Airport Tycoon 3

by Global Star

Product Features

• Detailed airport simulation
• Start out buying land and finish with the airport of tomorrow
• Excellent 3-D realtime graphics
• Oversee business and flights
• For one player

Product Details

• Shipping: This item is also available for shipping to select countries outside the U.S.
• ASIN: B0000C4E71
• Product Dimensions: 7.5 x 5.5 x 1.2 inches ; 7.2 ounces
• Media: CD-ROM
• Release Date: October 1, 2003
• Average Customer Review: 2.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (44 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #12,560 in Video Games (See Top 100 in Video Games)
• Discontinued by manufacturer: Yes

Product Description

From the Manufacturer

Design, build and maintain your very own international airport in this amazingly in-depth management simulation. Get started by buying land and building runways, and then secure both cargo and passenger airline contracts. Watch your creation come to life as your airport bustles with the activities of planes, cars and passengers in detailed 3D-rendered graphics. But be careful! Bad weather, overbooked flights, bottlenecks on the runway, and aircraft collisions are all part of the job. Do you think you can keep your customers safe and happy on the way to becoming the ultimate airport manager?

Features:

• Begin the airport dynasty by purchasing land from over 40 diverse locations in the country or city.
• Cutting edge 3D graphics, utilizing the Renderware 3D engine
• Amazingly detailed environments including cars coming in and out of the grounds, people populating the terminal and sidewalks, and planes landing and taking off
• Sign airline agreements and create a lucrative airport empire to carry passengers across the globe.
• Oversee every facet of your business, from negotiating contracts with hotels and restaurant chains to managing gas stations and casinos
• Indoor terminal management tool allows for placement of restaurants, stores, security, and other features
• Dozens of challenging scenarios put your management skills to the ultimate challenge

Product Description

In Airport Tycoon 3 you'll bring an airport to life, and make into a bustling center of commerce! There will be problems galore to face -- everything from weather delays and overbooked flights to aircrafts collisions. Deal with these and keep your airport running and profitable, no matter what!

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

40 of 43 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars The "sit back and wait" game, August 31, 2004

By 

edmomqby (New York) - See all my reviews

= Fun:2.0 out of 5 stars 

This review is from: Airport Tycoon 3 (CD-ROM)

I bought this game for my 11 year old son because he loves roller coaster tycoon, ski resort tycoon, and zoo tycoon. This tycoon game had nice graphics and music (when we found a computer that had an adequately equipped video card) but that was about it for positive qualities. The manual is horrible, the online tutorial is useless, and gameplay is not intuitive when it comes to figuring out what the player should be doing as far as building and the business end of running an airport. The money runs out way too fast and the contracts come in way too slow - not a lot of action or fun. One of my biggest pet peeves about this program is that there are spelling and grammar errors throughout the program. It is almost like the person who wrote it doesn't speak English as his/her first language. Not a good example for kids unless you want to teach them how NOT to check their work...This is one tycoon game I would suggest avoiding.

20 of 20 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Don't Bother, January 3, 2005

By 

L. Foster - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

= Fun:1.0 out of 5 stars 

This review is from: Airport Tycoon 3 (CD-ROM)

This "game" is probably one of the most frustrating, buggy, and annoying money pits you will ever have the displeasure of playing. I made the mistake of seeing this in the discount bin and picking it up; I could've used the $10 on something more enjoyable, like an enema.

The list of missteps here is long and entertaining:

1) There is no way to learn how to play the game without trial and error. The "tutorial" is a series of blurry screenshots that offers nothing of value. Things like: You need most buildings to face an apron to be functional. You need to place a taxiway adjacent to the runway, and then a planestand adjacent to the taxiway.

2) The scenarios, all 2 of them, are so ridiculously easy a blind monkey could figure them out in a couple tries.

3) There is no way to improve the passenger experience except to place plants everywhere inside the terminal. It doesn't matter if they can't move in there, as long as it's green.

4) The contracts come in slowly. I'm not kidding. You will go weeks in the game (5-10 minutes real time) before you're offered a contract. And you'd might as well accept it without any changes because the changes you ask won't matter. The economic system would make a third world Communist country look like a global superpower. In other words, there is no economic system. It's completely inept. What do I mean? You can't borrow money, but you spend up to negative $5 million with no repercussions. After that, you will earn maybe $10,000 a month with 50 contracts in place. Do the math - you will never make money in this game. It's so completely out of whack it's amazing - and appalling that this is a "professional" release.

5) The sounds become immediately grating. For instance, when a contract comes in, you're alerted by a buzzer and a red flashing light. Of course, if your sound is off because of the annoying Euro-trash techno music, then you'll probably miss the red light because it's literally the size of a pinprick and the "news alert" box doesn't scroll down, it just writes over itself. If you zoom in, you'll get a couple vehicle-appropriate sounds, but it just loops over and over like a bad Groundhog Day scene.

5) Someone with a 3rd grade English education proofread the game. Seriously. It's atrocious. Granted, I'm no Hemingway, but if I'm asking people to buy my product, I should have someone read it, right? It begs the question: Did anyone actually play this game before packing it up and shipping it off?

I could go on, but suffice it to say, no matter what you do, do not buy this game. Look in the same discount bin this game is probably located and pick up any old school Sid Meier, Maxis or PopTop game and you will have infinitely more fun. When/If Airport Tycoon 4 comes out, I'd cast a wary eye on these guys, because I simply would not trust any company that saw fit to release this turkey way before it's time.

17 of 18 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Looks like nobody tested this game for bugs at Global Star!, January 8, 2004

By A Customer

This review is from: Airport Tycoon 3 (CD-ROM)

I am a big fan of simulation games - especially those which end in 'Tycoon'!

I guess I should have paid more attention to the other folks who wrote reviews for this game because I went ahead and purchased Airline Tycoon 3, thinking naively "2 should be better than 1, and 3 should be better than 2". I can't comment on 1 and 2 because I don't own copies of them, (and unless someone reassures me that they are much better than 3), and don't intend to own them, or anything from Global Star.

Let me tell you what I found annoying/ disappointing in this game:

1) Other games have simulations that run as tutorials, here you just get the privilege of reading the manual in an electronic form!

2) The English needs work - "Plain" Maintenance for heaven's sake! Other examples which I can't recall right now. Someone needs to actually LOOK at what is being displayed to give the game in my view, a 'finished' look.

3) Once you place a terminal building there is no way of removing it.

4) Ditto for the runway. Except of course when you try to delete a runway you are told you cannot delete it. We can still see it after the deleted attempt, but the game has decided that the runway has been deleted, and we are stuck with the message that the airport cannot be operated without a runway!

Due to 3 and 4, I found myself quitting the game again and again in order to correct my mistakes. This got old very quickly and I found myself sailing the CD across the room vowing never to buy anything from Global Star ever again.

A message to the folks at Global Star: TEST your software...your competitors are allegedly doing this!