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.
In RollerCoaster Tycoon and RollerCoaster Tycoon 2, you cannot have 2 two 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").
RCT1
- Andy Hine - Thinks "Nice ride! But not as nice as the Phoenix..." after leaving a roller coaster
- Chris Sawyer - Takes pictures frequently while navigating the park
- Damon Hill - Rides all Go Karts four times as fast
- David Ellis - Thinks "...and here we are on <ride name>!" when sitting on a roller coaster train that is leaving the station.
- Emma Garrell - Changes the shirt colour of all guests within a tile's range to purple
- Felicity Anderson - Causes all guests within a tile's range to continuously throw up
- Jacques Villeneuve - Rides all Go Karts three times as fast
- John Wardley - Thinks "Wow!" often
- Katie Brayshaw - Waves occasionally
- Katie Smith - Jumps occasionally
- Lisa Stirling - Litters continuously
- Melanie Warn - Sets the guest's Happiness and Energy to maximum and reduces their Nausea to zero upon renaming
- Michael Schumacher - Rides all Go Karts twice as fast
- Mr Bean - Rides all Go Karts at 3 km/h
- Nancy Stillwagon - Causes all guests within a tile's range to continuously receive an Ice Cream Cone
- Simon Foster - Paints occasionally
RCT2
In addition to the following codes, all codes from RCT1 will still work.
- Elissa White - Thinks "Brilliant...it's an Intamin Ride." when riding any ride made by Intamin (Giga Coaster, Inverted Impulse Coaster, etc.)
- Katie Rodger - Wants to leave the park
- Carol Young - Reduces the Happiness of the renamed guest
- Donald Macrae - Thinks "I'm lost!" often
RCT3
Base Game
- Isambard Kingdom Brunel - Fully trains all staff at no cost, although they will still be paid their increased monthly wages as per normal
- FPS - Displays a counter at the top left corner of the screen showing the frames per second
- Ghost Town - Will stop the flow of peeps coming into your park; this cheat is irreversible and can only be disabled by restarting the game
- Andrew Thomas - Decreases track friction, which reduces the amount of speed that vehicles on most tracked rides lose over time
- Andrew Gillett - Sets track friction to 0, which completely prevents vehicles on most tracked rides from gradually losing speed over time
- David Braben - Allows the player to set unlimited chain lift and launch speeds
- John D Rockefeller - Adds $10,000 to the player's cash-on-hand
- Atari - Peeps applaud you
- Chris Sawyer - Peeps applaud you and jump into the air
- Mouse - Peeps' heads swivel to follow the mouse cursor
- Guido Fawkes- Enables the Advanced Fireworks Editor in the fireworks menu
- James Hunt - Spawns a dune buggy somewhere on the map; double-clicking the buggy switches to a CoasterCam view of the buggy, during which it can be driven around by the player using the arrow keys; the buggy can also be deleted by right-clicking on it when any construction or landscaping tool is active
- D Lean - Opens the Flying Camera routes editor; this is also accessible by pressing CTRL + SHIFT + 0 without activating the code
- A Hitchcock - Many ducks spawn flying around the map
- PhotoStory - Peeps take photos of park landmarks
- ATITech - Every peep, staff and animal moves very fast for twenty seconds (in-game clock stays at a normal speed)
- Make Me Sick - All peeps become sick and vomit simultaneously
- John Wardley - Disables ride support limit, allowing the player to build rides with track heights greater than their supposed limit
- Frontier - Park attractions no longer break down
- Jon Roach - Makes every peep ride every ride at least once before exiting the park
- Sam Denney - Makes every peep ride every coaster at least once before exiting the park
- Elissa White - Causes a female adult peep who is renamed to this code to say "I'm so excited - it's an Intamin ride!" whenever she enters a queue for a Giga Coaster or Impulse Coaster
- Jonny Watts - Switches to a CoasterCam view of the renamed peep that rotates in sync with the direction that they are looking at
Soaked!
- M Brookes - Enables wall pieces and other scenery items to be placed on the edge of path tiles
- Alistair Lindsay - Alters the speed and pitch of all sound effects based on the game speed; this cheat is irreversible and can only be disabled by restarting the game
- Rick Griffiths - Changes the texture of the walls and ceiling of tunnels to a shark texture
- Mornington Crescent - Enables shops and scenery items to be built underground
- David Walsh - Hides the user interface; pressing CTRL + U causes the interface to reappear
Wild!
- Rabbit - Animals breed at an increased rate
- Alvin Swazonegger - Allows large billboard movies
- Jurassic Dart - Helicopter shoots miniature dinosaurs instead of tranquilizer darts
Other Quirks
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
- 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.
RCT2
- 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).
- Cars on tracked rides with a powered launch option that are launched off a straight track 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.
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.