Wall Street Tycoon
Stock market sim previewed
What? No 3D accelerated graphics? No Dolby Digital surround sound? No texture mapped polygons or volumetric fog effects?
Um .. no actually.
Instead Wall Street Tycoon presents you with a dolled up spreadsheet listing the high, low and current prices of shares, along with their trade volume, and of course how many of each of them you own.
Huh?
Rogue Trader
You see, Wall Street Tycoon is a simulation of the stock market, the aim of the game being to buy and sell a range of big-name shares, and (hopefully) make a killing in the process.
Wall Street Tycoon features a series of around twenty "missions", many of them based on real historical data, from the 1860s to the 1990s, taking in the big stock market crash of 1929 that kicked off the Great Depression and the oil crisis of the 1970s along the way.
You can indulge in a little day trading, buying and selling tech stocks on a minute by minute basis, or you can handle a balanced portfolio over a span of seventy years. You can even follow in the tracks of Nick Leeson and bankrupt yourself and your company on the futures market, or enjoy a little legally dubious "insider trading".
Generally your goal is merely to accumulate a certain amount of money in the time allocated, but you can also buy "personal assets" such as flashy sports cars and luxury boats if you feel the need to flaunt your wealth.
The dot.com Bubble
Perhaps the most interesting feature of the game though is the multiplayer. And no, we are not talking about deathmatch here.
Wall Street Tycoon allows literally hundreds of players to compete together over the internet, buying and selling stocks in real companies in real time, based on real prices from real stock markets around the world. Think you have what it takes to make a fortune investing in high powered dot.com shares? Now is your chance to prove it, and all without risking any of your hard earned cash. It brings a whole new spin to "massively multiplayer" gaming...
Wall Street Tycoon might look rather dull on the face of it, but there is something strangely compelling about stock trading, especially when you aren't risking loosing your house in the process. If the developers can pull it off, Wall Street Tycoon just might do for share trading what the Championship Manager series has done for football management.
Either way, we should know in a couple of weeks. Look for a full review here on EuroGamer in the near future.