These games were pretty fun.
There was a time period of when I was playing on consoles as a kid. From 2001-2004. In this time period I had a SEGA Genesis (screw the Megadrive name, it's called a Genesis!!!!!) and in about 2002/3 I ended up getting a PSone (I still have the PSone but not the Genesis). And the thing is that there were just not that many new games being made for either of those games. My family did previously have a Windows 98 PC that we got used from relatives and I think we had that thing for maybe 2 years before throwing it away (I only played simple games on it, there is some other info about it that I am forgetting, but I feel like we maybe had it at latest until 2004 maybe? But I know that we definitely threw it away when we got our new one in 2005).
In 2005 my family would get a Windows XP PC and it was special since it did introduce me to a lot of new games that I had not previously played before (and these were also types of games that I would not be able to play on my PSOne, or my GBA SP that I got at roughly the same time period). I was really into Tycoon games as a kid and from 2005 until maybe 2012 is when I would play on that Windows XP PC. I stuck to playing games on that PC because after the PSone the next consoles that I would get was a Gamecube and that was in 2006 or so and by that time they were more or less not making games for the Gamecube any more, which now left me with only playing games on my PC and my Nintendo DS lite. In 2012 is when I would get my Xbox 360 and my Nintendo 3DS and that Windows XP machine was really starting to show it's age.
PC gaming was sort of strange for me, I can't really remember about how I learned about my PC but I was able to at least understand that it was dual core and that it had a clock speed of over 3.0GHz (I didn't know anything about integrated graphics and stuff like that), my general understanding was that as long as the min req was under 3.0GHz that my PC would be able to run the game. And since I mainly played Tycoon games, I was pretty much able to play them without that much of an issue. The only issues would be long loading times for games like RCT3 where it would take over 5 minutes for a map to load up. I didn't play online games on my PC since we were still using dial up until 2009 or so and then we switched over to DSL, we had DSL until 2012 and after that we switched over to cable internet (since we no longer had a phone connection at home) and cable internet is what we have been using since then. So I didn't really play online games on my PC and I didn't really know about where to look for more information about the types of games that I played since I don't think that many of my friends were playing the same games as I did.
All that I knew was if the game had tycoon in the name that I might potentially like the game and that is what I was on the look out for. So I would get these games at places like Walmart,Big lots, and at thrift stores.
I still have some of these games with me, The only one that I no longer have is RTC3 since the disc ended up breaking and sadly it seems that the Steam version of that game was delisted. I didn't know that much about Steam and Origin and all of that back in 2014 when I got back into PC gaming other wise I might have gotten RCT3 on Steam. I got it on Origin since it was on sale at the time for just $5USD. Does any one if there happen to be any places that are selling Steam keys for the game?
Here are two of those games that I would play a lot, I never got to play Zoo Tycoon 2 since I think that it just cost to much and because I don't think that the PC that I had at the time was able to run the game.
MT3 was fun but there was always this issue were the game would keep crashing after you got to a certain point (so I would always just restart the game progress wise). Maybe the issue was with my PC or maybe it was just a bug? Now that I have money I may end up trying to hunt down some copies of some other tycoon games that I wanted to play as a kid. GS seemed to publish some games that I thought were cool. As for Zoo Tycoon, I am guessing that MS will never re-release those older games?
