset them (2x redlight) at the start of every run.

was a myth back then that if you left your park closed for a year and not build anything at all, a guy in a suit will come to the park entrance and give you a million dollars

_∗walks up to ice cream stand∗_ "Oh, I don't want any. It's raining. Just thought you should know that." _∗walks away∗_

The weirdest thing is I also remember the award of "Best Park in the Country". I wonder if it was something the Dutch installment of Rollercoaster Tycoon had, considering it might have changed some names, cause I never saw it in the English version. But I vividly remember this achievement as well.

15:58 I laughed so hard at that, thank you for including it. :) Hm, I wonder if I had any of these myself! Maybe for SC3K? I played that more as a kid, I think. I do remember an urban legend that you could unlock Waluigi in Mario Kart: Super Circuit, but that's quite unrelated. I do remember thinking that a car in the 1999 game Re-Volt stopped racing for a while to train up, and then when he came back he was better. It's amazing how humans can conjure up consistencies in randomness.

These videos are bringing back so many memories! I used to play this game too when I was a kid, probably around 20 years ago now I bet! Thanks for making these videos! I've subscribed, and bought the trilogy on sale to finally finish those scenarios I could never figure out as a kid!