Pizza Tycoon (or Pizza Connection, for the German version) really takes the meaning of the word "micromanagement" to a new level. In this game, you must take care of everything. You start out with a pathetic amount of money. First, you have to rent a restaurant. Then you have to buy and place furniture. You have to hire personell. You have to decide which pizzas you put on the menu, and you have to do some market research first. Are there more kids or old folks in your neighborhood? Which pizza ingredient is popular with this demographic?
Demographics are all important. There are six: kids, young people, blue collar (These three often have common tastes), white collar, business people, and senior citizens. The last three, again, often share tastes, theirs being more conservative. No we ain't clichéd in the least, or are we? Anyway anything from floor covering to pizza ingredients to the pictures you hang on your wall will have different appeal on these six demographics.
Once you have decided on a menu, you have to buy ingredients. Again these are available in different quality, and you have to figure out how much of each you need yourself. The game does not really help you here. Once you hire a manager, he or she can do it for you.
You can amend your meager earnings by running errands for the mafia, for naturally, where there is pizza, there has to be mafia. This is where it gets really weird. Occasionally you will have to deal with politicians, who have the heads of celebrities—German humor. If you can deal with it, and do not mind the difficulty, this game might be for you.
There has been some confusion over whether or not this game has really been released for the Amiga. It has, but only in German, under the title Pizza Connection. A UK release was planned but cancelled.
There were two sequels, Pizza Syndicate (1999) and Pizza Connection 2 (2000). Pizza Syndicate (or $yndicate, as it was spelled on the cover, which spoofed the European cover of SiN; in the US it was released as Fast Food Tycoon) had isometric graphics, but retained the cartoony style. In Pizza Connection 2 (Fast Food Tycoon 2), the graphics are more "serious", even beautiful.
Links
- The Pizza Tycoon Page is the main and only fan/info page for Pizza Tycoon, and it should answer most of your questions.
- TheLegacy should remove any doubt that there really was an Amiga version. You will also find some info about the sequels here.
Reviews
- As good as the gameplay sounds, it is also highly unbalanced,
NetDanzr mourns:
I have been playing the game for years now, but never succeeded in becoming profitable by legal means. This means that those gamers who prefer to play only the legal way will be at a disadvantage. To make matters worse, the illegal way is not too easy, either. It is highly profitable, but a single arrest, especially early into the game, will cost you dearly, probably too much to continue playing. The main problem here is that whether you get caught or not is determined by the time you accept a mafia job, and you will have no way of knowing it. As such, you will end up saving and loading games all the time, only to prevent getting arrested.
- One of the most original strategy games,
Home of the Underdogs says:
You are a pizza guru/businessman/gangster who must build up a reputable chain of pizza restaurants while dealing with mafias, picky customers, and local authorities. The downside of this game is the confusing interface and some illogical random events. Regardless, creating successful recipes is never boring :) Thumbs up!
- A fun little game to play once in a while, Tom Henrik thinks:
The process of making a new recipe for your restaurants are based on real pizza making, and I find it difficult to play this game without wanting a pizza afterwards. Building a new restaurant is also great fun, as it enables you to use your creativity to make every little detail. Remember to build a restaurant that people will like. Pizza Tycoon is one of the rare games out there where beauty is a necessity in all that you do.
- Pizza Tycoon is like marmite, you either love it or you most
likely hate it, Game:Collection (defunct) said:
But at the end of the day Pizza Tycoon is over complicated, and it almost becomes fluke when you do well. If you want a 5 minute laugh then Pizza Tycoon is your game, if you want a tycoon game where you actually have a chance of success or don't have to worry about your property being randomly but regularly smashed by local gangs or other restaurateurs, then Theme park, or Railroad Tycoon is the game for you. Every time I play Pizza Tycoon it does not live up to my expectations and it is because of this I end up immediately deleting it, but I always go back to it.
