Tycoon City: New York

by Atari

Product Features

• Build your own Manhattan empire in this exciting strategy game
• Create and customize over 100 types of major businesses
• Place buildings anywhere to create your own version of New York City
• Upgrade businesses with hundreds of improvements to drive profits
• For 1 player

Product Details

• Shipping: This item is also available for shipping to select countries outside the U.S.
• ASIN: B0007WZLG4
• Product Dimensions: 7.8 x 5.2 x 1.5 inches ; 3.2 ounces
• Media: CD-ROM
• Release Date: February 21, 2006
• Average Customer Review: 2.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (16 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #23,748 in Video Games (See Top 100 in Video Games)
• Discontinued by manufacturer: Yes

Product Description

Platform: PC

Build Your Own New York Empire!Product InformationIt's the greatest city in the world!  Develop your own businesses andneighborhoods.  Meet all the demands of virtual New Yorkers.  Addglitz and glamour; make more money and outclass the competition. Get down to the street level to see what New Yorkers are thinking. Capture the spirit of individual neighborhoods. Place hundreds of buildings in your very own New York City. Design around New York landmarks.Build up the New York City skyline in Tycoon City New York simulation. It's all up to you!  Product Features Grow your own business with a unique New York flavor to meet the needs of your demanding population. Set in the most authentic depiction of Manhattan ever seen with an awesome level of detail. Fulfill a range of opportunities set for you by a diverse range of New Yorkers. Play in sandbox mode and create your own version of New York City. Build and customize 12 New York City neighborhoods including Greenwich Village Times Square and Central Park.Minimum Requirements Windows 2000 or XP Pentium 4.1.8 GHz or AMD Athlon 1.8 GHz (Pentium 4.3 GHz or AMD Athlon 3 GHz or higher recommended) 512MB of RAM 1.5 GB Hard Disk space 4X or faster CD-ROM Drive (8X recommended) 64 MB Hardware T&L compatible Video Card (128 MB recommended) (64 MB Video Cards that do not support Hardware T&L such as the Nvidia GeForce 4 MX or any Intel integrated Video Card are not supported.) DirectX version 9.0c compatible Sound Card DirectX version 9.0c (included) or higher   

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

37 of 38 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Money doesn't grow on trees, March 9, 2006

By 

Lestor neeker Wong (Singapore) - See all my reviews

= Fun:4.0 out of 5 stars 

This review is from: Tycoon City: New York (CD-ROM)

If you've played a tycoon simulation before, you'll find Tycoon City: New York vaguely familiar. You know, you're the boss, and you'll be fully responsible for how your business grows. In Tycoon City: New York, the business is to build an empire in the city of New York. And to a certain extent, it provides quite an entertaining experience of doing so, even though the effect isn't quite as lasting as it could've been.

Before you begin, you'll be asked to choose a mode of play. Seasoned tycoon gamers, or those who simply want a more open-ended quest, can choose the "Sandbox" mode, which basically gives you the entire island of Manhattan, and the freedom to do almost everything with it. Almost, because some of the famous landmarks can only be built if you manage to achieve certain status. The Sandbox also allow you to turn off competition completely, but that's hardly what you want to play a game for, is it?

The "Build New York" mode is more structured, since it's actually the main campaign mode of the game. This offers tutorials on the various aspects of the game as you progress, as well as some missions along the way to keep the interest going. Missions come in the form of "opportunities", and fulfilling them will help improve your standing as a tycoon. An opportunity, for example, could be the influx of students into your district. To satisfy these students, you'll need to build street fashion retail shops, internet cafes, burger joints, and so on. Doing so will rake in the profits, which will in turn allow you to build more businesses. To fully complete an opportunity mission, however, you'd still need to achieve the objectives given by the game, which usually require you to hit a certain percentage of certain ratings. These are not difficult to achieve, but some level of multi-tasking is required to truly excel.

The rewards of completing a mission could be new items in your Build menu, or even Landmark Points, which you can use to build prominent landmarks. At the time of writing, I've built the Greenwich Church and the Greenwich Courthouse Library, which is not too bad for a few hours of play, I guess. Having landmarks in a district greatly increases its rating, and soon after you build them, you'll find yourself unlocking new districts where you can further strengthen your empire.

The strength of your empire is measured by your total earnings. It's therefore important to identify the needs of the people in the districts, and build businesses to satisfy them. Each business has a sphere of influence, which basically shows you how far its reaches in terms of fulfilling needs. You can also upgrade a business by improving its appeal and satisfaction level, but you'd need to accumulate upgrade credits to do so. Each business also has a fixed amount of upgrade limits, so you'd need to juggle between your resources, as well as each business' limitations. This could turn out to be quite a challenge. Also, if you fancy a competitor's business, you can always buy it over. It's usually expensive to do so, but the takeover could still proved to be fruitful if it's raking in profits by the truckload daily.

Tycoon City: New York is primarily focused on business, rather than infrastructural expansions. Sure, you create buildings all the time, but they only take a few seconds to be completed, letting you go straight into enhancing the businesses right away. Unfortunately, the game gives very little control over your finances. Apart from earning profits, and the odd sale of existing businesses, you won't get much opportunities to further your earnings. The game would have appeal better if it allows some level of business micromanagement. For example, after adding an advertising billboard to increase an appeal of a building, it'd be more fun if you can actually sell the advertising space for cash. Nonethelss, this is not a major issue.

The main issue for Tycoon City: New York is the limited gameplay. You'll find yourself clicking on empty plots of land, and creating new businesses. And that's basically it. Even with opportunities and expansions, what you'll effectively do over the course of the game is to click on empty plots of land, and create new businesses. This is exactly why the game gets old very quickly, even though it has the potential to be highly addictive.

Presentation wise, Tycoon City: New York is definitely a looker. The infrastructural models look solid, with great details on each type of building. A sense of appropriateness also comes into play for the upgrades, since you can add display items for your shops so that they look better. So, a restaurant may have an additional seating area outside the shop, a retail shop may have a bargain bin, and a night club may have a bouncer. All these add to the variety of graphics, and you can't help but stop and admire at these additional details from time to time.

The audio presentation is a little weak by comparison. The music is rather boring, and the voice-overs (yes, you do get to see people talking) are bland. But at least Deep Red included a nice little identification jingle for each type of building. This is seldom seen in games of this genre, and is quite a pleasant touch to accommodate the slow gameplay.

Overall, Tycoon City: New York is an enjoyable game. It's straight to the point, it's visually beautiful, and to a certain extent, it may even have mass appeal - who doesn't like making money? What drags it down is its overly mundane gameplay, and the lack of a real challenge. If you're simply looking to enjoy a tycoon game without ever risking the chance of losing the game, Tycoon City: New York should just do the trick.

25 of 26 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Its OK, March 4, 2006

By 

B. Gustaevel - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

= Fun:3.0 out of 5 stars 

This review is from: Tycoon City: New York (CD-ROM)

If you are into City Building Sims, you will enjoy this game. Otherwise, don't bother. There is absolutely no challenge here. You build businesses and houses, but the worst thing that happens is you make no money. A failing business or empty house does not lose money. Even though you own the business, you cannot set prices, either. Furthermore, you are given missions, some of which the computer players will complete for you. There is no time limit on any of them. Progressing through the game unlocks different neighborhoods until you have all of Manhattan available; even though I finished the game, I never figured out what causes the next neighborhood to unlock. The manual is useless. There are a few bugs, such as missing textures (my doormen appear as grey boxes and some of my pennants say "default texture" on them.)

12 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars I enjoy it, September 23, 2007

By 

LComeno (Phoenix, Az.) - See all my reviews

= Fun:5.0 out of 5 stars 

This review is from: Tycoon City: New York (CD-ROM)

I play games of all types. Being disabled and homebound the majority of the time, I spend all my waking hours on my computer either online or playing a game, sometimes both at once.

Reading the other reviews I am seeing people who bought the game thinking it was something it wasn't. It is exactly what it said it was, a business Sim game. You build your businesses, if you get enough of the same kind then you build a headquarters and you make money. No, you can't lose money, I like that, it means I don't have to search the web for cheats so I'm able to actually get enough money to build at the pace I want instead of cheating to get it.

Complicated games are fun if you are young, have a med free mind, etc. I am 50, am on many different meds for various incurable auto immune diseases and Fibro which all cause intractable, chronic pain. Pain meds get the pain gone, but can make it hard some days to concentrate for any length of time on something. Games like this one fill a need, for people like me who want a fun game to play that has an easy learning curve and that you can win without having to cheat.

For those having problems with their video, it sounds like you need to upgrade your computer's video card. The new games coming out are so graphically intense, you need a top of the line video card in order to play them. You can find one for under 200 if you are patient and look around at different sites online, but I've gotten the best deals right here on Amazon for the last 2 I've bought. I expect when I need to upgrade again in a year or two, I will be right back here to order again. :) I buy ATI's, which have always been the best for the sim and shooter games I play.

I'm sorry some of you didn't like the game, but I'm of the opposite view. I love it and am having a lot of fun laying out my town, fixing up my parks, watching the wild Halloween parade you get with the first area you build LOL and deciding how I can best decorate the front of each business that will please the customers the most (the game will tell you before you put a choice down).

Things have sure come a long way in gaming since I got that first pong game and attached it to my TV when I was young. The one cool thing about being my age, I've had the joy of watching it all grow thru the years and I was hooked from day one when I got Pong, then Atari, etc., to my homebuilt gaming computer of today. Enjoy the game for what it is and it will bring hours of fun.

Now I'm off to change over to my other window under this one, which is of course, Tycoon City New York. Haha, seriously, I was playing and decided to write this here and give my thoughts on the game. Sorry if this is kinda long, I wanted to cover all the previous posts as well as possible.

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