Sid Meier’s Railroads – A Blast From the Past

It’s been a long time since I sat down and played this game, but today I felt the urge to lay down some tracks and live through the steam era. And even after all these years the game still looks and plays great. I had the resolution set to 1920×1080 and it didn’t skip a beat. I only had time enough to play the first scenario, but it was a great time.

I actually got off to a really good start and was able to shuttle gold back and forth to Los Angeles. From there I made the connection to San Diego and made a quick buck moving passengers back and forth. I had a bit of lunch and there was a vineyard right down the road which opened up a Winery for me. From there I was able to extract some oil, bring in some corn and then some cattle. Yes, I was only on the first scenario but wow, the time flew buy as I made my fortune. I was actually able to buy out JP Morgan (yeah, like that could have ever really happened) and took over his rails. I was then able to make short work of connecting all the other cities and swept through each one of them building refineries, wineries and stockyards. I was able to bank over $100 million in cash before I hit the time limit. Pretty damn entertaining I have to say.

Sometimes you just want to jump into those old games. It doesn’t always have to be first person shooters, or dungeon crawlers, or exploring some seemingly dead planet. Sometimes you just want to amass a fortune and drive your competitors out of business. Railroads is still a lot of fun and I’m looking forward to a couple more games this weekend.

Anyone else get the urge to jump into the oldies from time to time?

And by the way, if you want to learn about the moguls of this era – Cornelius Vanderbilt, Andrew Carnegie, JP Morgan and JD Rockefeller, then check out the documentary – "The Men Who Built America". It’s a 5 hour program that showcases how these men quite literally built the America we know today. If you think Gates, Ballmer, Jobs and Buffet have wealth, you haven’t seen anything. These guys ruled and guided America and their wealth was about 10 times what our modern day robber barons have put together. The things they did were staggering. $400 million is a massive amount of money today, but what about a hundred years ago? A billion is more money than most people could ever spend today, but what about the turn of the century when things cost pennies? If a car cost $100 and you had$1 billion? It’s pretty staggering what these guys pulled off and well worth watching if you have any interest in history. Fun stuff!