Last I heard, Microsoft Train Simulator 2 was supposed to be released February 10, 2004. Of course, I haven’t seen any signs over the past two weeks that it had actually been (the official Microsoft site hasn’t been updated in a year, and just says “Release Date:
TBA”). I finally stumbled upon EBgames.com’s purchase page, which claims a release date of 7/1/2004. I guess it’s back to waiting patiently.
I think Train Simulator is a great game, but Train Simulator 2 leaves me with a huge quandary: My three-year-old PC is just barely powerful enough to run the original game at a decent resolution and framerate. I don’t know what the official specs for the sequel will be, but the game almost certainly won’t run well on any computer I own. For that matter, I haven’t switched my PC on in months, and I’ve been thinking of getting rid of it to reclaim the desk space anyway. I’m really looking forward to playing the new game, but the idea of spending hundreds (thousands?) of dollars on a new computer just to play a $50 game seems ridiculous.
I suppose it would be too much to ask for Microsoft to do a Mac version of Train Simulator 2. I guess I’ll just have to be happy with Uru.
Heh. But just think, if you are buying a PC especially for running Train Simulator 2 on it, you can build it all into a special videogame-like console and stuff, so it looks a little bit like the inside of a train cab.
That doesn’t make it any cheaper. Just the RailDriver controller is $149. They have an article on the full-sized cab simulator they built for NMRA 2002, and it looks quite pricey. Fun, though, I bet!