Microsoft Train Simulator (sometimes referred to as
MSTS) is a
train simulatorA train simulator is a computer based simulation of rail transport operations.-Industrial train simulations:Like flight simulators, train simulators have been produced for railway training purposes...
for
Microsoft WindowsMicrosoft Windows is a series of operating systems produced by Microsoft.Microsoft introduced an operating environment named Windows on November 20, 1985 as an add-on to MS-DOS in response to the growing interest in graphical user interfaces . Microsoft Windows came to dominate the world's personal...
, released in July 2001 and developed by
UKThe United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...
based
Kuju EntertainmentKuju Entertainment is an English computer and video game corporation consisting of three studios, two of which are located in the UK: Zoë Mode , Headstrong Games , and one in the Czech Republic: Vatra games...
, and is available for purchase through
Amazon.comAmazon.com, Inc. is a multinational electronic commerce company headquartered in Seattle, Washington, United States. It is the world's largest online retailer. Amazon has separate websites for the following countries: United States, Canada, United Kingdom, Germany, France, Italy, Spain, Japan, and...
.
Gameplay
The simulation allows players to operate a train on various routes in Europe, Asia and the United States. Players need to stop and start the train, couple wagons, using the computer keyboard or a hardware addition such as
RaildriverRailDriver is a desktop cab controller for train simulation software. It replaces keyboard and mouse operation as far as possible to provide a more realistic train driving experience. It is designed to be compatible with Microsoft Train Simulator, Auran's Trainz, Rail Simulator's RailWorks, BVE...
to operate the controls. Sound effects are enabled.
Features
The original game featured six routes:
- The Arlberg railway
The Arlberg railway, which connects the Austrian cities Innsbruck and Bludenz, is Austria's only east-west mountain railway. The 135.7 km line is referred as Europe's most difficult mountain railway since it is threatened by avalanches, mudslides, rockfalls or floods...
in AustriaAustria , officially the Republic of Austria , is a landlocked country of roughly 8.4 million people in Central Europe. It is bordered by the Czech Republic and Germany to the north, Slovakia and Hungary to the east, Slovenia and Italy to the south, and Switzerland and Liechtenstein to the...
in the 1930s, with the Orient ExpressThe Orient Express is the name of a long-distance passenger train service originally operated by the Compagnie Internationale des Wagons-Lits. It ran from 1883 to 2009 and is not to be confused with the Venice-Simplon Orient Express train service, which continues to run.The route and rolling stock...
.
- The Settle to Carlisle Railway
The Settle–Carlisle Line is a long main railway line in northern England. It is also known as the Settle and Carlisle. It is a part of the National Rail network and was constructed in the 1870s...
line as it was in the 1930s and 1940s, with the Flying ScotsmanThe LNER Class A3 Pacific locomotive No. 4472 Flying Scotsman was built in 1923 for the London and North Eastern Railway at Doncaster Works to a design of H.N. Gresley...
.
- The Northeast Corridor
The Northeast Corridor is a fully electrified railway line owned primarily by Amtrak serving the Northeast megalopolis of the United States from Boston in the north, via New York to Washington, D.C. in the south, with branches serving other cities...
in the United StatesThe United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
between 30th Street Station30th Street Station is the main railroad station in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and one of the five stations in SEPTA's Center City fare zone. It is also a major stop on Amtrak's Northeast and Keystone Corridors...
in Philadelphia and Washington Union Station with AmtrakThe National Railroad Passenger Corporation, doing business as Amtrak , is a government-owned corporation that was organized on May 1, 1971, to provide intercity passenger train service in the United States. "Amtrak" is a portmanteau of the words "America" and "track". It is headquartered at Union...
's Acela ExpressThe Acela Express is Amtrak's high-speed rail service along the Northeast Corridor in the Northeast United States between Washington, D.C., and Boston via Baltimore, Philadelphia, and New York...
and Metroliner.
- The Marias Pass
Marias Pass is a high mountain pass near Glacier National Park in northwestern Montana in the United States.The pass traverses the continental divide in the Lewis Range, along the boundary between the Lewis and Clark National Forest and the Flathead National Forest...
route, in the United StatesThe United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
depicting the BNSF RailwayThe BNSF Railway is a wholly owned subsidiary of Berkshire Hathaway Inc., and is headquartered in Fort Worth, Texas. It is one of seven North American Class I railroads and the second largest freight railroad network in North America, second only to the Union Pacific Railroad, its primary...
's Hi-Line Subdivision between Shelby, MontanaShelby is a city in and the county seat of Toole County, Montana, United States. The population was 3,216 at the 2000 census.-Geography:Shelby is located at ....
and Whitefish, MontanaWhitefish is a city in Flathead County, Montana, United States. The population was 5,032 at the 2000 census. It is home to a ski resort on Big Mountain called Whitefish Mountain Resort. Montana Governor Brian Schweitzer hails from Whitefish....
, with C44-9W and GP38-2 locomotives.
- The Odakyu Odawara Line commuter service in Tokyo
, ; officially , is one of the 47 prefectures of Japan. Tokyo is the capital of Japan, the center of the Greater Tokyo Area, and the largest metropolitan area of Japan. It is the seat of the Japanese government and the Imperial Palace, and the home of the Japanese Imperial Family...
and the Hisatsu Line on Kyushuis the third largest island of Japan and most southwesterly of its four main islands. Its alternate ancient names include , , and . The historical regional name is referred to Kyushu and its surrounding islands....
in JapanJapan is an island nation in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean, it lies to the east of the Sea of Japan, China, North Korea, South Korea and Russia, stretching from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea and Taiwan in the south...
.
Included with the game was the Editors & Tools program, which allowed the user to build custom routes. Users could also create activities for any route, create custom cabviews, or edit the default ones.
Issues that affected gameplay
The original version contained many
bugsA software bug is the common term used to describe an error, flaw, mistake, failure, or fault in a computer program or system that produces an incorrect or unexpected result, or causes it to behave in unintended ways. Most bugs arise from mistakes and errors made by people in either a program's...
. For example the "front coupling bug", where the locomotive's front coupler would not work, the "white void bug", where the route scenery disappears, leaving a white void, and the "end-of-the-line bug", where the locomotive, if it crashes through the last buffers on the route, would fall into an empty void. There are also issues with the signalling and
AIAI, A.I., Ai, or ai may refer to:- Computers :* Artificial intelligence, a branch of computer science* Ad impression, in online advertising* .ai, the ISO Internet 2-letter country code for Anguilla...
dispatching. The game is also notoriously unstable with unusually high tendencies to
hangIn computing, a hang or freeze occurs when either a single computer program, or the whole system ceases to respond to inputs. In the most commonly encountered scenario, a workstation with a graphical user interface, all windows belonging to the frozen program become static, and though the mouse...
,
crashA crash in computing is a condition where a computer or a program, either an application or part of the operating system, ceases to function properly, often exiting after encountering errors. Often the offending program may appear to freeze or hang until a crash reporting service documents...
without giving reason, and display
error messageAn error message is information displayed when an unexpected condition occurs, usually on a computer or other device. On modern operating systems with graphical user interfaces, error messages are often displayed using dialog boxes...
s incorrectly and/or at the wrong times. In many instances, out-of-place error messages, usually for missing files, will cause a highly undesired crash at the wrong time. MSTS 1.2 addressed some of these issues.
Updates
v1.2 added new items such as British and American rolling stock, namely the
British Rail Class 50The British Rail Class 50 is a diesel locomotive built from 1967-68 by English Electric at their Vulcan Foundry Works in Newton-le-Willows. Fifty of these locomotives were built to haul express passenger trains on the, then non-electrified, section of the West Coast Main Line between Crewe,...
, British Rail Mark 1 Coaches, an
EMD SD40-2The EMD SD40-2 is a C-C locomotive produced by EMD from 1972 to 1989.The SD40-2 was first introduced in January 1972 as the mid-range offering in EMD's six-axle "Dash-2" series, competing against the GE U30C and the MLW M630...
and general US freight cars, along with two new activities each for the SD40-2 and Class 50.
Microsoft Train Simulator 2
On May 7, 2003, Microsoft announced that it would be making a sister game of MSTS called
Microsoft Train Simulator 2 and it was first demoed to the public at E3 on May 15. Seemingly its main improvements were the addition of people to the game (e.g. passengers waiting at the stations, people operating the new locomotive roster, etc.), more realistic crashes and other accidents, and
turntablesA railway turntable is a device for turning railroad rolling stock. When steam locomotives were still in wide use, many railroads needed a way to turn the locomotives around for return trips as their controls were often not configured for extended periods of running in reverse and in many...
. It was being developed by
Kuju EntertainmentKuju Entertainment is an English computer and video game corporation consisting of three studios, two of which are located in the UK: Zoë Mode , Headstrong Games , and one in the Czech Republic: Vatra games...
, the original
MSTS creators. Despite restructuring efforts at Kuju, the project was however handed over to Microsoft Game Studios on August 18, 2003.
This project was ultimately halted, as the following statement on April 24, 2004 from Microsoft confirmed:
On January 19, 2007, Microsoft announced the relaunch of the
Microsoft Train Simulator project. This time the game was being made in-house by ACES Game Studio (
Microsoft Game StudiosMicrosoft Studios is the video game production wing for Microsoft, responsible for the development and publishing of games for the Xbox, Xbox 360, Games for Windows and Windows Phone platforms. They were established in 2002 as Microsoft Game Studios to coincide with the release of the Xbox, before...
) known for its long line of
Microsoft Flight SimulatorMicrosoft Flight Simulator is a series of flight simulator programs for the Microsoft Windows operating system, although it was marketed as a video game. It is one of the longest-running, best-known and most comprehensive home flight simulator series...
s, as a part of the "
Games for WindowsGames for Windows is a brand owned by Microsoft and introduced in 2006 to coincide with the release of Windows Vista. The brand represents a standardized technical certification program and online service for Windows games, bringing a measure of regulation to the PC game market in much the same way...
" initiative. The game would have used the
Microsoft Flight Simulator XMicrosoft Flight Simulator X, also known as FSX, is the latest version of Microsoft Flight Simulator after Microsoft Flight Simulator 2004...
graphics engine and it was planned to be compatible with both
Windows VistaWindows Vista is an operating system released in several variations developed by Microsoft for use on personal computers, including home and business desktops, laptops, tablet PCs, and media center PCs...
and
Windows XPWindows XP is an operating system produced by Microsoft for use on personal computers, including home and business desktops, laptops and media centers. First released to computer manufacturers on August 24, 2001, it is the second most popular version of Windows, based on installed user base...
. A post on the 'The Little Wheel Goes in Back' blog, written by one of the developers, on August 23, 2007 suggested the working title was 'Train Simulator 2'.
On January 23, 2009, Microsoft announced that it was permanently closing ACES Game Studios, the internal development studio responsible for both Microsoft Flight Simulator and Microsoft Train Simulator. As a result, all future development on Train Simulator 2 (which was entering the final stages of development at the time of the closure) was immediately halted, marking the second time that the project was terminated. While Microsoft states that they are committed to both the Flight Simulator and Train Simulator brands, it is currently unknown if the Train Simulator 2 project will ever be resurrected and completed sometime in the future. Although Aces Studio has closed, they have reopened under the name of Cascade Game Foundry, and they are planning on continuing to develop simulations.
External links