A-Train ( A列車で行こう , Ē Ressha de Ikō , lit. Take the A-Train ) is a series of business simulation video games developed and published by Japanese game developer Artdink in Japan. The first game in the series was published in 1985. The first release in the United States was Take the A-Train II , published in 1988 by the Seika Corporation under the title Railroad Empire . However, the most well known U.S. release is Take the A-Train III , published in 1992 by Maxis as simply A-Train . There is also the spin-off title C.E.O.
49-878: The first iteration of the A-Train series was released in December 1985 for the FM-7 , NEC PC-8801 , NEC PC-9801 , X1 Turbo , MZ-2500 , Famicom , and MSX2 . A Microsoft Windows port followed in April 2000. The second iteration of the A-Train series was released in July 1988 for the NEC PC-9801 and X68000 . In the US, it was released under the name Railroad Empire . Take the A-Train III (known internationally as A-Train )
98-541: A software patch which users of the original A-Train 9 can upgrade to. Version 2.0 includes all content from the two expansion packs intended for the original A-Train 9 plus several new buildings and trains, as well as several bug fixes. Three DLCs were released for The Train Giant starting on August 1, 2012, with "Shanghai". "Boston" and the "Elbe Estuary" were to follow but are impossible to find. "The Train Giant" can be purchased on eBay for about $ 10–15. The version with
147-625: A "3" on the cover contains the three DLCs. On June 29, 2014, a second new version, entitled A-Train Version 3.0: Railway Simulator was later released. This version was then released worldwide on October 10, 2014, via Steam , although due to licensing issues fewer real life trains are available from the Japanese version. On October 21, 2015, A-Train 9 Version 4.0: Japan Rail Simulator was released on Steam, supporting Windows XP, Vista, 7, 8.1 and 10. On September 6, 2018, A-Train Version 5.0: Final
196-483: A few kanji , the ability to have graphics appear on the default text screen, and several new commands such as BEEP , CONNECT , MON , SYMBOL , INTERVAL , MERGE , RANDOMIZE , SWAP , and TERM . There are also strings for TIME$ and DATE$ , which access a temporary built-in internal clock, though if the power is turned off, the time and date are lost. While F-Basic has commands that Color BASIC does not, most commands featured in both versions of
245-573: A gameplay perspective, both the FM Towns and the FM Towns Marty were very poor sellers in Japan. They were expensive and the custom hardware meant expandability was not as easy as with DOS/V ( IBM PC clones with Japanese DOS or Microsoft Windows ) systems. NEC 's PC98 series computers were also dominant in Japan when the FM Towns Marty was released, making it difficult to break out before
294-421: A monthly fee to access the game. The game is no longer available as of March 2012. Marketed as the 20th anniversary title for the A-Train series, it revives the "urban development" gameplay that had been missing since A-Train 5 . It was released in Japan on June 26, 2005, for Windows 2000 , XP and Vista . Several expansion packs were released for the game. Released by the mobile phone company au by KDDI on
343-526: A swifter CPU than the first, but this was not the case. It has also been speculated that the Marty 2 featured an Intel 486 CPU, but this was also discovered to be false. There is also the FM Towns Car Marty ( エフエムタウンズカーマーティー , Efu Emu Taunzu Kā Mātī ) for installation in automobiles . It included a built-in navigation system with audio and video guidance, and could also be detached from
392-560: Is a home computer created by Fujitsu . It was first released in 1982 and was sold in Japan and Spain . It is a stripped-down version of Fujitsu's earlier FM-8 computer, and during development it was referred to as the "FM-8 Jr.". Although it was designed to be a cut-down version of the FM-8 (with the FM-7 costing 126,000 yen , compared to 218,000 yen for the FM-8 ), most notably removing
441-568: Is also compatible with the said 64-bit versions. Two Japan-only building kits were released, the first on October 8, 2010, and the second on December 23, 2010. The Japan version also includes a 3D patch costing ¥1050 that can be played using 3D glasses , and the German version includes an unofficial patch that adds 200 trains to the game on top of the existing 11 trains. This also includes a digital manual featuring how-to-play instructions on urban growth, development and financial management, which are
490-953: Is also the first title published by Artdink under the A-Train name for the Japanese market. It was also released in Europe. The gameplay is similar to A-Train 7 , but it has a full 3D view that was previously used in A-Train The 21st Century. However, it comes with map editor as a standard feature. Custom maps can be shared through Xbox Live. Additional Xbox Live features includes leaderboards which contain "Total Capital", "Population" and "Time to 1 Trillion Yen" categories for each map. The Xbox Live features can be used with an Xbox Live Silver account. Artdink offered over 150 types of trains for sale in Xbox Live Marketplace , based on real-life Japanese trains. The game itself comes with
539-473: Is badly designed, poorly presented, overcomplicated and utterly tedious", giving it a score of just 2/10. Official Xbox 360 Magazine gave it a slightly better score of 3/10. However, they still called it "The most confusing train wreck of a game ever". Released on March 21, 2008, in Japan for Windows, the game was also released in Europe. The game was released on Steam worldwide on September 18, 2013. A-Train DS
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#1732779755305588-580: Is fundamentally the same connector as an Atari 2600 . The Marty's Run and Select buttons are the equivalent of pressing right and left, or up and down at the same time. A six-button controller from Fujitsu was available for use with Capcom 's Street Fighter II . Capcom also released an adapter for their CPS Fighter stick which made the stick compatible with the FM Towns/Marty as well as the Sharp X68000 . Despite having excellent hardware from
637-444: Is the first game in the series to make use of near-isometric dimetric projection to present the city, similar to Maxis's later SimCity 2000 . There are two types of transport that the player's company can take: passengers or building materials. The former is more likely to be profitable, but building materials allow the city to grow. Wherever the building materials are delivered, they can be taken and used to construct buildings for
686-524: Is the third game in the A-Train series. It was originally developed and published by Japanese game developer Artdink for Japan, and was later published by Maxis for the United States. It was originally released in December 1990 for the NEC PC-9801, FM Towns Marty , X68000 , and PC Engine (TurboGrafx-16). The US version was released in October 1992 on DOS and Amiga. Later, the Japanese version
735-694: The BREW platform in January 2006 and distributed by Hudson Soft , A-Train EZ is similar to A-Train in that it is also a service planning game. A-Train HX ( A列車で行こうHX , A Ressha de Ikou HX ) is a railroad simulation for the Xbox 360 . It was released on December 21, 2006, in Japan, supporting high definition graphics (720p resolution) and Xbox Live support for uploading and downloading maps and leaderboards. It
784-557: The PS2 , A-Train 2001 is an improvement over A-Train 6 . The game and its dependencies can be installed on the system's hard disk drive. Also, for the first time, people were featured in the game. Released on June 19, 2003, in Japan for Windows , this is essentially a rebadged PC version of A-Train 2001 . Released on the DoCoMo 504i/505i/506i/900 mobile phones as a service planning game and distributed by Hudson Soft . Players had to pay
833-626: The "Athena Project". There were several models of the computer: FM Towns Marty The FM Towns Marty is a home video game console released in 1993 by Fujitsu , exclusively for the Japanese market. It uses the AMD 386SX , a CPU that is internally 32-bit but with a 16-bit data bus . The console comes with a built-in CD-ROM drive and disk drive . It was based on the earlier FM Towns computer system Fujitsu had released in 1989. The Marty
882-585: The (expensive) bubble memory technology, the FM-7 was given a more advanced AY-3-8910 sound chip capable of three voice sound synthesis, leading to a strong uptake among the hobbyist computer market in Japan and making it a more popular system than the FM-8. The FM-7 primarily competed with the NEC PC-8801 and Sharp X1 series of computers in the early 1980s. It was succeeded by the FM-77 series of computers in 1984, which featured backwards compatibility with
931-459: The BIOS GUI. The Marty's disk drive does not support 1440 KiB or 720 KiB FAT-formatted 3.5" floppy disks. For a PC to be compatible with FM Towns Marty floppies it must have a disk drive, BIOS and OS that supports "3 Mode". There are also USB floppy drives that support "3 Mode". The Marty's IC Card slot is compatible with type 1 PCMCIA cards, including battery-backed SRAM cards (accessible from
980-560: The BIOS menu) that can be mapped to a drive letter and used as a small drive. Fujitsu also officially released a PCMCIA 2400 bit/s modem (FMM-CM301) for the FM Towns Marty. This modem was bundled with the special TCMarty that also came with a printer port. While it is widely believed that the IC Card slot can be used for RAM expansions, this is not correct. The controller connector is a DE-9 , referred to as an "Atari Type" in Japan because it
1029-511: The DOS/V invasion took control of the market. This was despite such revolutionary features as bootable CD-ROMs and a color GUI OS on the FM Towns PC, something that predated Microsoft 's Windows 95b bootable CD by seven years. Software today is rare and expensive due to the low production runs. Despite backwards compatibility with most older FM Towns PC games, compatibility issues plagued
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#17327797553051078-641: The FM-7. The FM-77 series was later succeeded by the 32-bit FM Towns in 1989. The FM-7 is based around the 6809 chip, which was also used in home computers such as the TRS-80 Color Computer and Dragon 32/64 , as well as several arcade games . The included "F-BASIC" is an enhanced version of the Color BASIC language used on the TRS-80 Color Computer. Changes include a different character set that includes katakana and
1127-819: The Japan-only console launch title release AIV: Evolution in December 1994 for the PS1 and AIV: Evolution Global (released under the title A-Train in North America), also for the PS1, and re-released in January 2007 for the PSP and PS3 and AIV Network$ (known as C.E.O. in North America) in 1995 for MS-DOS and Windows 3.1. Also released in North America was the " A Train Evolution Pack", which included
1176-582: The PlayStation version of AIV: Evolution Global , a PlayStation Mouse , an A Train mousepad , and a PlayStation memory card. On release, Famitsu PS scored the Japanese PlayStation version of AIV: Evolution a 27 out of 40. Five months later, Famitsu magazine's Reader Cross Review gave it a 9 out of 10, and the following week Famitsu scored it a 31 out of 40. The four reviewers of Electronic Gaming Monthly were divided about
1225-464: The PlayStation version of AIV: Evolution Global ; Andrew Baran and Mark Lefebvre described it as an addictive and pleasantly time-consuming simulation, while Mike Desmond and Sushi-X felt it to be dull compared to most simulation games, especially other Maxis titles. They scored it 28 out of 40 (average 7 out of 10). Like Desmond and Sushi-X, GamePro felt the game "just doesn't roll with the same FunFactor of other sim games." Next Generation said it
1274-526: The car and played at home. An optional IC Card for the FM Towns Car Marty allowed it to use VICS , and was subsequently sold with a video monitor. The Marty had only composite and S-Video output; no other video connectors are possible. As some FM Towns games were VGA -only, the Marty had a 15 kHz down-scan capability for displaying on a household TV screen. Floppy disks must be formatted 1232 KiB ( PC98 -style). This can be done from
1323-485: The carried-over core game components. A-Train 9 includes buses and trucks, grouped by distances they travel and the work they manage (e.g. intercity, local, heavy goods, etc.), power plants , Japanese castles and more authentic-looking Japanese buildings. On December 7, 2012, A-Train 9 Version 2.0: Professional Edition was released in Japan, supporting Windows XP, Vista, 7 and 8 . It is available in DVD format as well as
1372-454: The city. These start with houses, but eventually, as an area grows, roads, and shops and other buildings are built. These can provide extra revenue for a passenger service, but also allowing the city to develop and grow can be seen as a goal in itself. As well as the buildings built by the computer, in response to the materials being present, the player can construct their own buildings, such as ski resorts and hotels, and make profits from them if
1421-607: The conditions are right, and if these areas are populated enough. A.III. Map Construction , known internationally as A-Train Construction Set , is an editor that can change existing saved games, or to build landscapes from scratch. It comes with 6 sample maps. Maxis also published A-Train Construction Set with A-Train as a single package in Europe, without the Ocean Software label. Computer Gaming World ' s reviewer stated in 1992 that while he enjoyed
1470-579: The construction of a railroad in order to boost the city's mass transit system. The game was released to an exclusively Japanese market; with no release ever being attempted for the North American or European markets. The player must use the resources at hand to build a railroad connecting the two ends of a map in each scenario. A train can be controlled throughout the day (05:00–17:00) while building new tracks and stations. Nighttime activities (17:00–05:00) involve changing train schedules to better suit
1519-651: The copyright on the BASIC . The FM-7 was sold in Spain as the Secoinsa FM-7 . Secoinsa was a electronics supplier to Telefonica , the main Spanish telecom, and was eventually transformed into Fujitsu Spain. It retained an independent R&D department until Fujitsu's 1990 acquisition of ICL . Secoinsa adapted the FM-7 for the Spanish market and specifically for the Spanish government's push towards computers in school,
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1568-631: The financial and management aspects of A-Train , "many people will miss out on a fine program because of a steeply graded learning curve". The game was reviewed in 1992 in Dragon #187 by Hartley, Patricia, and Kirk Lesser in "The Role of Computers" column. The reviewers gave the game 4 out of 5 stars. In 1993 the game received a Codie award from the Software Publishers Association for Best Strategy Program. A-Train' s isometric, tile-based graphics and animated elements inspired
1617-511: The following trains designed by Artdink: AR3 (Commuter), AR4 (Express), AR5 (LimitedExpress), AR7 (LimitedExpress), ARX (LimitedExpress), U-Shape (Subway), DC4 (Cargo), EC6 (CargoExpress), 186Exp (SuperExpress), Linear (SuperExpress). Before the release of Taiwan version, publisher TTIME Technology held a paper train model contest for winning the game. Eurogamer reported that they liked the music in A-Train HX , but concluded that " A-Train HX
1666-484: The game to the United States. It was subsequently released by Limited Run Games on May 22, 2019. A-Train All Aboard! Tourism was released worldwide on March 12, 2021, for Nintendo Switch . Published by Artdink themselves, it was first announced on February 12, 2020, via Artdink's Twitter account as a "Switch version of A-Train", the latest game for Nintendo systems following the 3DS version. Following shortly after
1715-562: The game's announcement. Artdink revealed the new secretary character, designed by Yuji Himukai, best known for character design works for the Etrian Odyssey series, and also work as the character designer for this game. On October 28, 2020. It was revealed that the game's official Japanese title is A-Train Hajimaru Kankou Keikaku , and it will come out in 2021 in Japan. On January 6, 2021. The game's release date
1764-534: The language operate in exactly the same fashion. While the BASIC EDIT command works the same as on Color BASIC, the cursor position is important on the FM-7: there is a small keypad on the upper-right of the FM-7 with cursor-control keys (arrows, INSERT & DELETE), and wherever the user decides to position the cursor, it will move it there and affect whatever is underneath it. Both Microsoft and Fujitsu share
1813-539: The level if their funding goes into the red. There are 38 different trains available for the player to use in four categories. Commuters have high passenger capacities, suburban trains have generally slightly lower capacities but are faster, express trains have the lowest passenger capacities but are often the fastest, and freight trains, which haul cargo from industries which can be delivered into commercial and residential areas to boost growth. Released in May 2001 in Japan for
1862-438: The needs of the player's growing mass transportation hub. New developments will spring up around the tracks and stations. This permits the player to increase the amount of money that can earn; resulting in the increased ability to build railroad tracks and stations for the growing city. Five scenarios offer a tutorial mode for first-time players, an extremely hard scenario for veterans, and three more scenarios for players in between
1911-657: The soundtrack. Based on A-Train 3D , A-Train PC Classic was released in Japanese on Steam on December 14, 2016. On June 8, 2017, the English version was officially released. A-Train Express , a port of A-Train 9 with PlayStation VR support, was released in Japan for the PlayStation 4 on December 21, 2017. In January 2019, the game received a rating from ESRB signaling publisher Degica Games intent on bringing
1960-465: The two extremes in difficulty levels. Players can play using speeds that range from slow to normal to fast. Released in December 1993 for the NEC PC-9801, FM Towns Marty , Windows 3.1 and Windows 95 . It was later re-released on March 17, 2000, for Windows 95 and 98 under the title A-Train 4 15th Anniversary , and again on March 26, 2004, under the name A-Train 4 XP , this time including support for Windows 2000 and XP . Related versions include
2009-466: The visual style Maxis went on to adopt for Simcity 2000 in 1993. In 1994, PC Gamer UK named A-Train III the 46th best computer game of all time. The editors wrote, "Fascinating, absorbing and now quite cheap, A-Train is worth a place in any games collection—and don't be put off by the subject matter. It's brilliant fun." A Ressha de Ikō MD ( Ａ列車で行こうＭＤ , "MD A-Train") is a simulation game involving
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2058-486: Was backward-compatible with older FM Towns games. In 1994, a new version of the console called the FM Towns Marty 2 ( エフエムタウンズマーティー2 , Efu Emu Taunzu Mātī Tsū ) was released. It featured a darker gray shell and a lower price ( ¥ 66,000 or US$ 670) , but was otherwise identical to the first Marty. It was widely believed that the FM Towns Marty 2 would feature similar improvements to the FM Towns 2, which had
2107-529: Was "a quality management title. Unlikely to set the world aflame, however." Released in December 1996 in Japan for Windows 95 , this was the first A-Train game to use 3D graphics with a PowerVR graphics accelerator . It was re-released in December 1997, this time including support for the DirectX and Direct3D APIs for the Windows release, and at the same time saw its debut on the PS1 . The PS1 version
2156-443: Was later published in Europe during 2004. A-Train 6 features improved graphics over A-Train 5, as well as the ability to play the game entirely in the 3D view across six different regions, each with a task for the player to meet before progressing. The game also includes a train viewer, and the ability to replay completed levels with trains that have already been unlocked. The player starts each level with ¥10,000,000,000, and will fail
2205-509: Was re-released in April 2007 for the PSP and PS3 . Released in May 1999 in Japan for the PS1 , this was a re-imagining of the first game's setting and objectives, using the 3D engine of A5. A reworked version with an anime aesthetic was released on PSP in June 2006. Released in March 2000 in Japan for the PlayStation 2 as a launch title. The game sold over 1 million units in Japan. The game
2254-401: Was re-released in March 2000 for Windows 95 and 98 . Artdink ported the A-Train III along with the editor to Windows 95, and published both titles as a package as the 3rd ARTDINK BEST CHOICE title in Japan. The game puts players in command of a railway company. There are no rival companies; the player controls the only one in the city and the game is resultingly fairly open-ended. A-Train III
2303-481: Was released in Japan, supporting Windows 7, 8.1 and 10. No English version of the game has been released thus far. Originally planned for 2011, A-Train 3D was released in Japan on February 13, 2014, in North America on April 14, 2015, and in Europe on April 16, 2015, as A-Train 3D: City Simulator . It was published by Natsume Inc. for the Nintendo eShop on Nintendo 3DS . Nintendo eShop pre-orders also received
2352-510: Was released on April 23, 2009, in Japan for the Nintendo DS for 5500 yen. The game featuring touch screen controls and became the first handheld title in the series to have the 3D train view. A-Train 9 was released on February 11, 2010, in Japan, and on March 15, 2012, worldwide by UIG Entertainment under the names The Train Giant in English and Der Bahn Gigant in German. It is compatible with Windows XP , Vista , 7 and 10 , and
2401-540: Was revealed to be March 12, 2021. And it would support Japanese, English, Traditional / Simplified Chinese, and Korean language. On January 14, 2021. The game's official English website was opened. The game's official English title was revealed as A-Train All Aboard! Tourism. The game was also revealed to be a simultaneous worldwide release, with both physical and digital releases available in Japan, South Korea, Hong Kong, and Taiwan, and digital releases everywhere else on launch. FM-7 The FM-7 ("Fujitsu Micro 7")
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