Railroad Tycoon

If the saying 'the old ones are always the best' rings true, then Railroad Tycoon must surely be one of the greatest strategy games ever made. In actual fact it is; or rather was.

Created by Sid Civilization Meier, Railroad originally appeared back in 1993. The amazing thing about it was that It was a game for trainspotters that actually managed to break the mould by appealing to everyone. What it offered was the chance to build an empire-spanning rail network to the envy of your competitors, and then eliminate them by buying shares in their respective companies. This Deluxe Edition (don't read too much into that) enables you to build 32 different types of trains all over the Americas, Europe and Africa, and run all sorts of goods all over the place. The original game didn't even sport VGA graphics, so you can thank this Deluxe version for at least providing something halfway decent on the eye. Anyway, dire graphics aside, if you missed Railroad Tycoon the first time around you have two choices to catch up: buy this for a fiver, or buy the sequel.