News / Top 50--Entire List

SACF said something about the four fathers of RCT in FG's topic and I wanted to reply to that but it didn't seem like the appropriate place (plus mantis would crucify me) so I decided to post it here. It seems relevant to this conversation. SACF said that the four fathers of RCT are:

For the uneducated, Its Joe [Holland], Greg Reese, Liquid and Myself [SACoasterFreak].

And while I totally agree with that statement, I don't think it's the full truth. Those are the fathers of the realistic style of parkmaking. They are all people that I admired at the time and they're responsible for a lot of what I do with RCT but who are the fathers of fantasy parkmaking? I generally ignored those types of parks way back in the day so I don't have any idea. I would guess the guy who made Hybris mega park might be one but I don't know how influential that park actually was. I thought it was amazing but I never even considered imitating it's style. Does anyone have an opinion on this? Blitz, I'm sure you have some ideas.

*Blitz screams from across the room*

Lee!

Yeah I figure he'll say the official site coaster competition winners. Actually he's told me who his main influences were before but I've since forgotten. Lee is the only one I can remember so I figured I'd let him say that. I really liked some of Lee's coasters too though. Maybe that's why my coaster designs have never been very realistic even when my parkmaking was excessively realistic.

40.mp3mystro
-Best RCT Attribute: Overall Theming
-Creator of Elsinore Falls (Adix-Picked Spotlight). The only Spotlight that was ever picked by Adix (when I was on vacation) was mp3mystro's best all-time park. mp3mystro often got caught up emulating styles like SA & Schuessler a bit too much, and in this park there heavily inspired areas from Crystal Horizons & Moonlight Magic.
-Creator of Tierra Theme Park. The park that earned mp3mystro his parkmaker spot. He had such a unique style, where he brought his own style of parkmaking mixed with heavy Snowbound influences, as can be seen in almost every single aspect of his work. This park was never really famous, and over the sands of time, it seems to have completely disappeared.
-With Six Flags Maine, competed for popularity points with Hampton Park Mega Resort for the most replies all-time in a thread at Dnet.
mp3mystro left New Element on a sour note, as me and him left on bad terms. Regardless, mp3mystro did leave his mark on the community with three major full scale parks in Elsinore, Six Flags Maine, and Tierra Theme Park. He also got the chance to work with Nevis on Tales of Camelott, in which Nev described him as: "impossible to work with". The Mystro was also the first parkmaker I'd ever seen to really pull of jagged rocks nicely, in his park with Brett Stevens (an underrated old park)

39.Prince_Ashitaka
-Best RCT Attribute: Consistency
-Creator of EverQuest: Waters of the Past (Unreleased). The best of his long standing EverQuest chain, he finally broke from the generic themes that he usually makes over and over again, with a great water-based parks. Everything is improved in this park, from the coaster design to the architecture, to the theming, and even the ideas.
-Creator of EverQuest: Mystic Realms (NE Runner-Up). Another one of his EverQuest parks, but after a while this chain just got really stale quickly. Still, the improvement is obvious from park to park, and Mystic Realms was definitely a huge stepping stone into Waters of the Past.
-Supposedly finally dropping the EverQuest chain name and creating more original parks.
Prince Ashitaka is a tough parkmaker to place on this list. His consistency is what makes him a respected figure in my opinion, although he can often fail to meet expectations of some of his higher advertised parks. The case is not the same for Waters of the Past, which came agonizingly close to Spotlight this round. Still, not many people have created such a great number of parks with solid quality in the amount of time that Prince does. If you're looking for a sure bet, Prince is your man, and with Waters of the Past, the quality is catching up to the quanity.

38.Dan MacKellar
-Best RCT Attribute: Memorable Parks
-Creator of Adventures Into Imagination, the first ever "Super Spotlight" at Danimation. This of course prompted me to get hugely excited over this park, which at the time, was pretty groundbreaking. Coasters like the "Ion Cannon", the boardwalk racing woodies, and "Thoth's Thunder" were instant favorites of mine, and I didn't even see that basically all the trees were the same, etc.
-Creator of Willow Lake, the first Danimation Spotlight of all time. According to sacoasterfreak, it's still the best park he's ever seen. Completely paving the way for parkmakers of the future, Willow Lake was a beautiful traditonal park featuring some excellent wooden coasters and tremendous atmosphere. Like all Spotlights, you must start strong, and Willow Lake really pushed Dnet in the right direction.
-First Spotlight and Super Spotlight Winners.
Dan Mack is one of the most legendary parkmakers of all time, no question. By name alone, I'd say he is a top ten parkmaker. I just never really became quite the fan of his work as I did for other parkmakers, so he fell into the #38 position. Adventures Into Imagination was a favorite of mine for quite a while, and Willow Lake was an accomplishment in itself. A great coaster designer, leaving behind rides like "Invasion", which flew by alien fighting machines on its course of destroying a 60's British town and "Battle for Britain", a set of dueling inverted jet coasters. Really set the tone for creative ride and parkmaking for the people of today.

37.Butterfinger
-Best RCT Attribute: Complexity
-Creator of Euroscape (NE Spotlight). One of the most controversial parks to hit New Element. No debate was over it's quality as a spotlight, which was unquestionable, but it had actually reached the #1 spot on The List, the first RCT2 park to ever do that. Looking at it now, I realize some of the architecture gets very repetitive, but the atmosphere in the park is still unbeatable. With great Spanish and Swiss themed areas, plus an even improved extended map, Euroscape remains in the top 3 even now.
-Creator of Universal's Caribbean Seas Resort (NE Spotlight). Butterfinger's curtain call from LL was definitely going out with a bang. A three map gigantic Universal resort, with all three maps featuring a variety of rides and attractions. One of the most downloaded parks in NE history. Very inventive rides including a suspended coaster with cutbacks, tons of indoor adventure rides, a recreated Hogwartts featuring an indoor Floorless coaster, and tons more.
-Scouted by Natelox from ThrillNetwork, who presented some of his work to me (Lake Wintergreen)
Butterfinger is one of the few people to have made a memorable park in both RCT2 & LL. The great part about it is, Butter has distinguished his own unique style in both games. His LL style is very evident in parks like The Outer Banks & UCSR, and his style of "mega archy" was debuted with Euroscape, to mixed reviews. Still, Butter has a long RCT/2 career ahead of him, and if Euroscape was only a preview of what is to come, then I think the platypus will be even higher on this list eventually.

36.Roberto Roboparks
-Best RCT Attribute: Consistency
-Creator of Rocky Falls (Dnet Forum-Voted Spotlight). Easily the crown jewel in Roboparks' career, Rocky Falls really came out of left field, breaking the chain of parkmaking that Robo had been setting for himself before (and well..after) the release of it. A "breakthrough" park if you will, what looked like the beginning of a whole new style for Roboparks. The park had many flaws, but was a great piece of art, especially in areas with the Dive Machine & Boomerang coasters.
-Creator of Valleystorm Falls (NE Runner-Up). His best park to be released in modern times really, in the NE era. One of his many Runner-Ups at New Element, but by far the best. Splitting the park into themed areas (something Robo didn't really do too often) had a great effect, and watching him break the trend of his usual style of parkmaking into Aztec & Ice themed areas was a great change of pace.
-Creator of four different NE Runner-Ups.
Roberto Roboparks was another tough person to place on this list. He has made so many solid parks in his career that not putting him on this list would be ridiculous. From his current works like Pinewood Grove Resort and Valleystorm, his Two Flags parks like Sandy Pointe, Venice, and Livingston Fortress, and his stand-out parks like Rocky Falls and Lake Texcoco (with Elrocko), Robo's work was always solid. Unfortunately, his work really never varied that much from each other, and his style gradually got duller and duller. Valleystorm was a nice break, very refreshing, but since then (and Pinewood), Robo has been AWOL.

35.Gutterflower aka roomraider
-Best RCT Attribute: Coasters
-Creator of Snow Drop (NE Spotlight). One of the most downloaded parks ever at New Element, Snow Drop was also NE's first ever single-wide Spotlight. Featuring over twenty coasters, including gems like the prototype "Merlin", Mountain Ranger, and Matterhorn. Several new ride types were invented, and several great coasters were built. Still his best work to date, and still one of the few great uses of snow theming I've ever seen.
-Creator of Arnos Springs Resort (NE Spotlight). Roomie's second spotlight, this time a double mapper that barely edged out Glyphindel Oasis Dunes for the Spotlight. While the park itself was fantastic, the resort map (featuring incredible guest work from mantis & x-sector) is what pushed it over the edge. The park was an updated version of roomie's first ever breakthrough park, "Arnos Grove", (actually, Snow Drop started the same way as well), and the project just grew and grew.
-Also the organizer and creator of the Revolution Project.
roomraider paved the way for fantasy parkmakers at New Element. While almost everyone had adapted to the Fatha'/Pyro style of parkmaking, roomie refused to change the way he played the game. With emphasis on coasters ahead of theming, roomie has invented several new technologies over the years. Whether it be inventing the crossbrace supports for hypers, inventing Rotator Coasters, or reinventing just about every single coaster type in the game, roomie is definitely one to call on for great coasters.

34.Elrocko
-Best RCT Attribute: Architecture
-Creator of Lloyd Harbor. One of the few parks to ever be completely released on the Parkmaker Pages, Elrocko's Lloyd Harbor has racked up about 400 downloads, all from his parkmaker page, still the record at New ELement. It also ended up being his final park of all time, as Elrocko left on bad terms, and doesn't appear to be returning any time soon.
-Creator of Citrus Beach. Really the park that got Elrocko legendary in my opinion. Sure, Colorado Springs Park was his improvement park, but Citrus Beach was the "next level" park. Everybody remembers the rides like "Waltzing Matilda", "Crescent Moon", and "Aquazoid". The park had a great atmosphere, and great architecture all throughout.
-The second of two parkmakers introduced to me by Natelox.
Elrocko is definitely one of the 'cult favorite' parkmakers in NE history. Really inventing his own style of parkmaking and sticking to it, improving it with every park until he finally topped out at Lloyd Harbor. Starting with n00bish parks like Aztec Park, and gradually improving, Elrocko eventually earned himself a NE Runner-Up spot for his sequel park, "Citrus Beach California", a park that had more skill but less 'magic' then its predecessor. Still, Elrocko lurks somewhere, away from New Element, unaware of this list, welcome to come back at any time and resume his legendary resume.

33.OZONE
-Best RCT Attribute: Colors
-Creator of Warner Bros. Hawaiian Adventures (NE Super Runner Up). One of the few parks that was nominated for the 2003 Runner-Up of the Year award. OZONE really broke into his own here, and became a NE Parkmaker shortly before the release of this park. Featuring some incredible themed areas like Return to Neverland and Terminator-I'm Back.
-Creator of Forest of Nautica (NE Runner-Up). OZONE's breakout solo park that earned him his third NE Runner-Up, and I really started to see the greatness coming from OZONE. The coasters of course struggled to keep up with the theming and architecture of the park, but still FoN stayed in the top 36 of the List for months after it was released.
-Owner of 4 NE Runner-Up spots.
-Although some may argue that he's too new to be on this List, I think that already his accomplishments have succeeded 85-90% of the guys out there. His theming talents are endless. True, his coasters are weak, and some people could argue that his parks have no depth, they get old quickly. Still, I'm more and more impressed every time I open up an OZONE park. Nowadays, I'm just expecting to be amazed by him, and thats the mark of one of the greatest parkmakers ever.

32.Evil WME
-Best RCT Attribute: Hacks/Creativity
-Creator of Glyphindel Oasis Dunes (NE Super Runner-Up). Definitely WME's best work to date, even though it didn't reach the Spotlight plateau like his past work did. The park is really a tale of up and downs. There are some incredible areas such as Adult Arubia and Gusta City, and then the park gets kinda tacky in places at the same time. Some great coasters in "APE" and "Ghost Train", but some rather below par ones as well. Still, a great park and still in my top 20.
-Creator of The Lost Resort (NE Spotlight). Winning a rather weak spotlight round, but still the crown is the crown. WME's double map resort in which the resort map is what won the project Spotlight. Still, some great coasters in the first map and awesome ideas in the second map.
-One of the best RCT Hackers in the world.
Evil WME really confuses me sometimes. On occasions, his work is absoluely amazing, and then sometimes I just don't understand what he's doing. For the most part though, WME continues to improve, with Lost Era, GOD, and now his NE Inv. which I believe is his best work. One problem with WME's parks is that they lose their appeal after a few views to me, meaning they lack depth and atmosphere. Still, I think his new park might have solved that problem. He definitely has the talent to become one of the all time legends, and I don't think we've seen him peak yet.

31.mrICE
-Best RCT Attribute: Realism
-Creator of Great Texas Adventure , one of his more creative parks. It still maintains the great style of architecture and realism that made mrICE one of the most legendary parkmakers of all time, yet it has improved coasters and cool ideas, something that some of his prior parks have gotten. Definitely his crowning achievement in parkmaking in my opinion, and it won Raven's old RCT Tournament thing. Great park from a classic parkmaking.
-Creator of Tennessee Fun Park , one of the most realistic parks of all time. I don't remember all that much about this park, other then it wasn't really my style (I was more into fantasy parks at the time), but I do remember it had some great coasters, including the then-dismantled "Zip" coaster, one of the coolest ideas I'd seen (I think he was the first to do that...)
-The father of realistic parkmaking.
You can ask anybody who was around in mrICE's time the influence he had on the community. He basically taught people how to make architecture, path layouts, and coasters. Just because mrICE never really expanded into themed area parkmaking, and stuck mostly to park chain parks, he still managed to have individuality in each one of his parks, and would constantly update his parks every few weeks with new rides and renovations to previous rides. mrICE was a legend on all fronts, one of the most respected parkmakers of all time.

30-21 Coming Next.

and I don't think we've seen him peak yet.

haha, fathers? I don't know...
Really were no fathers, as most of the fantasy scene was too low level.
There were, however, a few people that stand above.

The most obvious is mala, and right now is the only one I can name that contributes something other than coasters. I'd have to say Lee is the father of duelers. Any parkmaker worth his time has either been directly influenced, or influenced by someone who was influenced by Lee. To get any other names, I'd have to really do some searching, since I tend to do my own thing; I don't have some huge list of official influences.

and Ed: you don't talk loud enough

hmm, I don't really know much about these old school guys. I think Robo is way too high (I'd put him mid-40's), and roomie and Evil are too low (they're in my top 10), but that' just my opinion.

haha, fathers? I don't know...
Really were no fathers, as most of the fantasy scene was too low level.
There were, however, a few people that stand above.

The most obvious is mala, and right now is the only one I can name that contributes something other than coasters.  I'd have to say Lee is the father of duelers.  Any parkmaker worth his time has either been directly influenced, or influenced by someone who was influenced by Lee.  To get any other names, I'd have to really do some searching, since I tend to do my own thing; I don't have some huge list of official influences.

and Ed: you don't talk loud enough   

Don't forget GregM...you were blowing his trumpet a while back...

Wait, that sounded dodgy.

finally I get around to reading this.

GReat read it was interesting and I enjoyed it to. I'm not going to argue as where people should be on the list as I wouldn't have a clue and I think yours would be pretty good as you seen like every park ever .

Great list I can't wait for the next lot.

My question has been answered. There ARE 50 parkmakers that are better than me.
Well, in iris' opinion.

Finish something.
Anything.
You're like RRP...(well, probably more productive then RRP)

You're like RRP...(well, probably more productive then RRP)

or not because kiddos only released Holcrane.

But nice update on the list. Its your list but i would have like to have seen Roomie and Wme higher, cant wait to see whos higher i think shouldn't be. Its an interesting read and a good update

My question has been answered. There ARE 50 parkmakers that are better than me.
Well, in iris' opinion.

Fuck off.

I don't know some of the old parkmakers from Dnet and such, but most of it sounds okay to me. The first one I strongly disagree with is, as iris assumed, OZONE @ 33. OZONE is one of my good buddies () but it seems kind of unfair to place him that high, and I'll tell you why: In a first park, everyone emulated someone's style(s). I did. In AO Convention, which is the epitamy of a four-corner park , OZONE especially picked up on the styles of the popular parkmakers. He was pretty damn good at it, too. But IMO he's still breaking out of that. Maybe his area in the "Ultimate Collabo" or his new park (which is probably done by now...) will show us otherwise, but I think by all rights the parks he has made shoudn't have taken longer then they did, because he never took time to really put thought into new ideas for his parks. I think maybe I do too much of that, but a good park should have something in almost every area that makes you go "wow, that's so cool" or something like that, but the only thing that comes to mind is the lighthouse with the rapids base, which was nice but not breathtaking.

Anyway, you can tell how jealous I am.

My question has been answered. There ARE 50 parkmakers that are better than me.
Well, in iris' opinion.

Fuck off.

Mike - Illusions Isle kicks ass. Don't be disparaging the speed-demon

I'm worried that Kai isn't there, but hey, I don't know what's going on higher up the list so maybe there'll be more developments.

just a note on elrocko. I talked to him about a month or two ago, and he said he wasn't comming back....just to put any thoughts to rest.

I'm worried that Kai isn't there, but hey, I don't know what's going on higher up the list so maybe there'll be more developments.

Awwww.....mantis loves me.

Thanks again for a nice read Iris....there are some in the 30s that I hadn't seen/remembered much about, and now I have some new/new to me things to view and explore.

Thanks,

Kai

My question has been answered. There ARE 50 parkmakers that are better than me.
Well, in iris' opinion.

You mean you were questioning?

I already knew there were 50 people better than me. Pry close to 100.

and Ed: you don't talk loud enough   

I know, I have a real problem with that. I talk and people don't hear me. It's frustrating sometimes. I have trouble hearing people too for some reason. So perhaps that's why I'm more comfortable in a written medium. Don't have to worry about misunderstanding that way. Anyway, for anyone who doesn't know, my modem died a horrible death so I'm only going to be on sporadically for the next couple of weeks. If anyone has been waiting to talk to me (and I'm sure a couple people have) send me a PM and I'll respond the next time I'm able to.

don't worry, I haven't forgotten gregM, who invented a whole nother STYLE of dueling. Which, in turn, inspired lanus junction believe it or not.