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[Moogie]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SimIsle:_Missions_in_the_Rainforest

Someone here must have played this Maxis game, I'm sure. This was the very first management game I ever played, back when I was a wee teen. Ahh, that boxart... so pretty. :3

It's markedly different from other citybuilders, as you need to hire 'agents' in order to build specific things. I forget the exact types, but I'm pretty sure there's biologists, ecologists, engineers and such to do different things for you. Resources are things like lumber and oil that require the proper facilities to refine.

It was sort of an edu-tainment title, with factsheets and videoclips within the game of the natural (and manmade) rainforest environments. But it wasn't done annoyingly. The gameplay was actually very fun, with lots of scenarios, and I think it had a random map generator (can't remember exactly) but it did have quite a few stock islands to play on. And besides the pre-set scenarios, you could also play in sandbox mode and do whatever you like.

There is exactly one video on Youtube for this game, so here it is. It's the best, briefest, blurriest example I can show of the gameplay. I might actually try recording something myself if I can get the game working again.

Edit: Also, I believe this game is freeware by now, so Googling it should result in several download locations. Uses DOSBox, I think.

[Toaster]

Don't worry, I played it quite a bit.

Yes, it did have a random map generator, but it pretty much just moved things around- I always seemed to find the same things.

I almost always picked the same set of people (I remember Bob, Ian, and Rick for some reason).  The trainer guy (D something I think) trained himself, then Rick the explorer, who went all damn over the island finding the cool stuff.  Meanwhile, the trainer went to every village and trained it up so I'd have more labor (and soon more villages).  When the explorer was mostly done, I'd start up tourism near the animal park.  I'd go from there depending on how industrialized I wanted to be that game.

[olemars]

I had this, it was one of the first CD-ROM games i got, probably still have the box and CD around somewhere. I remember it as particularly unforgiving. Gameplay is kinda like Tropico but without any dictatorial powers. It properly felt like a managerial game where you had limited influence over the game world and really struggled to make ends meet.

Pretty sure I never managed to fully complete a scenario.

[hemmingjay]

it was both, more accessible and entertaining than the first one from maxis I played. SimEarth. ugh. so much potential.

Back on topic, SimIsl was fun but I felt it was limited and after one afternoon I had done all ther was to do. Maybe I am wrong.

[Akura]

Played it, still might have a copy somewhere, but it might have been broken or something I could never figure out how to do anything and pushing every button I could find didn't do a thing.

[Charmander]

I remember this.

I also remember haemorrhaging money at doing absolutely anything.

[Moogie]

Yeah, pretty much all I can remember doing is building some logging camps and trying out different islands. I was probably way too young to get very far into it.

I'm trying to find a reliable download for the Win 95 version. The file on hotu.org is just a PDF manual for some reason.

[Bluerobin]

Yeah... I've tried playing it 2 or 3 times and can never figure out what the heck to do. I remember something similar to Akura where no matter what I did it didn't seem to really do anything.

[Empty]

I still own my cd.

I've also beat most of the scenario's.

I hated that you could not have every kind of specialist.

[Sowelu]

I also remember haemorrhaging money at doing absolutely anything.

This.

Basically your only hope was to use Dee Jarvis (I think) to train the living crap out of everyone, then click as fast as you could alternating between Rick spazzing out all over the jungle and Dee training up the villagers and then abducting them for secret experimentslumber mills and mines.  Anything more complicated, especially heavy industry and cities, tended to kill you dead.  And tourism, oh boy was that ever frustrating.  Especially because 1) you couldn't hardly see a grid and 2) when buildings upgraded, they needed more room, and woe to you if you accidentally built somewhere that you didn't know the airport would need.

[Toaster]

I never remember having many problems.  Starting heavy industry sucked because you had to buy heavy machinery before you could build damn near anything big, including the plant to build heavy machinery.  You could get auto production running nicely, but then the pollution would kill your tourism.

[Sowelu]

Hmm...I think I might have to dig my old CD back out and give this another shot.

I used to use the CD when playing Quake, since the music was nice and relaxing to gib people to.

I always loved the nature/industrialization screen that slowly panned its picture to the left to show your island's status.  I never figured out how far it would pan.  I think I'll try.

Maintaining cities to produce skilled workers, now THAT was a pain.  But it's possible that I was dumping too much money into them.  I tried to keep their medicine, schools, entertainment etc. all at the highest quality, which wasn't realistic.  From now on, just one city.

It was still annoying how unbalanced exploration was.  You wasted SO much time, but every once in a while, you would find something awesome like the lumber upgrades.  Oh yeah--and for some reason I remember that you had to find certain upgrades in a certain order.  Like, you couldn't find Captain Sprout (or whatever his name was) until you've found pretty much everything else.  I always wondered what the radius on finds was, and if they were randomized...I think I'll investigate that with more rigor, too.

[Paul]

Ha, I remember this one. I seem to recall building a gigantic beach resort with an airport and a port for boats and having tourists coming in in droves. All my hotels were on the beach, which gives you the extra site on the beach for entertainment. Then there were some jungle sites with roads going to them. I think those the explorer discovered and they were really good tourist spots.

Been ages since I played this one. I remember trying to get it going on a newer computer with DosBox but I had problems with the game freezing up unexpectedly and never solved it.