Airport Tycoon 4 Download Full Version Free
Rivka Licklider
Airport Tycoon is a business simulation game released for Windows 95/98 in 2000. It was developed in the United Kingdom by Krisalis Software (now defunct). In Airport Tycoon, the player must successfully build and manage an airport without going bankrupt. There have been two sequels created for Airport Tycoon: Airport Tycoon 2 and Airport Tycoon 3. There was to be a Nintendo 64 version released as well, but this version was cancelled for unknown reasons.[1]
Similar to other games of this type, players take on the role of an airport manager. They first select a location for their airport from several cities around the world. Players then construct a terminal for their passengers, followed by runways, tarmac, control towers and support services.
The player then attracts business to their airport by signing contracts with vendors in the terminal and contracting flights into and out of the airport. Players also manage the airport's budget, which cannot operate at too much of a loss. Players can operate passenger airports and cargo airports with different considerations for each.
It's a simulation computer game where the player acts as manager of an airline, competing against three other tycoons. The names of the four tycoons are: Tina Cortez (Sunshine Airways), Siggi Sorglos (Falcon Lines), Igor Tuppolevsky (Phoenix Travel) and Mario Zucchero (Honey Airlines).
The player must also manage their personnel, plan flights, buy fuel, attend meetings in the airport manager's office and, if there is the time, slip into Rick's café for a quick cup of coffee. The player can also perform sabotages on the other players.
In 2003, Spellbound Entertainment released a third Airline Tycoon addition, named Airline Tycoon Deluxe. It included all of previous versions, the only new part of the game was twenty new airports and possibility of accepting cargo from remote estates. Originally it was released in limited edition of 5000 items. It was available only in Germany, though it was not translated into other languages. However, Linux, Mac OS X and ZETA versions released in Autumn 2005 and Winter 2006 by RuneSoft are available in English, German and French.[1]
The first extra content or expansion for the game was announced on March 29, 2012. Honey Airlines DLC finally became available on April 19 of the same year. It would feature a new character, new airline company, two additional campaign missions and a Cargo area for the airport.
The second one, announced on May 31, 2012, called Falcon Lines DLC was eventually released on June 14 of that year. This DLC would add another character and airline company, another two additional campaign missions, the Last-Minute Counter as a new airport area and the ability to open branch offices anywhere throughout the world.
Airport Inc is a game about building airports. To my knowledge, no other game in recent history has touched on this potentially very interesting subject. Transport Tycoon Deluxe featured air travel, but only as a minor part of te gameplay. The challenge of creating an infrastructure and trying to turn a profit while meeting safety regulations is novel. Unfortunately, in spite of being a good idea on paper, Airport Inc doesn't follow through on its initial promises.
The most striking ting about the game is the manual. It's absolutely horrible. This is a complex business simulation about running an airport and the manual provided runs to a mere 30 pages. It spends the first 9 pages talking about the installation and explaining the difference between running in full screen vs. windowed. I kid you not, according to this manual full - screen means using the ENTIRE screen and windowed means only a part of the screen is used - who would have thought it? From pages 9 to 24, the various screens of the game are explained, yet this clinical approach to describing the game doesn't give any information that you couldn't figure out yourself. It does not, however, explain the buildings available, the difference between a medium and a small control tower or how to set up a terminal that can prevent security breaches. Pages 24-30 are filled with credits and as a whole, the manual, all 15 pages of it, is utterly worthless.
When you start the game up, you're supposed to select a spot to place your airport. This isn't exactly as challenging as it sounds because once you've selected the continent and city, there are just three options that vary only by the price and distance from the city you've chosen. The closer to the city, the more expensive the land is. This added cost is supposed to be outweighed by the increased number of passengers you will get, but I doubt that anyone who needs to catch a flight would be deterred for the sake of an extra 10 km drive. Realism flaw number 1, and we haven't even started the real game yet.
The choice isn't really that hard when you think about it. The price of a piece of land is low - even closest to the city - and since the game has decided an airport is a business depending on casual passer-by deciding to take a flight somewhere, you might as well play by its rules and grab all the extra passengers you can get.
Now you have to build your airport. You are connected to the outside world by two links, one by road and one by rail. It's impossible to build another link to the outside world. That does not exactly make sense, as you would expect an airport serving millions of people a year would have more than one two-lane access road, the airports I've seen in San Francisco, Riyadh, London, Paris and Copenhagen all did. Realism flaw number 2, and we're only just thinking about digging into the ground...
The game has a very slow-moving non-interactive tutorial. This brief but painful guide tells you that there are certain things you must have in order to open your airport for flights: A terminal, a long-time car park, a runway, a taxiway, a control tower, a fire-station and a few other small buildings. The game will tell you what you need as you start constructing. When you start a new airport from scratch the game begins paused and you can build the required buildings while under no time pressure. From time to time a box will appear on screen saying what building is required before your airport is functional.
On easier levels, it's a good idea to go with the standard prefabricated terminals. You can build the terminals yourself. First from the outside where you define the area of your terminal, and whether it is two or one stories high. Then you can move inside to define areas of check-in, arrival, security and retail areas. The latter are later leased to contractors. The main gripe I have with the inside of terminals is that I seem to be unable to define what needs to go where. Security is an obvious concern in an airport, but in a one level terminal, arrivals and departures somehow have to mix in the entrance area. How to do it without the game saying there is a security breach is a mystery to me, even after a lot of attempts. The manual says nothing on this subject. The prefabricated terminals seem like the only way to go. Yet unlike any other building in the game, they can not be rotated. This is a big problem as you go about planning your airport. It is also our realism flaw number 3.
After these initial buildings are placed - hopefully without ruining your possibilities for expansion - the game will tell you that the airport is ready to open. The first few days are dull, as you have no contracts and as a consequence you'll see no incoming flights. After a while, an airline will approach with an offer of a master contract. Airlines are ranked by a star-system, the maximum number of stars is unknown even after checking the manual but around 20 seems likely. At first, only low-ranking airlines will approach, and you have to decide on the prices the airline will pay for using the facilities available in your airport. But as an empty runway only costs you money, agreeing to the first few contracts is generally a good idea.
But then flights start coming in, and as Airport Inc is a game done entirely in 3D, you get to watch them from the moment they enter your airport to the second they leave. Yet the animations are a big problem for Airport Inc, and can totally ruin the illusion you have of watching your airport's day-to-day business. An example: I started up my airport and got a contract for one flight coming in at 10pm and leaving at 11:30. Naturally I assumed this meant I would only have one aircraft on the ground, so imagine the disbelief I felt when another airplane came in, with another already taxiing on the ground.
The explanation is simple. While Airport Inc is pretty proud of being in 3D, what the game shows in the three dimensions has no relation to reality, or at least has such little relation that it's practically useless as a tool for determining what's really happening, or judging the remaining capacity of your airport. The game has a slider for game speed, yet moving it up doesn't make the planes go any faster. Taxiing from a runway to a plane stand can take as much as a day in game time, and that totally blows away the credibility of the 3D simulation. While games like Railroad Tycoon 2 and Rollercoaster Tycoon have accelerated time, what you see does reflect what is happening, and you can click on people or trains to find out more details. Not so here. The game will occasionally report that your long-term car parks are full, yet they are not even half full in the 3D view. Which to trust then? Do you trust what you see in the 3D or what the game engine tells you? I still don't know, but it forces you to think in a way that detracts from your enjoyment of the game as a whole. These problems are realism flaws 4 through 250 and counting...
If you should want to look inside one of your terminals, the view is no less bizarre. I built the biggest prefabricated terminal available, and after laying 3 runways, and having millions of passengers going through my airport every year, I decided I wanted to see how they walked around the terminal. Amazingly, they don't. From what I saw, they only walk around the security area, walking until they hit a wall, then turning. Even if you have the security apparatus set up, the people don't exactly stand in line or anything even remotely like what you might see at a real airport. Think of the cute animations in Rollercoaster Tycoon, then erase that thought as that's not what you get here. In fact, the people act more like Lemmings than anything human. The game's internal messaging system will tell you when you near the limits of your check-in desk capacity that there are queues in front of that desk. If you then go and check out the desks for yourself, you'll see no people in that part of the terminal at all.
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