Chris Sawyer announced this enhanced remake of (or spiritual successor to) Transport Tycoon In early April 2004 and released it in September of the same year. The game uses the Rollercoaster Tycoon engine, runs at a higher resolution (1024×768), starts earlier (1900) and pays more attention to historical engine types, but most of all the AI has been improved. The computer player no longer builds pointless loops or massive bridges over small ponds.

Graphics are very similar to those of the original, making it one of the last isometric retail games. It needs a Pentium III with 128MB RAM.

The reception was originally rather mixed. Some enjoyed the nostalgy, others thought it looked dated and offered too little new in spite of taking up ten times as much disk space as the original. And did not OpenTTD offer just as much, for free? But on the whole, the community has embraced it, and lots of add-ons have been created for it.

Links

• Good Old Games
• Locomotion UK
• Interview for Gamespot
• E3 2004 Preshow First Look

Add-Ons

• PikkaRail Locomotion Downloads
• AMI Trains
• ChrisTrains for Locomotion
• The Shinkansen Series 0 Bullet Train
  from Chris Sawyer himself

Reviews

• What does it matter? Alfred Barten asks when it comes to the lack of features in Locomotion:

  The game is engrossing. It keeps me up way past my intended bedtime. It's like a good novel you can't put down. So what if the critics gave it a so-so rating? It does what I want it to. Hats off to Chris Sawyer!

• Chris Sawyer's Locomotion is an exercise in frustration, Dan Adams complains:

  Chris Sawyer released Transport Tycoon back in 1994. This game is the same game, but worse for the fact that it hasn't evolved into anything better in a full ten years and that other transport and industry games have come out that have been a thousand times better than it for the fact that they had functional interfaces that provided information and easy construction.

• Those who enjoyed the original Transport Tycoon will find Locomotion quite fulfilling, Bob Mandel is sure:

  This title has incredible depth and play value, absorbing you into the ins-and-outs of the economic strategies of transportation management. Despite the disappointing nature of the graphics and audio, if you can overlook these deficiencies or do not care about them, you should give this offering a try. Those of us who want to see the next big leap in the construction simulation genre will, however, have to wait for a future revolution.

• A worthy sequel to Transport Tycoon, Trainsim UK concluded (read revised review):

  Starting a Locomotion game is like pulling on a well loved pair of boots—comfortable and familiar. It is essentially Transport Tycoon with a makeover and new features but much, much more—not that aficionados of the original will have any problem with that.