Cheats and Quirks
The RollerCoaster Tycoon games have several cheats and quirks. Most of these can be exploited by the player to give them an unfair advantage in gameplay.
Cheat Codes
In all RollerCoaster Tycoon games, cheat codes are activated by renaming a guest/peep to a specific name. The effects will take place once the name is entered. This is done by clicking on the nametag icon in the Guest's window.
In RollerCoaster Tycoon and RollerCoaster Tycoon 2, you cannot have multiple guests on the map with the exact same name (e.g. 2 guests named "Chris Sawyer"), but you can work around this by having 2 guests with the same name but different capitalisation (e.g. 2 guests named "Chris Sawyer" and "chriS Sawyer").
RollerCoaster Tycoon 3 allows several peeps to share the exact same name. In addition, through the Peep Designer, it is possible to activate multiple codes simultaneously or activate a single code multiple times simultaneously by creating custom peeps with the desired code(s) as their name.
In addition to cheat codes, all RollerCoaster Tycoon games have other unusual quirks or loopholes that can be exploited to your advantage and/or for your amusement.
RCT1 and RCT2/RCTC
- In a scenario where guests pay for rides, when a guest enters the queue for a ride, they will not leave the queue unless the ride is closed or they have spent 9-11 minutes waiting in line. You can therefore repeatedly adjust the admission fee of the ride such that it is "Free", which causes many guests to enter the ride's queue, then set the admission fee to a very high amount when guests are boarding the ride. This will cause guests about to board the ride to pay a huge amount of cash (assuming they still have enough cash to pay for it). This exploit is more effective on rides with high guest capacities, such as roller coasters.
- Staff that are employed for less than 7 days in-game are not paid a portion of their monthly salaries and therefore work for free during this period, so you can hire staff to immediately fix problems in your park and then sack them immediately after they have fixed the problem without having to pay them for their services. The logical extreme of this exploit is that you don't need to pay a single cent for handymen and mechanics if you only hire them whenever you need one, but otherwise have an empty staff list.
- If your scenario objective is to have a certain number of guests in your park by the end of a certain year, you only need a few additional guests in your park, and you only have a few days left before the deadline, you can block the park exits with No-Entry signs or by removing the path tile right after the park entrances. While your park rating will start to drop once you do this, this exploit will keep guests intending to leave the park around for a slightly longer period of time, hopefully for a long enough time for the deadline to pass without your park rating dropping below the objective.
- Cars on tracked rides with a powered launch option that are launched off a straight track, or through an entrance and out an exit of a ride, and directly onto a straight section footpath will careen along the footpath without interacting with other objects along the path (i.e. guests and path items), exploding only when they stray off the footpath.
RCT2/RCTC
- RCT2 adds a variable price for scenery removal—scenery items that cost a fee to be removed (such as trees) will cost less if you remove them via right-clicking while a construction tool is active or via the bulldozer, and cost more if they are removed automatically when a track piece is placed on the same tile. However, the reverse is true for scenery items that give you money when they are removed—they give you less money when they are removed via right-clicking while a construction tool is active or via the bulldozer, and give more money if they are removed automatically when a track piece is placed on the same tile. There are several ways to exploit this quirk to gain money from ride construction, such as:
- placing a large cluster of Base Blocks 3 tiles square and 9 units high, then building a 3x3 flat ride such as the Twist or the Merry-Go-Round on the same spot as the Base Blocks, which automatically clears the blocks for a good profit, followed by demolishing the ride you just built, which adds even more money into your coffers;
- placing a Base Block cluster 3 tiles wide, 4 tiles long and 40 units high, then building 3 Ferris Wheels on same same spot as the cluster and adjacent to each other, which nets you a profit for constructing them due to the Base Blocks being automatically demolished, followed by demolishing the Ferris Wheels you just built, which also nets you a profit for demolishing them;
- placing a line of Fountains, building a track type with high placement cost through the line of Fountains (which generates profit from the game automatically demolishing the Fountains), then demolishing the track you just built (which generates even more profit);
- building a tower ride such as the Launched Freefall with the shortest safe height, stacking about 70 Base Blocks directly above the ride's tower section, testing and saving the ride with the Base Blacks placed directly above it as included scenery, and building this saved design in any scenario that has this ride type available and expanding the tower through the Base Blocks (which generates a profit from their automatic demolition) before optionally demolishing the tower (which also generates a profit)
RCT3
- You can build above the mesas at the back of the park in Broom Lake (where the cliffside buildings are) as well as within the canyon in Ghost Town, even though you do not own the construction rights for either region.
- You can demolish the cliffside building sections at the back of the park in Broom Lake that do not intersect the ground for a bit of extra cash.
- Despite being built outside the park boundaries and not being a ride designed for the purposes of carrying peeps or making money through ride admissions, the Grande Western Train Line in Gunslinger can still be controlled by you, and thus made to simulate a shuttle service from beyond the map edge for added realism, crashed for your amusement, or demolished for extra cash.