Oh my, an interesting discussion emerged to challenge my opinion in this thread. Considering the scalable windowed mode which doesn't suffer from stretching, I think I will indeed buy the original. I'm not interested in Roller Coaster Tycoon as a sandbox.

Thank you, everybody. I may drop by to share my rediscovery of a game from my childhood.

I shat myself with joy when I saw this on GOG. I wouldn't go without RCT1 or RCT2 if they were both available, but barring that, I'll take this one. Haven't found a better game to match with my favorite band from 10 years ago. :)

It uses an more refined version of the engine than RCT The major changes were an sandbox mode for free play, an ride editor to build rides outside the park, and the rides were revamped to allow the game to recreate Six flags rides since Six flags allowed them to use there parks for the Real parks levels where the first game used UK parks.

I think both are equally good. The only thing I didn't like about RCT2 was that the scenery building tended to be a bit cumbersome for me...but that may have changed now. I'll have to install it again.

I found RCT 1 to be the better game, but RCT 2 was the (much) better creator. With the first game, it the goal was to beat a park's objective (though make cool stuff doing it), in order to unlock more parks. With the 2nd game, most of the pre-built parks were.. meh, I guess, but you could have many, many hours spent making your own parks from scratch, especially with the ability to drop in fan-made stuff.

I think RCT 2 could have used a campaign mode like the first game had. <_<

There's only two things I find myself missing from RCT1 over RCT2:

1) block brakes. Probably doesn't mean a lot to most people, but makes it much easier to make coasters reliable. I seem to remember coasters crashed all the time in RCT1 (although I don't know if this was behaviour was changed in the expansion packs, because I haven't had a crash in the GOG version yet).

2) Stackable rides / scenery - Not such an issue unless you like making big buildings, but it did make underground/ raised rides much easier. Also, I've seen some amazing fan made parks with very impressive buildings, but as mentioned above, RCT1 is more focused on the game than the creation.

I played RCT2 a lot more originally, because I had problems with saving on my original RCT, which is fixed in GOG version. I can now quite happily sink many hours into RCT1. For those waiting for RCT2, be aware that there may be licensing issues related to the "real" Six flags parks and branding which may make it harder to re-release. I think many people would struggle to even find differences

RCT has coaster breaks at least in the deluxe version. if you want RCT2 Deluxe it is for sale here. Rollercoaster Tycoon 2: Triple Thrill Pack

Ok how about this....... Rollercoaster tycoon 2 or 3?

I am only going to buy 1 RCT game and I thought maybe if I wait 3 will come out but the problem is I never played 3.

So which is better 2 or 3? If 2 is better then Ill just get it now but if 3 is better Ill wait a bit and see if gog releases it.

RCT 2 is a sequel that uses an engine with all of the advancements of RCT Deluxe with smoe added features and Six Flags branding. RCT 3 is an entirely diffrent engine with full 3d rendered parks and a on ride cam added to compete with the theme park and disney coaster games.

And which one is better?

if you liked RCT 1 you will like RCT 2 Get RCT3 is you have a pressing need to ride your rides.

To me, RTC1 is far better than RTC2. I have spent hours and hours on RTC1 (and I like to play it from time to time, just like OpenTTD), while I played RTC2 like a week and never played it again since.

RTC2 is certainly an improvement over RTC1 here and there (more attractions, small tweaks, newer, larger, better etc.) it is also a lot more cluttered and sims-like... while someone may like it this way, I believe that you need to focus on many (too many) unnecessary things which distracts you from doing the best part in RTC - designing, testing and running attactions.

RTC1 is like distilled while RTC2 is somehow diluted...

RCT2 + RCT1 + RCT3

I totally agree. I think RCT1 is one of my favorite games of all time but I can't say the same for RCT2. My issues with the sequel were the fact that basically everything that the sequel added was either not really necessary or far too cumbersome to use (scenario editor was a nightmare to use, stackable scenery was cumbersome and had issues with depth due to the game's 2D perspective, a huge amount of rides were just reskins to buff up the ride count, the way they rearranged the UI was terrible, etc.). Not to mention the fact that the scenarios the game came with were pretty sub-par and weren't fun to play on.

RCT1 had less in general, but what lacks in quantity in more than makes up in quantity. Far better scenarios, the rides that were there were good on their own, no cheap "reskin" rides, UI wasn't a jumbled mess, it was just overall better. RCT2 felt like they really didn't know what direction they wanted to take in and it became a classic case of feature creep.