Screenshot / #fbf: Zippo's Wacky World of Wonders (2009)
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16-September 16
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Zippo's Wacky World of Wonders
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Still one of the best parks ever. It's pretty much perfect and incredibly stereotypical theme park.
Xophe come back!
Shit this was '09? How time flies. Still an absolute masterpiece.
I never really "got" this park. Maybe it's because I wasn't as active at the time to realize how groundbreaking it was and it doesn't really stand the test of time like some other parks have.
I've always imagined it as a LL scenario that was hyper charged to spotlight level. It is the charm and atmosphere that the park has which makes it special.
Maybe it's also how it contrasts so much to the other top tier park of the time in an lot of ways. It's not hyper detail or realistic, nor is it so far on the other side that it isolates the audience.
Wow, realism with actual charm and atmosphere. Unbelievable!
I'd hardly call this "realism". Outside of the backstage area's and some of the archy, its not really believable.
At the time it was probably considered as realistic as parks like "Disney's Forgotten Kingdom" or "Busch Gardens Litchfield" were in their's.
It bridges the gap in a way that a park like Vitaminland or some of Faas' other parks do. They are not realistic, but "grounded" in reality. No one would mistake them for real parks, but at the same time they don't really becomes so fantastical they turn into fantasy parks.
I'd say it was Realism. I believe parks fall on a scale.
Ultra Fantasy - Fantasy - Semi Fantasy - Semi Realism - Realism - Ultra Realsim
You have Taboo etc. sitting in one end and Westwinds etc. up the other end.
This is clearly Realism, just not ultra realism, it certainly isn't semi-realistic, that is more your X250 style.
Back in 2009 it wasn't compared to DFK or BGL. I'd say that those parks were considered exactly as ancient as they are now, and that genre was already dead for years when Zippo's happened. You weren't around, so stop rewriting history.
Wow, I was just saying I don't think this is "realism" in the modern sense like Poke mentioned in his post. And actually, I was around when this was released, not that I posted much. But I do remember when this was released.
An amazing park that still holds up well, as far as I'm concerned. The atmosphere and all the whimsical details are what makes it special. I also always experienced it as a very realistic park, except for maybe colours of the entrance building (and Zippo's Sewage Works, obviously! But what a great ride, though!). The only thing I never particularily cared for is the hotel. Weird choice of colours and textures, and a little plain compared to the level of detail in the park.
Was Zippo's really groundbreaking though? It nothing in it was like, new or exciting. It was just all really well done.
The way I remember Zippo's was the first 'real' step away from full semi-realist parks like The Masterpiece, Spellbrook Shore, Isole Calabria and Isles of Enchantment. Huge parks with fully immersive themes that gave minimal thought to how possible this would be in real life and instead focused completely on the aesthetics.
We'd had parks like Watkins Woods, but they were the complete opposite end of the spectrum to the above parks. Zippo's bridged the realism gap rather than jumped it and while we haven't really seen many spotlight quality parks in the same style, I'd argue that parks like BGA and Starpointe take more from Zippo's than they do Watkins Woods or Six Flags Carolina.
One thing that I do think is interesting is that I perceive Zippo's as being much better received now than I did at the time. At the time, while it was considered an amazing park, it wasn't considered a turning point by the majority or 'GOAT'. The era-defining parks were still RoB, IC, BGSS...the big immersive parks from days gone by. There were still many who did think it would lead to a new story in NE history, but I think even they underestimated the influence Zippo's would actually have.
Looking back now, I can relate almost every style still in use on NE to Zippo's, and I think it's wonderful that we can look back 7 years on and point at something which was 'our RoB' as I wholeheartedly think it deserves that title.
And I didn't/don't even like the park that much...85% heh.
What's this? An excuse to open Zippo's again? Yes please! Love this park
Would a park like this even contend for spotlight now? Judging it through the ideological "realistic" lens that is typically used on everything that isn't exclusively fantasy, I doubt this would reach past high gold. Why? Because now, the standard for detailing is so ridiculously high that the only two spotlight worthy marks this park, if judged today, would receive is the foliage and that "some of the layouts are pretty good". Am I talking up my ass, or does anyone see the issue that I do and that what was considered one of the best parks a few years ago can now be considered the norm, context excluded?
Now the post H2H6 standards are, to be fair, ridiculous. Either you have to play the game over 20 hours a week, like Russ, or spotlight-contending parks take the creator regardless of his or her skill level well over a year to make. We've became so micro oriented because though detailing is a far more tedious task, it actually takes less skill to be adequate at than proper composition, layout, and theme creation. Are we killing ourselves over convention?
I'd still vote this spotlight.
To me spotlight isn't necessarily about quality, but about feeling.
This is why I can score a park 70-75% and still think it should be spotlight, or vote a park 90-95% and it not feel like a spotlight.
Zippo's still has the spotlight feeling for me, even if it's quality doesn't quite hold up. It's like a large scale Faas park. It's beautifully cute.
It always takes for something to become an absolute classic. There's probably a lot of spotlight parks that were deemed great when they came out that people forgot about in a couple of years. To stand the test of time is the ultimate step in becoming a classic.