RollerCoaster Tycoon 3 Photo Features

Atari, one of Australia's leading sources of interactive entertainment recently announced that its highly anticipated RollerCoaster Tycoon 3 game will include innovative new photo features and a full version of Microsoft Photo Story, which will enable players to tell the story of their park experience and share it with their friends.

In RollerCoaster Tycoon 3 players can create and share elements of their parks and roller coasters found in previous versions of the series like never before. In addition, owners of RollerCoaster Tycoon 3 will be able to create customised park guests, groups of their friends, fireworks shows and guest photos, as well as CoasterCam and park videos directly from the game. New scenery items called Photo Spots can be placed in a park and enable park guests, 'Peeps,' to pose for the camera. In addition, cameras can be placed directly on roller coasters to take shots of guests as they ride. These in-game photos are then easily transferred to the Photo Story software included on the RollerCoaster Tycoon 3 disk so that players can create a digital slideshow of their experience by adding music, narration and pan and zoom effects which can then be shared with friends and family via email, CD, VCD or posted online.

"Players sharing their coaster creations and their experience of the game with others has always been an important part of the RollerCoaster Tycoon franchise," said Martin Spiess, Senior Vice President of Marketing, Atari Europe. "By making use of the intuitive Photo Story software and the Windows XP environment, RollerCoaster Tycoon 3 players can share much more than their roller coasters, such as fireworks, Photo Stories and movies."

"Windows XP enables some of the best gaming innovations and makes it easy for anyone to enjoy great multimedia experiences," said Susan Kittleson, group product manager for Windows at Microsoft Corp. "Atari's RollerCoaster Tycoon 3 showcases this innovation by allowing game players to bring their creations to life with Photo Story."

RollerCoaster Tycoon 3 features stunning 3D graphics, a CoasterCam that lets players 'ride the rides,' a Fireworks MixMaster to create fireworks displays, dozens of new rides and themed attractions, a Peep Designer, VIPeeps, a Sandbox Mode, customisable music, day and night cycles, and the ability to save photos and movies of your park.

Photo Story lets users create fun and exciting digital slide shows from their pictures. With Photo Story, users can add motion effects, music, and narration, and save their experience as a digital slideshow that can be viewed with Windows Media Player 7 or higher, or other programs that support playback of Windows Media Video 9 files (WMV). Because Photo Story uses advanced Window Media compression, Photo Stories are small enough to easily share via e-mail and post to the web.

RollerCoaster Tycoon 3 is being developed by Frontier Developments, Ltd. and has a European in-store date of 5 November. Additional details and a downloadable demo of the game are available at www.atari.com.au