Chris Sawyer | Code Like It's 198x

In 1993, players of the PC version of Frontier: Elite II could find advertising hoardings in its space ports announcing “Coming soon… Chris Sawyer’s Transport Game”. Sawyer had written that PC version, converting David Braben’s Amiga original, and he was using it to advertise his own next game. The game became Transport Tycoon, and five years later RollerCoaster Tycoon made him one of the best-selling game designers of his time. He wrote the program code of both himself, in x86 assembly language, long after most of the industry had moved to compiled languages.

Fast facts

Born: October 1967, according to Companies House.
Education: a degree in Computer Science and Microprocessor Systems from the University of Strathclyde in Glasgow.
Early machines: the Camputers Lynx, the Memotech MTX and the Amstrad CPC.
Conversions to the PC, 1988–1993: Virus, Elite Plus, Campaign, Birds of Prey, Dino Dini’s Goal and Frontier: Elite II.
Own games: Transport Tycoon (1994), RollerCoaster Tycoon (1999), RollerCoaster Tycoon 2 (2002) and Chris Sawyer’s Locomotion (2004).
Programming: x86 assembly language, written with Microsoft’s Macro Assembler.

Starting out

Sawyer first programmed at school, which had a Commodore PET and a Research Machines 380Z. “I started writing little BASIC games on those during the lunch hour just for fun,” he recalled, before moving on to machine code. His own first computer was a Camputers Lynx, and then came a Memotech MTX. His website dates his start in the industry to 1983, “writing games in Z80 machine code on the Memotech MTX”. He later named Missile Kommand, “blatantly based on a similarly-named game”, as probably the first of his MTX games to be published. The small publishers of those years did not always pay: after one company’s first “(small) royalty cheque”, he said, “I never received anything further”.

At university he moved to an Amstrad CPC 6128 and kept writing games. In January 1987 Computer Gamer previewed Ziggurat, an isometric maze game for the Amstrad set in a Mesopotamian pyramid and devised by the Tigress team of Dave Bishop for Ariolasoft; the next month Amtix credited its programming to Chris Sawyer. Sawyer remembered Ariolasoft as the company “who had published one of my CPC games”, and which promised him a job once he graduated. “Ariolasoft was struggling and downsizing, and the job offer came to nothing.”

He spent four years studying at Strathclyde, in the Livingstone Tower in Glasgow, whose top floors then held the computer science department. The tower later turned up among the buildings of Transport Tycoon.

Converting other people’s games

From 1988 to 1993 Sawyer worked on PC versions of games written for other computers, mostly the Amiga. The PC was, as he put it, “quite a limiting machine” with no graphics co-processor, so “you were really having to push the main processor”. He enjoyed that: “it didn’t matter that it was somebody else’s game”.

The work included Elite Plus, the PC version of Elite. When Computer Gaming World reviewed it in October 1991, the credits box named Chris Sawyer as designer and MicroPlay as publisher, at $49.95; later advertisements credited “Elite Plus programming” to him. He then converted Frontier: Elite II. Asked by Edge in 1994 whether he had written the Amiga version, Braben said he had, and that “Chris Sawyer did the PC version”. Sawyer later said he had added texture mapping to its 3D graphics, “before PC graphic cards had any kind of hardware to help with 3D texture mapping”. His website also lists Virus, Campaign, Birds of Prey and Dino Dini’s Goal.

Transport Tycoon

Transport Tycoon grew out of an isometric game world Sawyer had built for himself. “One day I decided it would be fun to try having little trains running around in my 3D isometric game world,” he said. He worked on it alongside his conversions during 1993 and full-time from the end of that year, and paid for it himself from his conversion earnings. Simon Foster drew the graphics on the understanding that he would be paid once the game found a publisher. Asked whether anybody else worked on the code, Sawyer answered: “No, just me.”

MicroProse, which had published Elite Plus, released the game in November 1994 and gave it the name Transport Tycoon, tying it to its own Railroad Tycoon. Transport Tycoon Deluxe followed at the end of 1995.

RollerCoaster Tycoon

His next project began in 1996 as a sequel to Transport Tycoon. He abandoned it and changed the code “to handle roller coasters instead of transport vehicles”. The game was called White Knuckle throughout its development, until Hasbro Interactive, which was to publish it, bought MicroProse and took the chance to make it another Tycoon. RollerCoaster Tycoon came out in the spring of 1999. Sawyer described it as “99% written in x86 assembler/machine code (yes, really!), with a small amount of C code used to interface to MS Windows and DirectX”. Allister Brimble wrote its music and later accounts credit its graphics to Simon Foster.

It became the best-selling PC game in America in 1999, with 719,635 copies according to the retail tracker PC Data, and sold another 1,251,770 there in 2000. When Sawyer sued Atari in 2005, the trade press reported that the series had sold nearly nine million units worldwide by early 2005.

Sawyer wrote RollerCoaster Tycoon 2 alone as well, and Infogrames released it in 2002. The third game, in full 3D, went to David Braben’s Frontier Developments, with Sawyer giving “input and advice”.

Locomotion and the dispute with Atari

The long-promised successor to Transport Tycoon, Chris Sawyer’s Locomotion, came out through Atari in October 2004. It was built on the RollerCoaster Tycoon engine, and Computer Gaming World was harsh. Its reviewer, Di Luo, found it hard “to figure what’s improved in the last decade”, and summed it up as “a 10-year-old game with a 5-year-old coat of paint”.

In November 2005 Sawyer sued Atari, the former Infogrames, for royalties. According to Gamasutra’s report at the time, he claimed about $4.8 million, saying forensic accountants had found improper deductions from his royalty statements. Both Gamasutra and the trade magazine Develop reported that his games had brought Atari about $180 million, of which Sawyer had received about $30 million. The case was to be heard in London after Atari failed to move it to New York. Develop reported in February 2008 that the two had settled out of court, on terms that were not made public.

Return to his games

Sawyer set up a company, 31X, in 2010, at first “only as a holding company for the Transport Tycoon IP”. With the developer Origin8 it turned into a studio for new versions of his games. Transport Tycoon came to iOS and Android in 2013, rewritten because the original assembly code could not simply be recompiled for phones. RollerCoaster Tycoon Classic followed in 2016 for phones and in 2017 for Windows and macOS.

On 1 November 2024 Atari announced that it had acquired Transport Tycoon in an agreement with Sawyer. Atari already published Locomotion and the RollerCoaster Tycoon series.

Sources

Amtix issue 16, February 1987, news pages: preview of Ariolasoft’s Ziggurat, programming credited to Chris Sawyer.
Computer Gamer issue 22, January 1987, news pages: “Droids and Ziggurats”, the Tigress team’s Ziggurat for Ariolasoft on the Amstrad.
Computer Gaming World issue 87, October 1991: Elite Plus review (designer Chris Sawyer, MicroPlay, $49.95).
Edge issue 5, February 1994: interview with David Braben (“Chris Sawyer did the PC version”).
The One issue 66, March 1994, and Amiga Computing issue 73, May 1994: compilation advertisement (“Elite plus programming © Chris Sawyer”).
Computer Gaming World issue 246, holiday 2004, p. 103: Di Luo’s review of Chris Sawyer’s Locomotion.
Computer Gaming World issue 189, April 2000, p. 34, and issue 201, April 2001, p. 38: PC Data’s American sales figures for RollerCoaster Tycoon.
Computer Gaming World issue 222, January 2003, p. 112, and issue 240, July 2004, p. 50: RollerCoaster Tycoon 2 “developed solely by Chris Sawyer”; his “input and advice” on RollerCoaster Tycoon 3.
Chris Sawyer Games, information page, and “10 things you (probably) never knew about Chris Sawyer’s Tycoon games” (web, secondary; the author’s own site): start on the Memotech MTX, the list of conversions, release dates, the Frontier billboards, the Livingstone Tower, the names White Knuckle and Transport Tycoon. https://www.chrissawyergames.com/info.htm and https://www.chrissawyergames.com/feature1.htm
Chris Sawyer, “…about Chris Sawyer & Game Development”, chrissawyergames.com (web, secondary): RollerCoaster Tycoon’s programming language and tools; his degree. https://www.chrissawyergames.com/faq3.htm
“An exclusive interview with Chris Sawyer and the development team of Transport Tycoon mobile”, transporttycoon.com, 2014 (web, secondary): school computers, the conversions, the PC’s limits, how Transport Tycoon was made and paid for, Simon Foster, “just me”. https://www.transporttycoon.com/anniversary
“Chris Sawyer (Transport Tycoon/RollerCoaster Tycoon) – Interview”, Arcade Attack, August 2018 (web, secondary): the Lynx and the MTX, Missile Kommand, the unpaid royalties, Ariolasoft, texture mapping in Frontier, the origin of Transport Tycoon. https://www.arcadeattack.co.uk/chris-sawyer-interview/
Simon Carless, “Sawyer Sues Atari Over Roller Coaster Tycoon Royalties”, Gamasutra, 8 November 2005 (web, secondary): the claim, the audit, the London court, the $180 million and $30 million figures, nearly nine million units sold. https://www.gamedeveloper.com/game-platforms/sawyer-sues-atari-over-i-roller-coaster-tycoon-i-royalties
“Sawyer settles Atari suit”, Develop, 5 February 2008 (web, secondary): the out-of-court settlement and the figures claimed. https://mcvuk.com/development-news/sawyer-settles-atari-suit/
Mike Rose, “Chris Sawyer on his reentry back into video games”, Gamasutra, 19 July 2013 (web, secondary): 31X, Origin8 and the rewrite for phones. https://www.gamedeveloper.com/business/chris-sawyer-on-his-reentry-back-into-video-games
Companies House, 31X Ltd, company SC374055 (web, secondary): incorporated 3 March 2010; Sawyer’s date of birth and directorship. https://find-and-update.company-information.service.gov.uk/company/SC374055
“RollerCoaster Tycoon Classic”, Wikipedia (web, secondary), citing Wesley Yin-Poole’s interview with Sawyer in Eurogamer, 3 March 2016: release dates. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RollerCoaster_Tycoon_Classic
Atari, “Atari Acquires Chris Sawyers’ Transport Tycoon”, press release, 1 November 2024 (web, secondary); also reported by GamingOnLinux, November 2024. https://www.globenewswire.com/news-release/2024/11/01/2973467/0/en/Atari-Acquires-Chris-Sawyers-Transport-Tycoon.html