Thrillville - RCTgo

Visit Thrillville and step into a nonstop party in a theme park that you create. Customize your park, interact with guests like never before, and build and hop into your own roller coasters and other rides. For the first time ever, race on go-kart tracks you constructed, play mini-golf on courses you designed, and more. Join friends for dozens of four-player party games, from bumper cars to arcade shoot-'em-ups. You can also tour the park on foot - a first for theme-park titles - chatting and joking with all the guests to help them out and make sure they're enjoying themselves.

Thrillville combines elements of simulation, party games and social interaction like nothing before it, all in one of the most console-friendly theme park titles ever to be released. Its charming, laugh-out-loud story centers around you and the theme park you've inherited from your eccentric Uncle Mortimer. Only by keeping your guests happy and completing most of the hundreds of missions they present can you stave off the threat posed by the nefarious Globo-Joy corporation.

Thrillville: Off the Rails amps up the family-friendly mix of gameplay that made Thrillville the best-selling original children's intellectual property of 2006 with some of the most outlandish roller-coaster concepts ever imagined, as well as new ways to talk to park guests and a new array of carnival games.

Off the Rails lives up to its name with 20 death-defying rides so outrageous, they inspire the same word from every park visitor who sees them: 'WHOA!' Players build these incredible 'WHOA Coasters' to leap from one track to another, launch through the air like cannonballs, blast through a burning rings of fire and more.

A new lighthearted story ties together more than 100 missions, complete with 34 playable multiplayer theme-park games and social interaction with park guests that's better than ever. The in-depth conversations both advance the plot and suggest better ways to manage the park. But is every guest to be trusted?...

Thrillville

• Build, manage, ride, customize and socialize your way through the five theme parks you've created. Play with your friends in the park of your dreams.
• Thrillville boasts the simplest, most intuitive development tools available for all 75-plus ride types, from wooden, corkscrew and inverted coasters to merry-go-rounds, trains and all your favorite carnival rides.
• Complete up to 150 missions so that you can you retain Uncle Mortimer's legacy and fend off the threat of Globo-Joy.
• Midway games are more than simple props for your park - you can actually play them! Of the 22 available, 18 are multiplayer, 16 can be placed wherever you want them, and 10 can be customized to your liking.
• Examples of midway games include bumper cars, saucer soccer, remote-control cars, shooting gallery, mini-golf, rhythm challenges, arcade-style shoot-'em-ups and puzzlers, and much more.
• Interact and develop a relationship with any guests you see wandering about. Listen to and address their unique concerns about your park, joke with them, and even help a guest impress his crush by winning that special prize.
• Explore 15 different themed areas spread across five theme parks, such as Pirates Gone Wild, Gold Rush, Ancient Treasures of Egypt and Moon Base.
• Spend hours customizing every aspect of your park, or let the game assist you as you play the midway games, chat with guests and move the story along.
• Customize your own playable character's gender, head, body, clothes, skin tone and accessories.
• "Coaster cam" lets you experience the thrill of every speedy turn and stomach-churning drop your roller coasters have to offer.
• PSP version includes completely unique missions not found in the console versions. It also features ad-hoc Wi-Fi play, and players can share items such as their own unique track and coaster designs.
• Thrillville's focus on what you do in your amusement park - not just designing the park itself - makes it a theme park game truly designed with the console and handheld gaming experience in mind.

Thrillville: Off the Rails

• Build, manage, ride, customize and socialize your way through the five theme parks you've created. Play with your friends in the park of your dreams.
• Experience the visceral fun of interacting with a theme park you create.
• Build and ride your own creations, talk and joke with all your guests, and play dozens of minigames.
• Use the Wii Remote and Nintendo DS stylus in innovative ways to develop roller coasters and play minigames with the flick of your wrist.
• Create 20 death-defying WHOA Coasters such as these:
  • Hotrod Stunt: A nitro boost propels a car across a broken track
  • Pendulizer: A giant arm grabs the car just before a gap in the track, whips it around in a full circle, then sets it down on the other side.
  • Escape Drop: The track holds the car stationary as it lifts itself from level ground to a full 90-degree drop. Then it lets go.
• Visit 15 themed areas, like Battleville, Winterville, Spaceville and Aeroville, all spread throughout five new parks.
• Distinguish your rides even more with enhanced customization options. Attach animatronics, flowers and flaming hoops to all of your coasters and rides.
• Smarter guests, better dialogue, and more focused two-way conversation make Thrillville's socialization aspects even more amusing than before.
• Conversation more directly impacts the story than in the original Thrillville.
• Play 34 minigames - 14 new, 20 returning from the original Thrillville but with new levels. Examples of new minigames include the following:
  • Robo K.O.: Hit, bop and block with these boxing robots.
  • Sparkle Quest: Delightful 2D platforming action on Sparkle Island.
  • Bandito Chinchilla: A classic side-scrolling beat-'em-up - where you're a boxing Chihuahua!
  • Tank Frenzy: Get combative in this vertically scrolling shoot-'em-up.
• All minigames feature leaderboards for Xbox Live.
• DC Studios is creating the entirely unique Nintendo DS version from the ground up to best take advantage of the handheld's touch-screen capabilities.

THRILLVILLE: BUILDING A BETTER THEME PARK

SAN FRANCISCO, CA - September 15, 2006 - Designed specifically for the PS2, PSP and Xbox audience, LucasArts' Thrillville delivers a completely unique kind of gameplay experience not quite like anything before it. This November, players will chat it up with park guests, challenge friends in more than 20 multiplayer party games, and of course build, build, customize and then build some more as they create their ideal theme park.

"The experience of working on the Roller Coaster Tycoon series certainly taught us a lot," says Jonny Watts, senior producer at developer Frontier Developments. "We were also able to draw on our extensive console development experience, and so when it comes to building an actual park in Thrillville - from coasters to where you want to place your personally designed racetracks and mini-golf courses - we've adapted what we learned on the PC platform to consoles and made it easy for all players to get into the fun right away, but not lose any flexibility in the transition - which was a big challenge! Building on console has been made so very natural and quick, I personally think it beats keyboard and mouse, hands down."

"We wanted the player to use as few complex button combinations as possible," explains K.C. Coleman, assistant producer at LucasArts. "The analog sticks move the track pieces up/down and left/right, while the touch of a button adds or deletes a track piece. We also simplified the special pieces like loops and corkscrews - just hold the left shoulder button to bring up your available special piece library, and then scroll through them as you normally would for a regular piece. Pretty straightforward, eh?"

When designing a roller coaster, players know right away whether or not their desired extension will fit. "Blue is good, red is bad," says Coleman. "So, any time a piece of coaster track is blue, it can be placed down as you want. If it's red, no go. You are given feedback about why, so it's easy to figure out another alternative."

In some cases, that alternative might be to take the easy way out with the Track Assist feature. "Sometimes, you're building a coaster and you get into a jam where you're building, or maybe you're running out of time before you have to go to bed and you just want to finish this last coaster," says Coleman. "Well, in comes Track Assist to help, as the game figures out a logical yet effective solution for finishing the track. This little feature will go a long way with helping the player complete their custom coasters."

"Customizing coasters and many other attractions is actually a huge part of Thrillville," adds Watts. "Of course, you can change the color of your rides, change the themes of the rides and stalls, change the prices of rides to maximize your park's income, put down stalls and other amenities, decide which rides go where in the park, and design other tracked rides like monorails and log flumes. And you can also design, share and play with your friends on go-karts, mini-golf courses - and of course, you can customize your player character. So, yeah, the customization is pretty extensive!"

Throughout the course of the game, players will build as many as 25 different types of roller coasters (or take the less-involved route and place prebuilt versions). "There are all types of coasters, from classic wooden ones to extreme 'launched' coasters, plus ones that let the guests ride standing up or 'fly' lying down," says Watts. "There are classic steel designs and more compact ones, such as a wild mouse - pretty much all the cutting-edge and classic coasters you find in the top theme parks. I like the wooden coasters the best - they're such an iconic image of a theme park. And you can't beat the shake, rattle and roll, and the feeling of terror as a wheel lifts when you corner!"

"Currently, I'm exploring my talents on the Twisting Coaster," says Shara Miller, producer at LucasArts. "I like it because it can do loop-de-loops, nice corkscrews and severe drops. It also has a pretty decent height, which gives me a beautiful vantage point of my park when I'm riding it. Of course, I have to be sensible about my design - creating a roller coaster with too many twists and turns can make things a bit messy."

"If you design your coasters to be a little too extreme, yes, your guests might throw up," says Watts. "If they do, then you'd better clean it up pretty quick. A messy park is bad for business!"

Miller is quick to point out that not all attractions in the game will potentially nauseate your guests. "Aside from coasters, there's a whole host of carnival rides and other attractions - more than 70 total!" she says. "Pretty much anything you remember from your own theme park visits will be in the game - only better, because you can change the themes, names and colors for all of them. I'm really liking the Hawk Wing right now. It has a very pretty marquis, the camera goes crazy when you ride it, and it looks great on the horizon of my park. But next week I'll probably get excited about something totally different."

Watts has a little more trouble naming one favorite attraction that isn't a roller coaster. "If I had to pick a list of favorites, the carnival thrill ride Claustrophobia would be in there because it is so terrifying," he says. "The trampolines would have to be in there, as well, because they are so surprisingly compelling, particularly playing multiplayer. And I'm a big fan of first-person shooter games, so the ShootZone attractions would be near the top of my list, too. And Saucer Soccer, and mini-golf, and go-karts - the list would go on, I'm afraid. There's just so much to do!"

THRILLVILLE: A NEW KIND OF THEME PARK EXPERIENCE

SAN FRANCISCO, CA - August 4, 2006 - Forget everything you think you know about theme-park games. With Thrillville for PlayStation2 computer entertainment system, Sony PSP and the Xbox video game system from Microsoft, LucasArts and Frontier Developments shatter your perceptions and throw them off the rails. Built from the ground up with a console audience in mind, Thrillville isn't just a theme-park building game - it's also a party game with elements of social interaction.

In addition to letting you call the shots while creating the amusement park of your dreams, Thrillville takes you somewhere you've never actually been before - to ground level as a playable character. "With Thrillville, as well as building and managing a theme park, you 'play' within it," explains Jonny Watts, senior producer at developer Frontier. "All the attractions you design or place in the park - like roller coasters, mini-golf courses, go-kart tracks or thrill rides, first-person shooters and videogame arcades - are fully interactive and at the very least can be 'ridden.' The majority are full-on games in their own right and can be played solo or up to four-player multiplayer. Plus, don't forget that you can talk to and befriend any guest... or even flirt with them! There is a huge variety of gameplay that will entertain a wide range of people and keep them coming back for more."

An engaging, lighthearted story further establishes Thrillville as the theme-park experience console gamers have been waiting for. What happens when your zany Uncle Mortimer has an accident in his lab and needs some help running his Thrillville theme parks? Naturally, he calls upon you to take over. "Meanwhile, you must contend with a rival theme park, Globo-Joy, that has heard about Mortimer's leave of absence and decided to take Thrillville down while he's out of the picture," adds Shara Miller, producer at LucasArts. "You'll need all your building and managing skills to keep this rival at bay!"

Staving off the Globo-Joy threat entails more than 125 missions to complete, from deciding where to plant your coasters, midway games and other 100-plus attractions to helping to hook up a park guest with the cute girl he's got his eye on. "You can do whatever you like while you're down there, controlling your character among the park guests," says Watts.

In Thrillville, even otherwise mundane tasks such as training your staff have been revolutionized. "To train a mechanic, you undertake electronics circuitry," notes Watts. "To train the groundskeeper, you frantically blast and suck litter and gunk with your vac-gun. And to train your entertainers, what else but a dance game?"

Miller believes that Thrillville's innovative control configuration will win over anyone underwhelmed by the complex building processes found in past theme-park console games. "I don't have to be a structural engineer to make a great coaster," she says. "Frontier has analyzed the system of menus, mouse clicks, and trial-and-error that worked so perfectly for their PC Roller Coaster Tycoon games and boiled them down to the essential elements that make coaster building rewarding and fun. On consoles and PSP, I enjoy every button press and every swish of the analog stick I use in the building process. I always end up making stuff that's fun to ride - even when I start without a plan."

Miller also sees Party Game mode - with its instant access to all of Thrillville's multiplayer minigames - as another big draw for console gamers. "It's anything from bumper cars to shooting galleries to arcade games inspired by classics," she enthuses. "Add the ability to play with up to four people? It's madness!"

The madness begins this November.

www.thrillvillegame.com

LucasArts' Thrillville Goes Off the Rails for 2007

The No. 1 Original Children's Franchise of 2006 Expands into the next generation.

SAN FRANCISCO, Calif. - July 3, 2007 - LucasArts today announced that Thrillville, the videogame where players create and experience the theme park of their dreams, will open its gates for a whole new season in Thrillville: Off the Rails. Featuring some of the most outlandish roller-coaster concepts ever imagined, as well as new ways to talk to park guests and a wider array of carnival games, this October release amps up the family-friendly mix of gameplay that made the original Thrillville such a hit. Frontier Developments returns to create Off the Rails, which will scream onto the Xbox 360™ videogame system from Microsoft, Wii™ home videogame system from Nintendo, PlayStation2 computer entertainment system, PSP (PlayStationPortable) system, Games for Windows and, with the help of developer DC Studios, Nintendo DS™.

Off the Rails lives up to its name with 20 death-defying rides so outrageous, they inspire the same word from every park visitor who sees them: 'WHOA!' Players build these incredible 'WHOA Coasters' to leap from one track to another, launch through the air like cannonballs, blast through burning rings of fire and more.

A new lighthearted story ties together more than 100 missions, complete with 34 playable multiplayer theme-park games and improved social interaction with park guests. The in-depth conversations both advance the plot and suggest better ways to manage the park. But is every guest to be trusted? One never knows when a rival from the nefarious Globo-Joy might attempt to sabotage Thrillville parks with deceptive information...

"Between its amazing new WHOA Coasters, improved socialization, and a huge selection of minigames, Thrillville: Off the Rails is practically three great games in one, and it offers a fantastic bang for the buck," said Jim Ward, president of LucasArts. "We're also excited to introduce the franchise to four new platforms so that even more families can enjoy the Thrillville experience together."

"Together, LucasArts and Frontier challenged ourselves to improve upon everything that made the original Thrillville such a success," said David Braben, chairman and founder of Frontier. "I believe that we have more than met this challenge, and I wouldn't be surprised if Thrillville achieves some 'record attendance' with Off the Rails."

Meanwhile, 'attendance' of the original Thrillville should soon rise even higher, as it has achieved Greatest Hits status for the PlayStation 2 and PSP systems, as well as joined the new Platinum Family Hits line for the Xbox videogame system from Microsoft. Now, families can experience the No. 1 original children's franchise of 2006 for only $19.99 at participating locations.

For more information on Thrillville: Off the Rails, please visit the official website at www.lucasarts.com.