RCTLounge

Well everybody, it’s that time again, time for another award winning (but not really so don’t get any ideas) RCTview!

The ride I am choosing to review today is one of my personal favorites in a decent amount of time, the name: Collosus (although it should be spelled Colossus) Fire Dragon created by Weshowns. The name is of course, taken from the famous Shwarzkopf looping coaster at Lagoon, an amusement park in Utah, but the similarities stop there.

At first glance, you see a beautiful red Arrow coaster snaking through a tropical forest located on an island, creating a highly photogenic ride that’s easy on the eyes. At second glance, you can tell where the inspiration for the ride came from as it has the unique drop the likes of which were only found on the late Drachen Fire coaster at Busch Gardens Europe.

On to the in depth review! Coming off the lift hill, you go down a miniature steep drop that throws you, with decent speed too, into the dive loop which kicks the ride into gear. Following the dive loop plunge you are slammed into a very well paced vertical loop keeping you on your toes. After the loop, you make a quick ascent which if made in real life, would fling you out of your seat at the top in full force! Now it’s on to the 270 degree spiraling drop which keeps you off balance and wondering what the heck this crazy ride will do next. To keep up the ride’s blazing pace and pure insanity, Weshowns hits you with an airtime hill. I must say that airtime and inversions is a really good combination and he was very smart to take that from the Drachen Fire book (well and his own creativity). The ride is finally starting to hit its resolution as it throws you into one of its 2 corkscrews and snakes around the mysterious tropical terrain. The snaking is the part where you really get the feeling that while the end may still be near, this ride is still in control and you are subject to its will (alright that sounded pretty nerdy). Up and down a u-turn hill, and you go through the 2nd corkscrew and the ride’s last inversion. After a quick little twist the ride hits the breaks and your bout with Collosus Fire Dragon is over.

Now you may be wondering why I picked a decently small Arrow to review, and the answer to your question would be, ’simplicity.’ This ride is not a really flashy, “oh look at my pretend originality and Vegas editing skills” kind of ride. No, it lets its genius layout and great supporting do the talking for itself, the nice scenery was just a compliment to this stand out ride. It stuck to realism, but gave me element combinations that I had never seen before. Because of that, it earns nothing less than high approval from me.

Video Link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qcztSSWnMig&feature=channel_page

Thread Link: http://rctlounge.com/forums/showthread.php?t=3487

Nice song choice too by the way!

Hopefully I’m doing the right thing here and kicking of the first official RCT3 coaster review for the RCTLounge Blog.

The coaster I chose to review for the first ever RCTview (nice play on words right?) was Starwaris’s “The Black Knight.” What made this ride pop out to me is how Starwaris did not let RCT3’s many limitations stop him from making a highly realistic ride. If anyone is familiar to the B&M style of layouts and supporting, then you could clearly see the amount of effort Starwaris put into this to both replicate that style, and add his own touches to it.

I’d like to start off the technical part of my review with arguably the must crucial part to a good ride for me, supports. I thought the lift hill supports were better than anything I could ever think of doing in RCT3, he nailed the style of supporting that involves 3 A-frames stemming from the same point which made me so happy to look at. Then from there on, everything was spot on to the way that B&M makes their supports, the A Frames behind inversions (ex: http://rcdb.com/ig2169.htm?picture=10) and the vertical/slant supports on the zero G roll (ex: http://rcdb.com/ig2169.htm?picture=11). A couple of other great supporting spots were the cobra roll which had just absolutely great styling to them, and the perfect tripod supports for the interlocking corkscrews. (ex: http://rcdb.com/ig2169.htm?picture=13).

Yet another great aspect of this ride is its near perfect layout. I say near because of the amount of straight track on it, I would let it slide in the interlocking corkscrews, but the straight section after the drop and in the cobra roll were not to my liking. Those aside the layout was amazing, it followed the B&M form while still being creative. I love the idea of starting off with a dive loop instead of a regular loop, even just a small difference like that makes the ride seem much more original while still feeling realistic. A great part of innovation was the diagonal zero-g-roll, Starwaris pushed RCT3’s limits to the side here and followed through with his plans for the layout, even if he had to sacrifice fluidity for it. Following the zero-g was the obligatory B&M cobra roll, a very good placement for it, but I feel that it could have done without the straight track in the middle of it. The following overbank into the mid course brake run was pretty well paced, which then led into the ride’s closing, yet thrilling moments. After a small left hand drop after the MCBR, the ride takes a turn on the Kraken side and flies through a vertical loop which is followed by a B&M staple: the interlocking corkscrews. The first corkscrew is taken at a pretty good speed, but the 2nd was just a tad on the slow side, but not slow enough to make it seem too unrealistic.

The final point I would like to touch up on is scenery. The theming at the ride’s entrance is top notch medieval theming. You have the feeling that you are walking through chivalrous lands and are about to challenge a real black knight (just in the form of a B&M sit down). However on the majority of the ride, the theming is sparse, but that is highly allowable figuring as it only adds more to the realism of the ride. A great touch was putting the ending of the ride (ex: loop and interlocking corkscrews) inside castle walls. I thought that it was a great way to end a great coaster.

My summary of the ride is as stated: A very fine, top-notch ride with great points on realism in the track and supports with just a few minor flaws. The Black Knight is also a very finely themed ride which adds to the overall experience to the ride, therefore earning Atem122’s stamp of approval.

Thread Link: http://rctlounge.com/forums/showthread.php?t=3049

Video Link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Lkoiwy7XBg&feature=channel_page

Thanks for reading my inaugural RCTview
-Atem122

As the only member of the staff to have an iPod Touch, I bought and downloaded “AirCoaster 3D.” You may be thinking, “That’s really cool! A coaster editor for your iPod!” Well, it’s actually quite lame and is very disappointing.

For starters, all this does is makes a bunch of random track over an impossible enviornment. As you can see above, this is not realistic at all. To create a “ride,” all you do is slide bars left and right to decide how many loops, curves, and turns you want. Pretty lame compared with RCT3 and NoLimits.

The custom track editor is lame too. It’s based off of the premisess of using slider bars to change the height, width, and curve of a section of track. Can you make realistic tracks? You can try, but once you put it in one of it’s silly enviornments, it’s done for.

AirCoaster 3D gets a 2/5 from me. The graphics are great, and this would be a fun app to have it you were stranded on an island. If you’re looking for a portable Roller Coaster Tycoon, you’ll need to wait.

You can buy AirCoaster 3D on iTunes for $0.99 USD.