A Train 9

[rpierce000]

I am not sure if this is the right forum, so.... moderators please move if appropriate!

I have just recieved my copy of A Train 9. As a long time A Train operator (3,7,8,9) I have to say this one is a bold step forward. They have added buses and trucks, road as well as rail creation, 200+ trains, power management (Trains and buildings now have to have electricity), so many buildings I cannot count them and two building expansion packs, a map editor and probably a lot more that my limited written Japanese does not pick up.

If you are in a situation where you cannot have a large layout, are a fan of the series or just plain love running trains I HEARTILY recommend everything but the price. The program will set you back almost $200 for everything. I bought mine, with only the map editor, for $100 off of Yahoo! Japan auctions. BT Trains offers a service to help you do that, but you are still in the $140 range.

You will also need a decent graphics setup. I am running a Nvidia 260 and it holds up OK, my wife's AMD 6850 is gorgeous. It does a great job of sharing the load over multiple cores and says that it will run on XP, Vista or 7. I am running 7 x64 on dual four core Xeons with 16GB of RAM so you probably want to test it on your machine. My wife is running a quad core Athlon with 8GB and 7x64 and it runs fine there as well.

If anyone has questions, feel free to ask, but I am on my first night of burrowing into it so I am just starting to see the depths. I think you could spend weeks on it and not get bored just finding FEATURES, and then you have the fun of building empires.

If you love trains and SimCity, here it is taken to an extreme that Sid Meier only dreams of...

[sedril]

Silly question, have they made an English version of A Train 9?

[keitaro]

NO

I looked and couldn't see anything about any plans to do so either.... :(

I only understand basic kanji so i can read about 5 words on the game HAH!

but yeah i would love to see it come out in english.

I bought 8 and it was all right. i have always wanted a new railway tycoon not that garbage railways one that sid did a while back.

If only one of the simulator developers would make a epic scale railroad tycoon game.

These days with dlc they could make a fair bit of money just releasing content packs with addidtional trains continents and city building packs.

I always liked the idea how the towns/citys would grow in response to the amount of freight and passenger services you would provide to them and that could be done much better on a more epic scale.

[Darklighter]

There will be a German version called "Bahn Gigant" (published by UIG): http://www.eurovideo.de/dvd-bluray,de,19,502243,derbahngigant,konsole-pc-game-spiel.html
The release date is tomorrow. 
However, this version will include "only" 50 different trains, while the Japanese version includes over 200. I guess, UIG will release an English version, too.

[Shashinka]

Move to platform 9

[Shashinka]

I do believe they released an English edition of A8 in the UK a few years ago. I did get a copy on here of A8, Jpn as well, but Windows 7 would not play it.

[disturbman]

A8 works very fine on my Windows7.

[disturbman]

I forgot to add, for those who can't get pass the error 12something when installing the AAA copyright drivers for A8, go here: http://www.tagesprotection.com/main.htm and download the TagesSetup for Windows 64 bits. And, voilà, problem solved!

[Shashinka]

Hmmm.... my system didn't seem to like that all too much. It just froze up my system.

[ospen]

They also have a Traditional Chinese version of A-Train 9 available at YesAsia.com. There are two versions:

- a USD28 version that comes with the complete game (http://www.yesasia.com/global/a-train-9-the-next-generation-dvd-version/1024804792-0-0-0-en/info.html)

- a USD37 version that in addition includes a strategy guide (http://www.yesasia.com/global/a-train-9-the-next-generation-da-ren-version-dvd-version/1024804787-0-0-0-en/info.html)

Graphically the game is gorgeous and a huge upgrade from previous versions. In terms of game-play, the logic behind the A-Train games have always been unique and quite different from the train games released in the US (like Railroad Tycoon). Here the emphasis is more on precise train timetables and much more gradual expansion than is typical in US games. Developing real estate used to be a more viable money-making exercise, but A-Train 9 shifts the emphasis more to making sure the trains themselves are profitable, which requires much attention to detail.

[monicarobalo@gmail.com]

HI, i have just bought A Train 9 in german ( der Bahn Gigant) for my husband, he loves trains.. it happens that we tried to install the game on his computer and also on mine. The installation went fine but when trying to start the game nothing happens. we just dont know what more to do, would you have any ideas? thank you