Theme Park

Step right up to Theme Park's fictional fairway and become a virtual Walt Disney, constructing and operating an amusement park complete with roller coaster, fun house, and annoying nonstop organ music. As with all decent you-are-God simulation games — like Populous and SimCity — the fun is in the details. Plant a snack bar too close to the Big Dipper and pretty soon your patrons will start barfing all over the screen. Skimp on security guards and an unruly gang of motorcycle thugs might storm the gates. You don't want to know what happens if you forget to put in enough toilets. Curiously, the game was designed in Britain — a nation not exactly famous for its theme parks — but the whole thing neatly skewers the very American cash-register mentality at work in Disney, Universal, and Six Flags attractions. And dig the nod to Hitchcock's Strangers on a Train when one of the park's midgets gets stuck under the cups-and-saucers ride. B