Introduction

 

NE has seen several high prestige contests over the years - Pro Tour, Micro Madness, Grand Tour, and foremost the triennial H2H. Winning any of these is a high honour, but getting a spotlight… That’s the highest honour there is. The ambition of achieving a spotlight winning park has incentivised many great parkmaking careers. Spotlight parks will always be remembered and celebrated, or at least talked about. No other two decade plus old parks continue to enjoy as much attention as the spotlights that graced the site in the early years of the millennium.

 

“A Spotlight is the crown jewel of awards at New Element. Win a spotlight and be cemented in history becoming the envy of the entire community.”

 

The status it comes with has been a constant throughout NE’s history, but many other aspects of the spotlight have changed, either organically or by design. An institution this important to NE culture comes with historical context well known and obscure. There are many opinions in the community surrounding the arbitrary factors that go into electing a spotlight. There is a wealth of data to analyse that goes into this and other facets. One bit of data explains why now is a good time to delve into all of this. With J K’s Pixar Animation Studios, the NE database now holds exactly 100 spotlights - and that is worth a geek’s celebration!

 

The number ‘100’ sounds like an objective truth, beyond debate, but you will see that the actual number of spotlights may be higher or lower than that, depending on your definition - an unexpected example of arbitrariness. I will get into that later. To prevent this essay from becoming an incoherent mess, I will organize the history of the spotlight in eras. First we will look at the spotlight’s Pre-NE origins. Next we will move on to the early NE years and the gigantic amount of spotlights it produced, and two shorter eras that I call the Transition Era and the Modern Era. Lastly, we will look at the Open Era - the longest and our current era. The boundaries for each era have been arbitrarily chosen by me, and reflect changes in the spotlight paradigm primarily, but also changes in how RCT is played. Aside from the chronological chapters, there will be an extra chapter that goes into spotlight equivalents in neighbouring communities, as well as a general data overview of the past 25 years.

 

Table of contents

 

Chapter		Years
1	Pre-NE Era: Danimation	1999-2002
2	Early Classical Era	2002-2004
3	Late Classical Era	2004-2007
4	Transition Era	2007-2010
5	Early Modern Era	2010-2016
6	Revival Era	2016-2020
7	Present Era	2020-present
8	Statistical analysis	n/a
9	Other communities     RCPro     RCT2.com / RCTSpace	2001-2003 2003-2007

Pre-NE Era: Danimation (1999-2002)

 

 

The roots of the NE Spotlight can be traced back to a website called Danimation - the community that moulded NE when Iris broke away and started NE back in 2002, copying the Spotlight concept and name. There were also other websites with similar concepts, such as Thrillnetwork with their 'Premier Parks', and RCTInc with a member-voted 'People-Spotlight' or 'P-spot'. This is the internet before fancy submission forms and file uploads. Webspace was scarce and expensive, and most people did not have the means to host files such as savegames. For sharing parks, you had to rely on website you could e-mail your park to in hopes of it being good enough to be released, of which Danimation was the most NE-like in its competitive nature.

 

Dan, the site’s administrator, regularly handpicked parks that were a notch above the others, to put in the spotlight. Between 1999 and 2001, the number of Danimation Spotlights grew to dozens, admittedly of varying quality. The early ones sometimes still show how the game was rooted in scenario play, such as Greg Moore’s Golden Age Gardens or Scott’s Middleton’s Mega Park. Golden Age Gardens won an award for 'Best Fantasy Park' in the 2000 Danimation Awards. Note that all parks that weren't recreations of real parks were treated as 'fantasy'.

 

 

Interestingly, in the same awards, someone won an award for best innovation with 'ghost train windows'. It's hard to think of this as an invention to credit a single person with, but it shows the impact that LL would have on the game, and how rudimentary building techniques were at the time. Creating large logos and mosaics out of quarter tile flowers was about as custom as you could make your theming, which for that reason is an often seen feature of these parks that has since completely disappeared from the game.

 

Golden Age Gardens by Greg Moore

Middleton's Mega Park by Scott

 

The parks grew to be more conceptual and well thought out, and players started figuring out how to make RCT parks resemble real parks - something Mala clearly did not pursue, as is evident from both Mountain Beach and Cydonia City - precursors to his legendary later NE work. A notably conceptual park is Zoink’s White Star Park, a Titanic themed map including a giant Titanic recreation, probably the largest structure in any RCT park at the time. Players were clearly competing against each other in making larger and wilder parks. Parks that consisted of multiple full size maps were no exception.

 

Mountain Beach by Mala

White Star Park by Zoinks

 

On the other side of the spectrum are the early realism parks. Obviously, with RCT being the first true theme park sandbox game, people started to recreate real world parks, with sometimes enough quality to be featured on Danimation. Coasterco's Alton Towers was in fact one of the very first spotlights. Hersheypark by Greg Reese as well as a recreation of the freshly opened Disney's California Adventure by aero21 followed this trend. These parks now serve as time machines not only to the early days of RCT, but also to how the real parks were experienced back then. Some players started applying real world logic to original creations as well, introducing implied in-universe chronologies amont other things. Sacoasterfreak's Crystal Horizons is an example of this, as is aero21's earlier park Cinescape. There were also parks like CPRulez's Lake Perry, which is notably modest, standing out among all the Danimation spotlights of which most tried to outdo each other with extremities.

 

Lake Perry by CPRulez	Lost Worlds by colby
Aero's Cinescape by aero21	Canterbury Falls by Schuessler

 

Fast forward - since the launch of NE5 in 2013, it has been possible to retroactively award NE accolades to certain older parks. A few Danimation Spotlights have received this treatment, not always very successfully... Surprisingly, a long time and many meta shifts after they were made, the accolade panel still found some of them worthy of a Silver accolade. Tyler’s Orange Valley from 2001 certainly holds up, but it's the previously mentioned Crystal Horizons from the same year that stands out the most. These parks clearly indicate in which way the game was heading. Perhaps they are still held in high regard because it was parks like these that NE was moulded around.

 

Orange Valley by Tyler

Crystal Horizons by sacoasterfreak

 

The second to last Danimation spotlight was Mala’s Cydonia City, hidden behind a prank spotlight called FOO. We had a prank spotlight on NE more than a decade later, but that one was revoked after a day and the joke wore off. FOO, however, has retained its status, and is therefore arguable the worst spotlight ever. Cydonia City however, remains a fun park.

 

Research that went into this post likely uncovered what was the last official Danimation spotlight, using scraps of information missed on previous internet archeological expeditions: it's Corkscrewed's Hampton Park Mega Resort, which lives up to its name with three maps full of content. The 'Legendary Worlds' map easily could've been a spotlight on its own...

 

The Danimation story doesn’t stop here completely, but it gets all the more fuzzy and obscure. Starting in September '01, spotlights would be determined by members on a weekly basis, replacing irregular staff picks. This is not as well documented, and the timeline after the first three weeks becomes very unclear. An incomplete list of so called 'Danimation Forum Spotlights' can be compiled however, and there are some impressive parks here, such as Altamont Medieval Gardens by Natelox and Butterfinger’s Monte Vista.

 

Realistic parks were becoming a more common sight these days, spotlight winning parks were aesthetically driven and well thought out, the community had come a long way since the days of scenario-esque mega parks, though Buster still managed to grab a win with FFF, their latest crazy alliteration park. But generally the parks were more down to earth; we see our first examples of park outskirts and backstage areas being included. Aero21's two parks and Shiloh Town by vTd and Jesse are good examples of the progress made in this regard. Shiloh Town, by the way, is a dubious inclusion on this list - there is conflicting information regarding this park. One source names it a spotlight, another names it merely a runner-up. In any case, it's a very good park.

 

Disney's California Adventure by aero21	Shiloh Town by Jesse and vTd
Altamont Medieval Gardens by natelox	Monte Vista by Butterfinger

 

The Forum Spotlights were popular, considering each week had 10-20 different parks up for voting, and hundreds of people cast their votes. The change was not universally met with enthusiasm, as is evident from the eloquent criticism from member Dipper-86. Despite the rebuke from Crazzeh Timme, perhaps Dipper-86 was right, and the Forum Spotlights cheapened the value of spotlights to fizzle out in early 2002... This is all speculation - it was forum drama that spelled the end of Danimation. Around the same time, NE emerged as a leading website in the wider RCT community, and it would follow in the footsteps of Danimation, with many familiar names returning, and the legendary status of the spotlight park firmly established in the wider RCT community.

 

Butterfinger wrote:		RRP
It wasn’t long until I had entered many different competitions, such as the “Thrillnetwork Premier Parks”, the “Danimation Spotlight”, and the RCTinc “Peoples Spotlight (P-Spot)”. I pulled out victorious in some of these, but it wasn’t until the establishment of New Element that I realized what I would have to commit myself to in order to become a “master”.		If you need to reach me, my AIM screen name is rctrealpark and my MSN screen name is spotlight@hotmail.com

 

Below you will find two lists of Danimation spotlights. First the regular spotlights, and then the forum spotlights. Some parks we currently don't have the save file for, they have been missing for a long time.

 

Date	Park	Creator	Game	Score
1999	Willow Lake Amusement Park	unknown	AA/CF
1999-12-03	Busch Gardens Millenium	Pawn	AA/CF
1999	Sherwood Forest	Liquid Crash	AA/CF
1999-12-05	Golden Age Gardens	Greg Moore	AA/CF
1999-12	4 Seasons Park	Waffles	AA/CF
1999-12-25	Alton Towers	Coasterco	AA/CF
2000-01-08	Oasis Thrill Park	David Reynoso	AA/CF
2000-01-06	Mechanical Evil	HorrorFK	AA/CF
2000-01-29	Virginia Falls	Polar	AA/CF
2000-02-05	Meadowlands Trolley Park	Greg Moore	AA/CF
2000	Lost Worlds	colby	AA/CF
2000-03-20	Pyramid Port	Colm	AA/CF
2000-03-30	Paradise Island	Vulcan91	AA/CF
2000-03-05	Middleton's Mega Park	Scott	AA/CF
2002-03	Adventure World	Sirspud	AA/CF
2000-04-02	Faultline Amusement Park	Lee Stoddard	AA/CF
2000-04-01	Silver Lake	sacoasterfreak	AA/CF
2000-04-30	Revelations	Last Arch Angel	AA/CF
2000-05-10	Sierra Falls	colby	AA/CF
2000-05-20	Legends: Timeless Tales	sacoasterfreak	AA/CF	56.25%
2000-07-06	Land of Song and Dance	Greg Moore	AA/CF
2000-07-31	Hersheypark	Greg Reese	AA/CF
2000-08-07	Adventures Into Imagination	DanMack	AA/CF
2000-08-22	Generations Park	Joe Holland & Jordan	AA/CF
2000-08-30	Danimation Nation	Cyrax	AA/CF
2000-09-12	Lands of Adventure	Schuessler	AA/CF	43.75%
2000-10-09	Mountain Town	Last Arch Angel	LL
2000-11-12	Lake Perry	CPRulez	LL
2000-11-30	Lost Continent	Glitchey	LL
2000-11-30	Mountain Beach	Mala	LL
2000-12-17	Highlands Amusement Park	Michael Carson	LL
2001-01-06	White Star Park	zoinks	LL
2001-01-17	Canterbury Falls	Schuessler	LL	55.00%
2001-02-03	Crystal Horizons	sacoasterfreak	LL	69.38%
2001-02-16	Dungeons, Dragons & Drops	Buster	LL
2001-03-05	Sleepy Woods	Justin Glaser	LL
2001-04-03	Rich Uncle Pennybag's Estate	Corkscrewed	LL	56.88%
2001-04-26	Orange Valley	Tyler	LL	60.63%
2001-05-30	Sunshine Gardens	x-sector	LL	65.00%
2001-06-30	Wild Wild West	Fatha'	LL	61.88%
2001-08-25	Salem Swamp	Squiggy	LL
2001-09-02	FOO	Danimator	LL
2001-09-02	Cydonia City	Mala	LL
2001-10-23	Hampton Park Mega Resort	Corkscrewed	LL

 

The dates below are especially unaccurate, based on time stamps on the original files signifying when the park was finished rather than concrete information on when the park was released. Such 'estimated dates' are in cursive. They give a rough indication of the timeline of parks.

 

Date	Park	Creator	Game	Notes
2001-09-11	Shiloh Town	Jesse & vTd	LL
2001-09-23	Arnos Grove	Roomie	LL
2001-09-28	Disney Extreme	x-sector	LL
2001-09-29	Six Flags Emerald Coast	Last Arch Angel	LL
2001-10-04	Fields of Forgotten Fears	Buster	LL	MISSING
2001-10-11	Aero's Cinescape	aero21	LL
2001-10-20	Colorado Springs Park	Elrocko	LL
2001-10-20	Old Forest Lake	Mike Robbins	LL	MISSING
2001-11-20	Pinnacle Point	Corkscrewed	LL
2001-12-02	Lake Nadia Theme Park	x-sector	LL
2001-12-18	Cartoon NetWorld	x-sector	LL
2001/2002	Florida DisneySea	Testudo	LL	MISSING
2001/2002	Disney's California Adventure	aero21	LL
2001/2002	Whitepond Garden	Roomie	LL	MISSING
2001	SAP Klabautermann Bay	Blind Guardian	LL
2002-01-07	Cedar Creek Amusement Park	Coaster Ed	LL
2002-01-09	The Westcoast	natelox	LL
2002-01-10	Snowflake Summit	Corkscrewed	LL
2002-02-22	Altamont Medieval Gardens	natelox	LL
2002-04-22	Knightsbridge Wonderland	Roomie & Beagle	LL
2002-05-02	Pine Ridge	Butterfinger	LL
2002-06-08	Monte Vista	Butterfinger	LL

Early Classical Era (2002-2004)

 

It’s spring 2002. Iris had assembled a group of skilled like-minded players around him and launched his own community called New Element. The best way to market a new community is by hosting in-demand content. And thus, within days, the first NE spotlight emerged: Universal's Islands Xtreme by Nevis. The general idea going forward was that players could submit their park to Iris by e-mail, and every month the best parks would be released on the site, like how it was done in Danimation after their more productive first years. The best of them were released as a Spotlight, the others as ‘Runner-Ups’, and sometimes even ‘Mega Runner-Up’ (later called ‘Blockbuster’).

 

The site had dedicated pages for each category, consisting of a chronologically descending list of big park logos. Clicking on the logo would bring you to the park's page, with screenshots, a nice write-up, and a list of major rides. Getting such a nice page and being featured on an exclusive list gave a lot of weight to the spotlight category.

 

 

In practice, iris often deviated from this monthly pattern, with extra spotlights and co-spotlights and whatnot. As a result, 2002 saw a whopping total of 18 spotlights over a period of 8 months. The number somehow grew to 21 later. During the 2002 NE Awards, for some reason held in October 2002, the practice of elevating the Best Runner-Up to Spotlight was established, with the first elevated spotlight being Natelox’s Land of the Villain. Similarly, the 2003 NE Awards (held in… July 2003) resulted in Coaster Ed’s Egyptopia being elevated. Egyptopia was released in November 2002 as a Runner-Up to RRP’s Busch Gardens Lichfield. Interestingly, it was a regular Runner-Up that won the award, and not for example the Mega Runner-Up from the same round/month: aero21’s Disneyland Mid-America. You wouldn’t believe it, but Disneyland Mid-America won the award in June 2004 - that makes three spotlights from one round.

 

Universal's Islands Xtreme by Nevis

Egyptopia by Coaster Ed

 

The regular Runner-Up getting elevated before the Mega Runner-Up is easily explained when you realise that the spotlight/runner-up/mega runner-up accolades were awarded by iris personally, while the awards were community voted. Thus this is an early example of the discrepancy between the top-down leadership approach and the democratic approach. Over the years the discrepancies (whenever controversial) would stack up and lead to a revision of how accolades were determined, but that’s getting ahead of things. Iris often asked for second opinions with some of his trusted men such as Corkscrewed, but it could not always prevent controversy.

 

Another elevated spotlight was mantis’s Age of Empires - not a regular submission that was retroactively elevated, but the winner of the NE Invitational - a 2003 contest with an underwhelming number of three entries, though all three of high quality.

 

Age of Empires by mantis

Tropico Cove by Fatha'

 

When looking at this era it is noteworthy how productive some of these players were, which resulted in several players stacking up multiple spotlights. Busch Gardens San Simeon was Fatha’s fourth, after Tropico Cove, Tropico Horizons and Disney’s Movie Magic. The true champion of this era must be natelox however, with no less five spotlights (including an elevated Land of the Villain). All were Disney parks, of which Disney’s Forgotten Kingdom is the most notable one, except for the last: The Aegean, an atmospheric portrayal of several cities on the Mediterranean. RRP’s duo of spotlights is also famous: Busch Gardens Lichfield, and his later masterpiece Sea World Atlanta. X-sector arguably won four spotlights, but two of them were group parks. Nevis must also be mentioned here; his Universal’s Island Xtreme was the first NE spotlight, and his acclaimed follow-up Atlantis: The Lost Empire cemented itself as one of the most stylistically distinct spotlights ever.

 

Disney's Movie Magic by Fatha'	Disney's Forgotten Kingdom by natelox
Sea World Atlanta by RRP	Atlantis: The Lost Empire by Nevis
The Aegean by natelox	Audrix Towers by x-sector and posix (area by posix)

 

Other notable LL parks from single winners include Foozycoaster’s Visions Amusement Park, a park featuring only nostalgic ride and wooden roller coasters. Schuessler’s Islands of Adventure:  Hollywood was an exercise in minimalism that looks like a leftover from the Danimation days - which is not meant as a slight. Cataclysm was an actual leftover from that time, conceived but left unfinished by Blind Guardian. Coaster Ed saw something in it and finished it, with the final park being a high concept apocalyptic urban park that’s certainly one of a kind.

 

 

Not all spotlights were remarkable; iris's (and his army of guest builders) own Troy's Ancient Resort as well as Corkscrewed's Meadowbrooke Falls Thrill Park were met with relatively lukewarm reviews, and are hardly talked about anymore. Even more obscure are Panther's Elsinore Falls Theme Park and Evil WME's The Lost Era Resort, which is vastly outclassed by WME's later work like Candlelight Times. This is due to iris still taking parks into consideration for spotlight in 'rounds', picking the best of the bunch to win. No spotlight wins without reason though, and all parks contain at least some areas of excellence, but it became evident that the audience was growing more critical - perhaps spoiled. Your park had to stand out in quality and originality, and also be consistent across the map!

 

Islands of Adventure by Schuessler	Cataclysm by Blind Guardian and Coaster Ed
Troy's Ancient Resort by iris	Meadowbrooke Falls Thrill Park by Corkscrewed
Raindrop Riviera by posix	Universal's Outrage by x-sector
Harakiri's Islands of Adventure by bokti	Aurora's Bay by PyroPenguin

 

Clearly, 2002 and 2003 were dominated by heaps of LL parks. 2004 also started out that way with four LL spotlights in a row. However, RCT2 as a serious competitor to LL had emerged and would quickly push LL into the background, marking a soft end of an era. The 2004 LL spotlights were, however, all very advanced. X-sector and posix teamed up to create Audrix Towers, natelox won his fifth spotlight with The Aegean, mantis released the long awaited WOMB - Walkman of my Brain, and both x-sector and mantis won a second spotlight with City of Dreams, on which Toon was a third collaborator. City of Dreams was originally part of an NE Group Park with two maps; a utopian map, and a nightmare map - the nightmare map only got finished a decade and a half later. WOMB may stand out the most among these four, famously featuring a womb-shaped center lake, but it is also famous for simply being a stunning park.

 

Fun fact: The Aegean, City of Dreams and Disney's Movie Magic were all released on the same day, though their pages were hidden as part of an easter egg hunt. What an Easter...

 

City of Dreams by x-sector, Toon and mantis (area by x-sector)

Walkman of my Brain by mantis

 

Classic RCT2 was in its infancy. The early RCT2 spotlights and highly regarded runner-ups usually looked a bit rudimentary and clumsy. The first RCT2 spotlight was Aero’s Wormwood by aero21. Released half a year after the launch of the game, and already featuring some early custom scenery, making it technically a little more advanced than the second, Butterfinger’s Euroscape, a park notorious for utilising RCT2’s maximum map size of 255x255 - four times as large as a maximally sized LL map - and even came with a partially filled second map, blowing any other existing multi-map park out of the water. The third, Disney’s Tilted Acres by Meretrix, controversially used objects from the newly released expansion Wacky Worlds, resulting in not everyone being able to open the park in game… The fourth was sacoasterfreak’s Rivers of Babylon - possibly the most discussed park of all time, and arguably the first mature RCT2 park, built by a veteran of the game in his first NE submission since his multi-spotlight Danimation career. 

 

Aero's Wormwood by aero21	Euroscape by Butterfinger
Rivers of Babylon by sacoasterfreak	Tilted Acres by Meretrix

 

Note: in the table below, scores were retroactively determined many years after their submission.

Date	Park	Creator	Game	Score
2002-03-18	Universal's Island Xtreme	Nevis	LL	82.50%
2002-03-28	Disney's Beautiful World	natelox	LL	76.25%
2002-04-29	Cinescape East	aero21	LL	76.25%
2002-05-08	Visions Amusement Park	Foozycoaster	LL	78.13%
2002-06-13	California DisneySea	x-sector	LL	77.22%
2002-06-29	Atlantis: The Lost Empire	Nevis	LL	80.63%
2002-07-09	Florida DisneySea	vTd	LL	76.88%
2002-07-19	Elsinore Falls Theme Park	Panther	LL	67.50%
2002-07-26	Tropico Cove	Fatha'	LL	81.88%
2002-07-27	Disney Dreams	PyroPenguin	LL	78.13%
2002-08-02	Land of the Villain (elevated)	natelox	LL	73.75%
2002-08-19	Snow Drop	Roomie	LL	75.63%
2002-09-16	Islands of Adventure Hollywood	Schuessler	LL	84.38%
2002-10-06	Mount Sinister	Mala	LL	81.11%
2002-10-20	Troy's Ancient Resort	iris	LL	78.13%
2002-10-24	Disney's Discovery Island	natelox	LL	83.64%
2002-11-12	Busch Gardens Lichfield	RRP	LL	83.75%
2002-11-18	egypTopia (elevated)	Coaster Ed	LL	80.63%
2002-11-22	Aurora's Bay	PyroPenguin	LL	77.50%
2002-11-18	Disneyland Mid-America (elevated)	aero21	LL	75.00%
2002-12-10	Universal's Caribbean Seas Resort	Butterfinger	LL	78.13%
2002-12-25	Tropico Horizons	Fatha'	LL	82.50%
2003-01-10	Meadowbrooke Falls Thrill Park	Corkscrewed	LL	75.00%
2003-02-10	Harakiri's Islands of Adventure	bokti	LL	80.00%
2003-03-08	Lost Era Resort	Evil WME	LL	73.75%
2003-04-12	Universal's Outrage	x-sector	LL	83.13%
2003-05-11	Aero's Wormwood	aero21	RCT2	70.63%
2003-06-17	Arnos Springs Resort	Roomie	LL	74.38%
2003-07-03	Euroscape	Butterfinger	RCT2	77.50%
2003-07-18	Sea World Atlanta	RRP	LL	86.25%
2003-08-02	Raindrop Riviera	posix	LL	76.67%
2003-08-22	Disney's Forgotten Kingdom	natelox	LL	88.75%
2003-09-07	Cataclysm	Blind Guardian, Coaster Ed	LL	76.88%
2003-09-07	Disney's Tilted Acres	Meretrix	RCT2	82.50%
2003-10-23	DreamWorks Great Australia	Ozone	LL	82.50%
2003-11-17	Rivers of Babylon	sacoasterfreak	RCT2	91.25%
2003-12-03	Age of Empires (elevated)	mantis	LL	81.11%
2004-02-02	Audrix Towers	x-sector, posix	LL	80.63%
2004-03-19	Walkman Of My Brain	mantis	LL	87.50%
2004-04-13	The Aegean	natelox	LL	83.75%
2004-04-13	City of Dreams	mantis, Toon, x-sector	LL	86.25%
2004-04-13	Disney's Movie Magic	Fatha'	LL	87.50%

Late Classical Era (2004-2007)

 

With the release of Corkscrewed DisneySea Spain the dominance of LL came to an abrupt end; RCT2 had reached adolescence. This was Cork’s second spotlight, and he was now the third player to win a spotlight in both games, after aero21 and Butterfinger. It was still the LL legends producing the best RCT2 parks, with the exception of Meretrix, who after Cork also got his second spotlight with Disney’s Phantasia - the third Disney spotlight in a row.

 

When the real world amusement park industry is shaken up by a groundbreaking new ride or refreshingly designed park or area, or if the real world continues to impress enthusiasts, it usually doesn’t take long before this is reflected in RCT creations. Like it or not, Disney’s cultural influence is everywhere. And when Tokyo DisneySea opened in Japan in 2001 it set a new gold standard for themed amusement parks. Some Disney RCT parks followed their real life counterpart rather closely, such as x-sector’s, vTd’s and Corkscrewed’s interpretations of DisneySea. Parks like Disney’s Movie Magic or Disney’s Forgotten Kingdom were examples of original work under the Disney umbrella, and some parks were hardly recognisable as Disney parks, such as Land of the Villain. So many Disney Parks were built during these years that some people were starting to complain about Disney fatigue.

 

DisneySEA Spain by Corkscrewed

Tokyo DisneySea

 

Another incredibly influential theme park event for RCT, was the opening of Universal’s Islands of Adventure in 1999. It was noticeable for going all out on fantastical theming in several distinct zones neatly arranged around a center lake, creating the illusion of different ‘islands’. Whether intentional or not, many parks followed this park layout of pushing theme zones in corners around a central lake, that ‘four corners center lake’ become an acknowledged and lovingly mocked cliche. Other features of Islands of Adventure that found their way into RCT parks were the launched B&M lift hill as found on the Incredible Hulk coaster, for example Eversio Lemuria in Rivers of Babylon. Dueling Dragons, the impressive dueling B&M inverts of the park, spawned many RCT2 interpretations, such as the duelers in RRP’s Busch Gardens Lichfield (2002), sacoasterfreak’s Legends West (2001; strangely never submitted for spotlight on Danimation), or artist’s Islands of Enchantment (2005).

 

Dueling Dragons in Islands of Adventure

Islands of Enchantment by artist

 

The string of RCT2 spotlights that followed mostly followed the same pattern of being variants of the four corners center lake format, as well as being semi-realism parks that put strong aesthetics first. Custom scenery had now completely taken over the object selections, allowing for highly customised looks and unprecedented levels of refinement and detail. Most RCT2 spotlights during this time came in twos. Turtle’s Bijou Magique (2004) was but a rehearsal for Isole Calabria (2005), often remembered as one of the best parks in the genre. Similarly, artist built a series of similar parks at a scarily high pace around the same time. He missed the mark with Busch Gardens Europe, but quickly followed it up with Ports of Magia (built in a month) which narrowly won, and, three months later, Islands of Enchantment, a truly convincing spotlight that like Isole Calabria has become an icon of its time.

 

A more wildly colourful and dense variant of the style as built by hot new talent JKay resulted in two spotlights as well: Rocky Mountain Mystique and the candy-themed Divinity Ridge - the former of which is vastly more popular than the latter. Bookending either side of this collection of RCT2 spotlights is Kumba’s set of spotlights. 2005’s Bayfront Parc as an elevated spotlight, and 2007’s Dimensions: Realms of Creation, again a more convincing evolution of a less popular first win. The only RCT2 spotlight winner from this time that didn’t get a second was X250. The Masterpiece achieved spotlight status as an elevated spotlight after winning an award, and a second instant spotlight looked like a matter of time as he started to advertise Bays of Tropica on the forum. Sadly, it never left the Advertising District.

 

Isole Calabria by Turtle	Rocky Mountain Mystique
Ports of Magia by artist	Dimensions: Realms of Creation by Kumba

 

2005 still saw two LL spotlights. One is notorious for being unpronounceable (Baiht Oashyr Thel Valloo), another for being one of the greatest parks the site had ever seen: Busch Gardens San Simeon by Fatha’ - his long awaited masterpiece and fourth spotlight. Its status as one of the greatest of all time is hardly controversial. It can be considered a swan song to the era of classic LL. Interestingly, BGSS was originally supposed to be an RCT2 park, but Fatha’ gave up when he misplaced his RCT2 disc for a prolonged amount of time. Fortunately for us Fatha’ still gave us some excellent RCT2 work years later.

 

Baiht Oashyr Thel Valloo by Twisted

Busch Gardens San Simeon by Fatha'

 

Bayfront Parc and The Masterpiece were only spotlights because of their placement in the (respectively) 2005 and 2006 NE Awards.. Like their predecessors, their spotlight elevation was poorly executed, if at all, by iris and co. Iris faded away from the site in 2006, and gave way to the Kumba era of NE. Kumba had his own way of handling the site, but generally, the questioning of top-down leadership style remained a very prominent topic of debate on the site. It was not an easy time for NE, and Kumba tried all sorts of things to make the site stay popular and relevant. In February 2007, Kumba invented clickbait with the ‘4 SPOTLIGHTS’ headline that turned out to be a combination of the four elevated spotlights that never made it on the spotlight page, sometimes over 4 years after the original release: Disneyland Mid-America, Age of Empires, Bayfront Parc, and The Masterpiece. A nice gesture, better late than never, but at the same time a nothingburger of an announcement.

 

Why was Kumba so desperate to create buzz on the site? One look at the number of spotlights per year tells the story. In 2002 and 2003 it still hit double digits, but the influx of high quality parks slowed down due to increasing complexity of parks, with the monthly format abandoned, and in 2006, there was only one spotlight in the form of Divinity Ridge, and even that one was arguably not truly a spotlight-worthy park going off of the its reception on the forum. After Divinity Ridge, it took a full calendar year until the next spotlight: Kumba’s own Dimensions: Realms of Creation. The ‘4 SPOTLIGHTS’ announcement came in the middle of by far the most serious spotlight drought to date. And when that inevitable new spotlight finally hit - Dimensions - there was some doubt over an admin picking his own park as a spotlight. Something that has happened before, when Iris recruited a lot of help to create the double mapper Troy’s Ancient Resort. Anyway, Kumba’s reign lasted another year, until posix, geewhzz, and a few others took over, with major plans to overhaul the site and the way we treat parks, ending the classical era of NE.

 

Date	Park	Creator	Game	Score
2004-06-11	DisneySEA Spain	Corkscrewed	RCT2	68.13%
2004-07-27	Disney's Phantasia	Meretrix	RCT2	77.50%
2004-11-11	Bijou Magique	Turtle	RCT2	77.50%
2005-02-07	Bayfront Parc (elevated)	Kumba	RCT2	76.88%
2005-03-23	Ports of Magia	artist	RCT2	78.75%
2005-06-07	Baiht Oashyr Vel Thalloo	Twisted	LL	83.75%
2005-06-29	Islands of Enchantment	artist	RCT2	83.13%
2005-07-13	The Masterpiece (elevated)	X250	RCT2	83.75%
2005-07-23	Isole Calabria	Turtle	RCT2	90.63%
2005-10-27	Rocky Mountain Mystique	JKay	RCT2	86.88%
2005-12-25	Busch Gardens San Simeon	Fatha'	LL	92.50%
2006-05-29	Divinity Ridge	JKay	RCT2	76.88%
2007-05-28	Dimensions: Realms of Creation	Kumba	RCT2	87.50%

Transition Era (2007-2010)

 

The next spotlight after Dimensions was Watkins Woods Amusement Park by Cedarpoint6. Hyperrealism was already on the rise, especially since a handful of H2H4 parks started pushing boundaries in this direction, but Watkins was the first time a park like this achieved spotlight status. It was not a four corners center lake park, and it was not a Disney park, or any real chain at all. It had a rich but non-standard line-up including a cleverly hacked X-Car coaster, reflective of recent real world coaster innovations. The park had many details that before were often omitted from parks, such as accurate transfer tracks, splash guards, backstage areas, and most notably, fully detailed interiors. Not for dark ride interiors, but for storage rooms, bathroom stalls, shop inventories, and all the mundane details that remind us of the real world. Watkins Woods marked the end of the semi-realism era, and the start of the hyperrealism era. Among fans of the former, it did not always resonate. But it inspired an entire new generation of players whose minds were blown with this demonstration of how far you can take realism in this game. This was the last spotlight to be added to the site before the big redesign - the long-awaited third version of NE; cleverly named NE3.

 

 

Website aside, the next spotlight ignored the abrupt transition that Cedarpoint6's park posed - J K’s Spellbrook Shores was an echo of the semi-realistic parks that came before it. RCTNW’s Marriott’s Marine World was notably a realistic park, but it did not go as far as Watkins, more resembling earlier realistic parks. We got one more DisneySea by Highball, a few years after a Disneyland creation of his landed in the Super Runner-Up category.

 

Watkins Woods Amusement Park by Cedarpoint6

Marriott's Marine World by RCTNW

 

DisneySea was the first spotlight posted on the site by the new admin team headed by posix and geewhzz. After they gained control of the site, all running aspects of the site were put under scrutiny, including the accolade decision method. They went through a few iterations of a democratic system incorporating the members who had access to the ‘backstage’ section of the site, mostly former parkmakers and a few random trustees numbering almost eighty. Finding that most of them were inactive and could not be relied upon for voting in polls, the admins instead began setting up the accolade panel. Initially the panel only served to decide which accolades to award to parks. In August 2008, posix shared with the community the new ‘Release Paradigm’ - the accolade panel as we know it.

 

From the announcement:

The basic difference is that the accolade decision making is now using a score system. Upon receiving a submission, we post it as a poll inside the panel where each panelist is asked to vote on a 0-20 scale. When enough votes are gathered, we close the poll and calculate the final score for the submission by throwing out the lowest and the highest score given and taking the mean of the resulting scores.

 

Submissions for the spotlight category required a 115x115 map size to be eligible, as well a a minimum score of 14 on the 0-20 accolade scale, and a 60% majority in a yes/no vote. Super Runner-Ups (or ‘Blockbusters’) were no longer ‘almost spotlights, but simply parks that scored in a specific way, now named Gold. Regular Runner-Ups became Silver. Bronze was an entirely new category.

 

The first park to win in the new system was eyeamthu’s Magic Realms Resort, showing us yet another flavour of realism in a rather unique style. 2008 ended with a spectacular batch of Christmas releases, including Loopy’s Silver Valley Theme Park, the first LL spotlight in over three years, disproving the claim that LL had died.

 

In the summer of 2009, Zippos’ Wacky World of Wonders by Xophe hit the site. Its release was something the community definitely looked forward to, but hardly anyone expected the park to have this much of an impact. With a score of 17.92 it set the record for highest scoring park for a while to come, and it showed further evolution in the realism genre among spotlight parks. To date, Zippo's is probably one of the most 'fun' spotlights, not taking itself as seriously with on-brand trash cans in chain parks or realistic fire escape routes, without sacrificing the sense of realism. A wacky wonder indeed.

 

In October, the accolade system received another update. The 0-20 voting scale became a 0-100% scale, the minimum threshold for spotlight raised from 14 (or 70%) to 80%, and the yes/no threshold got moved up from 60% to 70%. Parks that were previously eligible and received multiple yes votes, such as egg_head's Indigo Hills and Ozone's Brighton Glen, would not be up for spotlight voting in the future.

 

Magic Realms Resort by eyeamthu1	Zippo's Wacky World of Wonders by Xophe
DisneySea by Highball	Silver Valley Theme Park by Loopy

 

It was nice to get a steady stream of spotlights under stable leadership again, indicating that NE had reached calmer waters. A new NE needed a new website, which arrived in the summer of 2010, with the release of a new spotlight…

 

Note: in the table below, the italised accolade scores for the spotlights up to DisneySea were retroactively determined many years after their submission.

Date	Park	Creator	Game	Score
2007-07-02	Watkins Woods Amusement Park	Cedarpoint6	RCT2	86.88%
2007-09-04	Spellbrook Shore	J K	RCT2	79.38%
2008-03-20	Marriott's Marine World	RCTNW	RCT2	75.00%
2008-07-30	DisneySea	Highball	RCT2	83.13%
2008-09-07	Magic Realms Resort	eyeamthu1	RCT2	85.45%
2008-12-25	Silver Valley Theme Park	Loopy	LL	85.00%
2009-08-19	Zippo's Wacky World of Wonders	Xophe	RCT2	89.62%

Early Modern Era (2010-2016)

 

NE4 was when the new admins could really implement their vision for the community. Most notably, it introduced the NE database. Instead of individually hosted parks with download links on their respective pages, NE now had an excel-like database in which parks could be filtered and sorted on all kinds of data, including accolade panel scores. NE4 also introduced a Hall of Fame for parkmakers, using a points system. Points could be earned by winning accolades or contests, and spotlights were a major contributor to one’s points. The NE database did mean the end for the classic logo-based spotlight page, and the Hall of Fame replaced the parkmaker system. The change was exciting, but somewhat bittersweet. A change all could agree on was brilliant was the park submission form and the completely streamlined and integrated release process backstage, including nifty voting infrastructure for the panel.

 

NE4’s celebratory release was Six Frags’ Europa Park World Showcase (EPWS). Indeed inspired by Europe Park, but expanded with many non-European countries. Six Frags hit the game’s object limit way too early into the building process, thanks to the now very rare 200x200 map size and the level of detail that was becoming the standard, prompting him to come up with some very creative solutions to drag the park to the finish line, albeit in a relatively undercooked state. Due to the long and consistent advertising in the years prior it was a highly anticipated and well received park despite the eventual flaws. The next spotlight was Liampie’s Legacies Theme Park - Europe. Its coasters were mostly regarded as not good enough, but more than any of its predecessors did it have geographically accurate and detailed architecture. Like EPWS, Liampie was struggling with the object limit, fortunately late enough in the process to not affect the park too much. 2010’s third spotlight was a big one again, Cedarpoint6’s Six Flags Carolina. The next step after Watkins Woods, this was again an evolution in raw but also clean realistic parkmaking. And again - a spotlight that struggled to make it to the finish line due to the object limit. Despite this, Six Flags Carolina took over from Zippo’s as the highest scoring spotlight with 91.54% - the first time a submission broke the 90% barrier!

 

Europa Park World Showcase by Six Frags

Legacies Themepark Europe by Liampie

 

2011 had a nice diverse set of spotlights. J K’s Dreamport was another massively hyped park with an object limit struggle that broke the accolade score record, with a whopping 93.08%. It would be the last traditional semi-realistic park for quite a while. Six Flags Santa Fe by robbie92 was another evolution for realistic parkmaking, and the first proper display of skill by robbie92, who had been the hottest new thing since around H2H5. The weirdly cut map shape revealed object limit struggled. The level of detail in parks kept going up, and the object limit struggle was just an inevitable fact of life now. 2011 ended with Through the Ages, a complete throwback to an earlier time… Jusmith was a straggler in the LL scene, born a generation too late. He didn’t finish his park, but the ever present and incredibly productive Roomie took over and finished it. The third spotlight with Roomie’s name on it! After all the 90% plus bangers, it was nice to get a ‘normal’ spotlight again, with a modest 81.54% score.

 

Six Flags Carolina by Cedarpoint6	Six Flags Santa Fe by robbie92
Dreamport by J K	Through the Ages by jusmith and Roomie

 

The community was changing. The era of players being a lot of high school students with lots of spare time was ending, and the time required to build a park kept increasing. More detail, more hacks, more objects, and more distractions such as H2H6 in 2012. Long thought impossible or very difficult, streaming become more of a thing, on platforms such as Twitch (and later Google Hangouts). An exciting upcoming park was Pacificoaster’s Starpointe, and he started streaming it often, with live praise and feedback from the spectators. Before streaming, there was often a lot of secrecy surrounding in progress parks. Showing everything could ruin the anticipation and hype. However, it turned out that streaming and spilling all the beans could have even an even more positive effect on a park’s reception, as Starpointe already became the gold standard for atmospheric hyper realism when it hit the site in the summer of 2013, after a long spotlight drought. Needless to say it took the panel record with a 94.62% score.

 

NE had moved on to the fifth iteration on the site with the release of Starpointe, and the lack of a front page and decreased prominence of new accolades further troubled the spotlight culture. There were only very few players who managed to take all the hurdles necessary to complete a park, and win spotlight with it. Startpointe was 2013’s only spotlight, 2014 only saw Airtime’s Thorpe Park, and 2015 was again spotlight-less. The tide turned in 2016. After battling the object limit for years, robbie92’s Busch Gardens Asia surfaced. Like Startpointe, it was regarded as the best in-progress park ever by many in the years leading up to this, thanks to many memorable streaming sessions. The park was rough around some of the edges, but the hype train could not be stopped, and Busch Gardens Asia shattered all records with a 98.13% score. Though undeniably one of the most important and influential parks of all time, there has been some agreement that the score was a bit too high considering the unfinishedness on display in some parts of the park.

 

Starpointe by Pacificoaster

Busch Gardens Asia by robbie92

 

Date	Park	Creator	Game	Score
2010-07-08	Europa Park World Showcase	Six Frags	RCT2	88.00%
2010-08-20	Legacies Themepark - Europe	Liampie	RCT2	83.46%
2010-09-14	Six Flags Carolina	Cedarpoint6	RCT2	91.54%
2011-02-25	Dreamport	J K	RCT2	93.08%
2011-05-27	Six Flags Santa Fe	robbie92	RCT2	90.00%
2011-06-24	Through the Ages	jusmith & Roomie	LL	81.54%
2013-09-30	Starpointe	Pacificoaster	RCT2	94.62%
2014-03-16	Thorpe Park	Airtime	RCT2	90.00%
2016-01-05	Busch Gardens Asia	robbie92	RCT2	98.13%

Revival Era (2016-2020)

 

Busch Gardens Asia opened the floodgates, but it was the upcoming OpenRCT that truly changed the course of the community. OpenRCT offered a much more streamlined building process, that made building in RCT more attractive again, slowly drawing more people back to the game. Secondly, NE at this time was pretty much the only RCT website still active or even existing at all from the old days, but new communities with new user bases emerged. The RCT subreddit r/rct, typically more oriented at scenario play and clickbait content, sometimes fed talented new players to NE, with different perspectives and building traditions.

 

Playing without custom scenery objects was becoming more popular, and there were even some new talented LL players producing traditional looking parks, such as alex, Poke and csw. Of this trio only alex managed to reach spotlight height - twice in one year even. First Luna Park was released, a park with a historical setting and unique aesthetic. Later in the year he followed it up with Discovery Bay, a park that felt like the LL spotlights from fifteen years earlier, though rich with new tricks and ideas.

 

Luna Park by alex

Discovery Bay by alex

 

In the RCT2 department, Pacificoaster-disciple G Force managed to break through the spotlight barrier after an earlier hotly contested miss (Westwinds) with G Force’s Worlds of Fun. Out of nowhere, newcomer Lagom surprised the community with a very impressive recreation of Liseberg. NE went from years of drought and struggles to the biggest spotlight harvest since 2005! 2017 was even more impressive, with seven (!) spotlights in addition to many near-misses. Lagom shared another Scandinavian recreation, this time of Gröna Lund. Liampie added himself to the short list of dual game spotlight winners with Giari Palms Theme Park, a park built with the intention of resembling old LL spotlights. Steve also built a throwback park with Veteris Shores, more resembling RCT from the semi-realistic days of artist, Turtle and X250.

 

Worlds of Fun by G Force	Gröna Lund by Lagom
Giari Palms Theme Park by Liampie	Veteris Shores by Steve

 

Last year, alex was the first person to win two spotlights in one year since artist in 2005. This happened again in 2017 but with Xeccah (formerly known as Shotguns? or ‘shogo’). Blue Oak Amusement Park was a notable breakthrough for the NCSO movement, it proved that NCSO had become a very viable way of producing high quality parks. Xeccah built another park with custom scenery, Coors Park, showing her high productivity and range, as well as admirable dedication to detail.

 

Blue Oak Amusement Park by Xeccah

Coors East by Xeccah

 

Other spotlights were bigshootergill’s Mario Kart: All-Cup Tour, a unique spotlight for its theme and focus on go kart tracks, and Riverland by Fisch, the latter being the highest scoring park since Busch Gardens Asia. Riverland combined state of the art hyper realism with extensive super dense theming as seen in the real world Phantasialand, appealing to realism and semi-realism lovers alike. Realism had become almost synonymous with unthemed or intentionally raw parkmaking, prompting the term ‘dirty American realism’, but Riverland showed another way, catering to all kinds of players in the community. On another note, Riverland was realised partially with help from many players in multiplayer sessions. Enabled by OpenRCT, hosting your park on a multiplayer server was the next evolution after streaming.

 

Mario Kart: All-Cup Tour by bigshootergill

Riverland by Fisch

 

Now that everyone had dumped their solo parks on the site in the two years prior, the community had space for a very successful H2H in 2018. Few large solo parks made it to the site, and only Liampie’s Seaquarium Curaçao made it as a spotlight. A new trend of hyper realism was emerging. Relatively generic parks with anonymous settings became more and more geographically anchored, often in non-western settings, such as the Caribbean in this case. Last year’s Riverland and the twin Lagom parks were previous examples, and during H2H8 we got realistic parks set in China and Brazil, among others. In 2019, Luna Park Adelaide by Stoksy fit this trend. Whereas back in the day a city or country name in the title of a park hardly meant anything (Sea World Atlanta, Dreamworks Great Australia), a park called Luna Park Adelaide would actually visibly and accurate feature Adelaide.

 

Seaquarium Curaçao by Liampie

Luna Park Adelaide by Stoksy

 

Meanwhile, G Force was breaking away from his Pacificoaster roots, establishing himself as a champion of ‘dirty American realism’. The game was becoming more textured, and it made a tired playing style more interesting again. His Southwinds won him his second spotlight. Coors East, Xeccah’s third spotlight, falls in the same category, though also having more geographic anchoring with some exceptionally well crafted but mundane surroundings. 2019 had two more realistic spotlights. Royr’s Vespucci Beach, a maximalist map with hardly any theme park content, resembling a part of Los Angeles as portrayed in Grand Theft Auto V is an outlier due to its content. Coasterbill’s Emeralde Pointe is an outlier due to the style and its process. Not following any meta trends, Coasterbill built an enormous map full of spectacular coasters, combating the object limit like it was 2014, going to unprecedented lengths to preserve object slots. The compound objects Bill made for his park divided the community. On the one hand, the edgy naming and repetitiveness it resulted in alienated some. On the other hand, the dedication and inventiveness yielded a lot of admiration that surely helped him to get a round 89% score.

 

Southwinds by G Force

Emerald Pointe by Coasterbill

 

2020 was a bit more quiet again, with In:Cities winning his first spotlight with Sea World Barcelona, and alex winning his third spotlight, this time in RCT2, but without custom scenery: Ancient Worlds. With 92.50% and raving reviews, Ancient Worlds was another breakthrough for the now popular NCSO movement. It’s been called the closest thing to Rivers of Babylon we’ve had since Rivers of Babylon, both because of the focus on ancient civilizations, and the exceptional macro vision that alex realised. Its popularity exceeded NE, and it graced the OpenRCT title menu for a while to come. 2020 was otherwise a weird year, with a pandemic wreaking havoc on the world.

 

Ancient Worlds by alex

Sea World Barcelona by In:Cities

 

Date	Park	Creator	Game	Score
2016-03-16	Liseberg	Lagom	LL	85.00%
2016-04-28	Luna Park	alex	RCT2	89.38%
2016-08-17	G Force's Worlds of Fun	G Force	RCT2	84.38%
2016-11-19	Discovery Bay	alex	LL	91.88%
2017-06-27	Mario Kart: All-Cup Tour	bigshootergill	RCT2	85.00%
2017-08-07	Gröna Lund	Lagom	RCT2	93.13%
2017-09-16	Blue Oak Amusement Park	Xeccah	RCT2	85.00%
2017-11-21	Giari Palms Theme Park	Liampie	LL	82.50%
2017-12-09	Coors Park	Xeccah	RCT2	85.63%
2017-12-25	Veteris Shores	Steve	RCT2	84.38%
2017-12-31	Riverland	Fisch	RCT2	94.50%
2018-11-30	Seaquarium Curaçao	Liampie	RCT2	85.00%
2019-03-10	Coors East	Xeccah	RCT2	87.50%
2019-08-13	LunaPark Adelaide	Stoksy	RCT2	87.50%
2019-10-04	Southwinds	G Force	RCT2	83.00%
2019-10-17	Emerald Pointe	Coasterbill	RCT2	89.00%
2019-10-22	Pacific Ocean Park Vespucci Beach	Royr	RCT2	90.50%
2020-03-29	SeaWorld Barcelona	In:Cities	RCT2	86.00%
2020-04-05	Ancient Worlds	alex	RCT2	92.50%

Current Era (2020-present)

 

The abrupt change that occurred in the real world is not directly reflected in spotlight output, but the game itself was changing. NCSO had become almost as popular as building with custom scenery, and 2019 and 2020’s Grand Tour contest helped the crunch aesthetic to take hold on NE. Lockdowns, lay-offs and health problems caused many people to spend a lot of time at home, finding new hobbies or rediscovering old ones, and thus from 2020 onwards, NE saw an increase in returning old players.

 

Storybrook Glen was the first post-COVID spotlight, somehow almost a year after Ancient Worlds. It was almost entirely pure NCSO, and notably, it was a group park, the first true group park since City of Dreams (at that one only had three players). Compared to Ancient Worlds it was a more progressive map, with a lot of OpenRCT-enabled trickery. Nin, Pacificoaster, WhosLeon and Steve were the biggest contributors with a combined 72% share. Most NCSO work was restricted to smaller maps, so despite the popularity, this was a rare event. Two years later the next NCSO spotlight landed, alex’s sequel to Ancient Worlds: Age of Sail. It was another traditional four corners center lake park, but bigger, better and denser than his previous park. It’s unlikely that any park would ever break Busch Gardens Asia’s accolade score record, but Age of Sail came scarily close with 97%. It was the highest spotlight score since Ancient World’s 92%. Another example of traditional parkmaker was Cocoa’s DisneySea (2021), a leftover from last decade’s ‘revivaLL’ period. It’s not unthinkable that it will be the last LL spotlight ever, but how nice to end on such a high note? Also more traditional in its approach was bigshootergill’s The Conquests of Quinlan Quinto - just a colourful semi-realistic map as an echo of for example JKay’s Rocky Mountain Mystique.

 

Storybrook Glen by nin, Pacificoaster, WhosLeon, Steve, and others	Age of Sail by alex
The Conquests of Quinlan Quinto by bigshootergill	Cocoa's DisneySea by Cocoa

 

Other spotlights that demonstrated the earlier mentioned geographically accurate realism trends were Cedarpoint6’s Washuzan Rainbow Summit, and G Force’s Mahoning Gardens. The former, CP6’s third spotlight, portrays a heavily neglected park in Japan. The latter is set in the American Midwest in the late 80s, featuring mostly historical ride types. It showed how G Force had completely broken away from his Cedar Fair/Pacificoaster roots, with a mature and refined parkmaking style that balanced visual clarity with raw textures. I both cases… Crunch had arrived in the hyperrealism scene. A first time winner that also illustrates this is pants' DisneyEarth Vancouver.

 

Early crunch innovators were FK+Coastermind and hydroportal, but the king of crunch appeared out of nowhere, sneaking in through the backdoor as a replacement in H2H9. A N D R E W's rise to stardom was incredibly fast, and his coronation was when Belle Isle was released. The advertisement screens were initially very good, but as A N D R E W kept revising his work, updating it to include the latest innovations in crunch and curve technology, until the entire park was beyond what anyone else had ever put together. Belle Isle has the closest to crushing Busch Garden Asia's panel record, scoring an uncontroversial 97.50%. It's as realistic as any other park out there, but it doesn't alienate players that are purely aesthetics-driven, featuring several unique and well made coasters, and marvelous architecture that make the park live up to its new. The park is still relatively fresh, but in the time since it's become clear that we're living in the post-Belle Isle era.

 

DisneyEarth Vancouver by pants	Mahoning Gardens by G Force
Washuzan Rainbow Park by Cedarpoint6	Belle Isle by A N D R E W

 

This era also featured many breakthroughs by players that were hovering in the sub-parkmaker tier for a long time. BelgianGuy and Jappy finally won after many misses, with respectively Thrill Point and Laguna Aventura. Ottersalad proved his worth with Otter’s Magic Kingdom, and Jene made an equally fairytale-like but IP-free Porto Encanto.

 

Thrill Point by BelgianGuy	Laguna Aventura by Jappy
Otter's Magic Kingdom by ottersalad	Porto Encanto by Jene

 

Lastly, we come to the topic of returning players. The early 2020s saw surprise appearances by players such as Magnus, Levis, Turtle and Ride6, and increased activity by old timers such as Steve, Kumba and Cedarpoint6, but the most notable comeback must be J K’s. After H2H6 we didn’t hear from him at all for nearly a decade. He quickly shook off the rust, adapted to modern building techniques, and started working on his third spotlight. J K spent his decade away from NE traveling, and it showed in his park: The Lonely Planet. The park made use of OpenRCT’s increased object limits, for it was enormous as well as dense. His ambition to win two spotlights in one year failed, though he quickly made a lot of progresson his follow-up, Pixar Animation Studios. A year and a half later than intended, Pixar hit the scene. Scoring 96.50%, there was no doubt that this was worth the wait, as well as a park worthy of being the 100th direct spotlight. Note that this is his fourth, putting him in the very elite group of natelox, Fatha’ and alex.

 

The Lonely Planet J K

Pixar Animation Studios by J K

 

This brings us to the present, in which another spotlight has been added to the list when much of this piece was already written. A true sign of the times, as Bluetiful_Monday is the first player to bring 'DKSO' to the highest tier of NE parks. Relevations of Stonehenge sets itself apart from all other spotlights due to its atypical workbench restricted to scenery from the default game and the expansions, and custom colourable versions of said scenery, a style established in the Deurklink community. It has become a significantly sized genre in the game, and it was only a matter of time until this happened. Revelations is also a notable park because it's a full on fantasy park, floating in space like no spotlight park before it.

 

It is yet unclear what direction the game will take after this… Perhaps OpenRCT will introduce new features that will make players build differently, and perhaps NE and the concepts of Spotlights will change with its recently installed new admin line-up… Only time will tell.

 

Date	Park	Creator	Game	Score
2021-02-28	Storybrook Glen	various	RCT2	89.50%
2021-03-11	Washuzan Park Rainbow Summit	Cedarpoint6	RCT2	92.50%
2021-04-08	The Conquests of Quinlan Quinto	bigshootergill	RCT2	84.00%
2021-04-22	Cocoa's DisneySea	Cocoa	LL	88.75%
2022-05-10	DisneyEarth Vancouver	pants	RCT2	87.00%
2022-12-25	Mahoning Gardens	G Force	RCT2	88.50%
2023-02-25	The Lonely Planet	J K	RCT2	89.50%
2023-05-19	Thrill Point	BelgianGuy	RCT2	86.50%
2023-08-04	Laguna Adventura	Jappy	RCT2	83.50%
2023-12-25	Age of Sail	alex	RCT2	97.00%
2024-11-02	Belle Isle	A N D R E W	RCT2	97.50%
2024-02-24	Otter's Magic Kingdom	ottersalad	RCT2	83.50%
2024-03-26	Porto Encanto	Jene	RCT2	82.00%
2025-07-11	Pixar Animation Studios	J K	RCT2	96.50%
2025-09-01	Revelations of Stonehenge	Bluetiful_Monday	RCT2	85.00%

Statistical Analysis

 

How many spotlights does that make? 96? 100? 102? No more words, it's time to let some numbers to speak. There's a few metrics that we can use to quantitatively describe and analyse the spotlight phenomenon. Panel scores are an obvious starting point, since these numbers are instantly available on the site. 

 

Scores

 

To keep the statistics pure, the ranking of highest and lowest scores only include contemporary panel scores, not pre-panel parks that got retroactively scored. Also note that the lowest scoring parks are still outstanding pieces of work.

 

Highest Panel Scores				Lowest Panel Scores
1	Busch Gardens Asia	98.13%		1	Through the Ages	81.54%
2	Belle Isle	97.50%		2	Porto Encanto	82.00%
3	Age of Sail	97.00%		3	Giari Palms Theme Park	82.50%
4	Pixar Animation Studios	96.50%		4	Southwinds	83.00%
5	Starpointe	94.62%		5	Legacies Theme Park - Europe	83.46%
6	Riverland	94.50%		6	Otter's Magic Kingdom	83.50%
7	Gröna Lund	93.13%		6	Laguna Adventura	83.50%
8	Dreamport	93.08%		8	The Conquests of Quinlan Quinto	84.00%
9	Ancient Worlds	92.50%		9	G Force's Worlds of Fun	84.38%
9	Washuzan Rainbow Summit	92.50%		9	Veteris Shores	84.38%

 

For the highest panel scores, the exclusion of pre-panel parks hardly makes a difference. Only Busch Gardens San Simeon would make the top ten, joining Ancient Worlds and Washuzan Rainbow Summit in joint 9th place. The highest scoring post-panel LL park would be Discovery Bay with a score of 91.88%.

 

However, it is still interesting to compare pre-panel parks among themselves. It is an indication of how these old parks are perceived in modern times. What parks have aged the best, and what parks have fallen out of favour most?

 

Highest Panel Scores				Lowest Panel Scores
1	Busch Gardens San Simeon	92.50%		1	Elsinore Falls Theme Park	67.50%
2	Rivers of Babylon	91.25%		2	DisneySEA Spain	68.13%
3	Isole Calabria	90.63%		3	Aero's Wormwood	70.63%
4	Disney's Forgotten Kingdom	88.75%		4	Lost Era Resort	73.75%
5	Dimensions: Realms of Creation	87.50%		5	Land of the Villain	73.75%
5	Walkman Of My Brain	87.50%		6	Arnos Springs Resort	74.38%
7	Watkins Woods Amusement Park	86.88%		7	Marriott's Marine World	75.00%
7	Rocky Mountain Mystique	86.88%		7	Meadowbrooke Falls Thrill Park	75.00%
9	Sea World Atlanta	86.25%		7	Disneyland Mid-America	75.00%
10	Islands of Adventure Hollywood	84.38%		10	Snow Drop	75.63%

 

Sometimes, a park wins spotlight just by the skin of its teeth... As kind as the numbers are to some, it is equally harsh to the parks that fall on the other side of the cut-off point. Passing the 80% score threshold is easier than getting the required 70% yes vote, and that one is so black and white that a park's fate often comes down on a single panelist's decision. The panelist knows this, so the decision should be made under pressure as well... What parks have come the closest to winning, just barely missing the mark?

 

Since this is a statistical analysis, for the list below, we will only look at post-panel parks. The selection includes all parks that missed out despite convincing at least half the panel.

 

Date	Park	Creator	Game	Score	Yes
2010-12-14	Hyatt's Ocean Adventures	RCTNW	RCT2	81.54%	60.00%
2011-03-31	Hyatt's Northwest Adventures	RCTNW	RCT2	84.23%	60.00%
2012-08-05	Disney's American Waterfront	Pacificoaster	RCT2	92.50%	50.00%
2013-02-08	The Escapist Experience	Liampie	LL	80.63%	60.00%
2015-09-13	Archipelago	Poke	LL	81.25%	50.00%
2015-12-26	Westwinds	G Force	RCT2	83.13%	50.00%
2016-04-07	Baker Lake Amusement Park	Coupon	RCT2	86.25%	60.00%
2020-03-11	The Good Earth	csw	LL	83.13%	60.00%
2020-03-14	Six Flags Worlds of Discovery	Pacificoaster, nin & Steve	RCT2	84.50%	66.67%
2020-07-01	Disney's Glacier Cove	StormRunnerFan	RCT2	84.50%	58.33%
2020-10-31	Timber Valley Amusement Park	BelgianGuy	RCT2	83.50%	58.33%
2024-04-21	Washington State Fair	roygbiv	RCT2	84.50%	66.67%
2025-02-10	Lake of Lost Worlds	FredD	RCT2	82.50%	66.67%
2025-04-13	Leafy Lake	Pacificoaster, SWAGTITTIES, Mahdezalg & mamarillas	RCT2	88.00%	66.67%

 

Hyatt's Ocean Adventures and Hyatt's Northwest Adventures needed two more yes votes, but such close shaves were not as prevalent before, and it was especially bitter considering the threshold had been moved up in late 2009 and the fact that it happened twice in a row. Baker Lake Amusement Park was the highest scoring large scale park to not win spotlight for a long time, until Leafy Lake stretched the limit some more. Recent super close calls were FredD's Lake of Lost Worlds, roygbiv's Washington State Fair, and the still controversial Six Flags Worlds of Discovery by Pacificoaster, nin and Steve. Speaking of Pacificoaster... Disney's American Waterfront, a 60x60 H2H park, managed to get surprisingly close to spotlight status with 50% yes votes. The park not winning is still named as the decisive precedent for later H2H parks not getting spotlight either. Supporters of spotlights being of any size lament the score, but it was a victory for the spotlight size purists.

 

Six Flags Worlds of Discovery by Pacificoaster, nin and Steve

The Good Earth by csw

 

NE could've had a few more LL spotlights, but unfortunately for the statistics, from the mid 10's LL renaissance trio, only alex managed to reach spotlights heights, with csw and Poke missing the mark by one and two yes votes respectively... Liampie's Escapist Experience almost became the lowest scoring spotlight, but again, a single vote got in the way.

 

The Escapist Experience demonstrates that the accolade score can be seen as different from the yes/no spotlight vote. It's hard to verbalize what that spotlight factor is, and every panelist and non-panelist has their own view. However, to further demonstrate the difference between the two scores, here is a selection of parks that got a considerable number of yes votes, despite the score threshold not being met.

 

Date	Park	Creator	Game	Score	Yes
2009-01-23	Indigo Hills	egg_head & RCTMajesty	RCT2	75.77%	26.67%
2009-07-26	Brighton Glen	Ozone	LL	78.46%	46.67%
2010-08-15	Mysterium Adventures	StormRunnerFan	RCT2	71.15%	20.00%
2011-04-13	Chronicles of Arransia	Metropole	RCT2	77.69%	33.33%
2012-03-28	Violet Gardens	prodigy	RCT2	79.23%	40.00%
2014-06-24	Kidron Park	RCT2Day	RCT2	78.13%	40.00%
2019-12-25	Bethlehem Steelworks	saxman1089	RCT2	76.50%	41.67%
2020-07-01	Disney's Animal Kingdom Spain	colby	RCT2	78.50%	33.33%

 

Typically, discussing spotlight merit for parks under 80.00% is a bit taboo, and the rarely cast 75%/yes vote is frowned upon by some. There have been dozens and dozens of parks in the 70%-80% score range that did not get any spotlight votes at all, so the fact that some did get multiple reveals something about the spotlight X-factor, whatever it is.

 

Up to fall 2009, the spotlight threshold was sstill 70%, and the yes/no vote threshold 60%. For Brighton Glen and Indigo Hills this meant that the yes/no votes were actually displayed on the site, and they were officially spotlight misses just like Six Flags Worlds of Discovery was a decade later. Three other parks stand out here. Firstly, StormRunnerFan's Mysterium Adventures. With a score of 71.15%, it is probably the lowest scoring park to still get multiple (three!) yes votes. The park has a vote spread we rarely see anymore nowadays, with the lowest vote being 55% and there still being a few 85% votes. Secondly, Kidron Park. It could've been the first of the new wave of NCSO parks to win spotlight, a few years before Xeccah's Blue Oak Amusement Park. Perhaps the sense of pioneering is what got RCT2Day the votes in the first place.

 

Thirdly, colby's Animal Kingdom Spain. The park is notable for being large, but also for harking back to a late 00s style of parkmaking. The most notable thing here is colby himself though... The same colby that won multiple Danimation spotlights back in the day, though he was still called Duke02 at this time. If he win, it would've been two full decades after his last moment in the spotlight. Regardless of whether he won, colby's longevity is rather incredible - something to discuss later in this post.

 

Kidron Park by RCT2Day

Disney's Animal Kingdom Spain by colby

 

Productivity

 

There are several parkmakers with multiple mentions in these top 10 lists. Alex and J K in the highest scoring parks, and Liampie and G force in the lowest scoring parks. Again it seems like a slight to have multiple mentions in the lowest scoring parks, but remember that it's a huge feat to win a single spotlight, let alone multple. The majority of players have never won, and the majority of players who did won, only won once. Below you'll find an overview of all players who won the award multiple times.

 

To avoid the stars from the classic period looking like one day flies, a second list that adds up Danimation and NE spotlights is included. In either list, natelox is the uncontested champion. Players who notably profit from the Danimation inclusion are sacoasterfreak (jumping from 1 to 4), Corkscrewed (jumping from 2 to 4) and Schuessler (jumping from 1 to 3). Aero21 is a player that flies under the radar nowadays, but looking at either of these lists his status in the early years of the game is undeniable.

 

NE Only			NE + Danimation
7			7	natelox
6			6
5	natelox		5	x-sector, aero21, Fatha'
4	x-sector, Fatha', J K, alex		4	Butterfinger, Corkscrewed, sacoasterfreak, J K, alex
3	aero21, Roomie, mantis, Cedarpoint6, Liampie, G Force, Xeccah		3	Greg Moore, Roomie, Schuessler, Mala, mantis, Cedarpoint6, Liampie, G Force, Xeccah
2	Nevis, PyroPenguin, RRP, posix, Coaster Ed, Butterfinger, Corkscrewed, Meretrix, Turtle, Kumba, artist, JKay, robbie92, Lagom, bigshootergill		2	colby, Buster, Last Arch Angel, Nevis, PyroPenguin, vTd, RRP, posix, Coaster Ed, Meretrix, Turtle, Kumba, artist, JKay, robbie92, Lagom, bigshootergill

 

Some of these players have had short but intense careers, others took decades to reach these numbers... It's no surprise that parks from the highly productive classic period of NE dominate this list. The top two players are there thanks to their (mutual) group park, which could be considered cheating. Therefore, the top 5 has been expanded to a top 7.

 

More than a decade later, in a wildly different era, Xeccah managed to achieve a similar production speed during the 2016-2017 boom. The only other modern player to win two spotlights within one year is alex; in 2016, there were 205 days between his Luna Park and Discovery Bay.

 

	Player	Spotlight	Interval	Next Spotlight
1	mantis	Walkman of my Brain 19 March 2004	25 days	City of Dreams 13 April 2004
2	x-sector	Audrix Towers 2 February 2004	71 days	City of Dreams 13 April 2004
3	natelox	Land of the Villain 2 August 2002	83 days	Disney's Discovery Island 24 October 2002
4	Xeccah	Blue Oak Amusement Park 16 September 2017	84 days	Coors Park 9 December 2017
5	artist	Ports of Magia 23 March 2005	98 days	Islands of Enchantment 29 June 2005
6	Nevis	Universal's Island Xtreme 18 March 2002	103 days	Atlantis: The Lost Empire 29 June 2002
7	PyroPenguin	Disney Dreams 27 July 2002	118 days	Aurora's Bay 22 November 2002

 

Exceptional longevity is shown by the players below. Try to picture colby here, with a Danimation spotlight in 2000 and an almost-spotlight in 2020. How many days is that?

 

	Player	Spotlight	Interval	Next Spotlight
1	J K	Dreamport 25 February 2011	4383 days	The Lonely Planet 25 February 2023
2	Cedarpoint6	Six Flags Carolina 14 September 2010	3831 days	Washuzan Rainbow Summit 11 March 2021
3	Liampie	Legacies Theme Park - Europe 20 August 2010	2650 days	Giari Palms Theme Park 21 November 2017
4	robbie92	Six Flags Santa Fe 27 May 2011	1684 days	Busch Gardens Asia 5 January 2016
5	bigshootergill	Mario Kart: All-Cup Tour 27 June 2017	1381 days	The Conquests of Quinlan Quinto 8 April 2021

 

This is all an indication of individual productivity, but what about the community as a whole? In previous chapters the 'spotlight drought' phenomenon has come up, so we may as well identify the spotlight droughts here. Despite the increase in productivity after the rise of OpenRCT2 and the pandemic, the top 5 still contains a very recent drought.

 

 

		Spotlight	Interval	Next Spotlight
1		Through the Ages 24 June 2011	829 days	Starpointe 30 September 2013
2		Thorpe Park 16 March 2014	660 days	Busch Gardens Asia 5 January 2016
3		Cocoa's DisneySea 22 April 2021	383 days	DisneyEarth Vancouver 10 May 2022
4		Divinity Ridge 29 May 2006	364 days	Dimensions: Realms of Creation 28 May 2007
5		Riverland 31 December 2017	334 days	Seaquarium Curaçao 30 November 2018

 

 

Park Size

 

Another metric that takes some more effort to get into view is the size of each park. For the first 8 years, spotlights were square and therefore easy to count. With Six Flags Carolina, irregularly shaped maps became a thing. With modern tools it takes a few minutes to count the used tiles on this map, however. Used tiles are all tiles that are not black tiled/void. So in the numbers below, empty land tiles and lakes are counted. Not always truly representative, but very practical and largely accurate. Another challenge is how to treat multi-map spotlights, something that was prevalent in the earlier years. In any case, the square root of the total number of tiles used represents the map size if it were a square. The irregularly shaped Six Flags Carolina uses as many tiles as a 172x172 map, for example.

 

The results may surprise you! It's the very latest spotlight that takes the crown here. It must be noted that the map contains a lot of black tiles and is not consistently dense. Similarly, Euroscape, DisneySea and Bayfront Parc contain a lot of water because the parks hit the object limit early. The same cannot be said for Otter's Magic Kingdom and Thrill Point - recent parks that show OpenRCT2's impact on the meta. Universal's Caribbean Seas Resort and Disney Dreams stand out because they were made in LL, a game that had a 126x126 map size limit. Both spotlights consist of three maps of consistently dense content, which is very impressive even alongside the modern parks.

 

When looking at the smallest spotlights, there's only a few parks that are smaller than the largest possible LL park, which was the standard map size for a long time. There are so many parks with a map 126x126 map size that it would be uninteresting to look at. Dimensions is named because it is the only RCT2 park among these, the only park that deliberately settled for a 'smaller' map size without restrictions forcing Kumba to do so.

 

Largest Parks				Smallest Parks
1	Revelations of Stonehenge	280		1	Veteris Shores	118
2	Euroscape	276		2	LunaPark Adelaide	120
3	DisneySea	254		3	Isole Calabria	123
4	Otter's Magic Kingdom	237		4	Ports of Magia	123
5	Bayfront Parc	226		5	Dimensions: Realms of Creation	126
6	Thrill Point	225		5	38 more LL parks...	126
7	Emerald Pointe	220
8	Universal's Carribean Seas Resort	218
9	Disney Dreams	204
10	Disney's Tilted Acres	198
10	Marriott's Marine World	198

 

Object Count

 

It is evident that map size is not the best measure of quantity, because density matters a lot. Using the console in OpenRCT2, we can count map data for all spotlights, even including the LL parks. Map data include all placed scenery, paths, rides and signs, with large scenery and track elements typically occupying multiple tiles. For practical reasons, black tile objects have not been subtracted. Surface tiles have been subtracted since there's no distinction between a full spotlight park and an empty workbench in this regard. This poses a problem for the LL-RCT2 comparison, since LL parks often use surface tiles in place of scenery items to shape the park. Therefore the list for fullest and emptiest parks are split for both games.

 

It must be noted, by the way, that the data retrieved from SV4 and SV6 files can be off by several hundreds or thousands, due to the conversion that happens to .park in OpenRCT2. Parks that have maxed out the scenery limit give different numbers when using OpenRCT2's map data counter.

 

Fullest Parks (RCT2)				Emptiest Parks (RCT2)
1	Pixar Animation Studios	541095		1	Ports of Magia	53925
2	Belle Isle	422211		2	Aero's Wormwood	60171
3	Otter's Magic Kingdom	327457		3	Ancient Worlds	62155
4	Revelations of Stonehenge	285009		4	Veteris Shores	63179
5	The Lonely Planet	274573		5	Rivers of Babylon	64706
6	Thrill Point	269082		6	Isole Calabria	66447
7	Porto Encanto	237614		7	Bijou Magique	66624
8	DisneyEarth Vancouver	206983		8	DisneySEA Spain	67141
9	Euroscape	162659		9	Islands of Enchantment	78084
10	Mahoning Gardens	152172		10	Storybrook Glen	78739

 

No surprises on either side. It's mostly parks using OpenRCT2's new save format with increased scenery limit that populate the top 10 fullest parks, with the exception of Butterfinger's Euroscape, which is a multi-mapper. The top 10 emptiest parks are mostly old parks or parks that have a restricted workbench. The question of what SV6-parks are the fullest may arise, but we can already tell that Euroscape wins, and behind Euroscape are all the parks that maxed out the scenery limit. More on the scenery limit later, after we discuss the LL parks.

 

Fullest Parks (LL)				Emptiest Parks (LL)
1	Universal's Carribean Seas Resort	69797		1	California DisneySea	17808
2	Disney Dreams	54559		2	Harakiri's Islands of Adventure	18161
3	Troy's Ancient Resort	46312		3	Islands of Adventure Hollywood	18734
4	The Lost Era Resort	43615		4	Florida DisneySea	18786
5	Arnos Springs Resort	43081		5	Disney's Forgotten Kingdom	19477

 

Again, no real surprises. The fullest parks are dominated by multi-map 'resort' projects. Butterfinger proves himself as a master of quantity in either game. Perhaps the emptiest parks are more surprising. How many of you would've guessed Schuessler's Islands of Adventure Hollywood to take the top spot? It turns out that x-sector, known for his busy vertical parks, made the emptiest LL spotlight, at least when using this metric.

 

The fullest single map park would be Busch Gardens San Simeon by Fatha', who maxed out the scenery limit, a rarity in LL. To correct for map sizes, one must combine map size and map data to calculate the density, which is the next section of this chapter.

 

 

Pixar's Animation Studios by J K	Universal's Carribean Seas Resort by Butterfinger
Ports of Magia by artist	California DisneySea by x-sector

 

Density

 

Now we get to the real meat of the story. If we divide the map size by map data, we get an average number of objects used per tile, giving us the average density of the park. As mentioned before, this is unfairly skewed towards RCT2 due to the different building methods. Again, it makes sense to split this data for both games. It's only the three densest LL parks that overlap with the three least dense RCT2 parks.

 

Densest Parks (RCT2)				Sparsest Parks (RCT2)
1	Pixar Animation Studios	14.15		1	DisneySea	1.95
2	Belle Isle	12.62		2	Disney's Tilted Acres	2.13
3	The Lonely Planet	11.10		3	Euroscape	2.14
4	DisneyEarth Vancouver	9.68		4	Bijou Magique	2.23
5	LunaPark Adelaide	9.06		5	Bayfront Parc	2.24
6	Mahoning Gardens	8.98		6	Aero's Wormwood	2.44
7	Porto Encanto	8.10		7	Emerald Pointe	2.68
8	Dimensions: Realms of Creation	7.32		8	Marriott's Marine World	2.75
9	Starpointe	6.94		9	Rivers of Babylon	3.16
10	Dreamport	6.86		10	Ancient Worlds	3.17
10	Legacies Themepark - Europe*	6.85

 

*Despite a slightly different OpenRCT2 count, both Legacies and Dreamport have maxed out the RCT2 scenery limit, using the same map size, therefore they are still considered a tie. There's a large numerical gap after Legacies.

 

Now these lists are very different from the previous ones, despite the recent OpenRCT2 parks still being very present in the densest top 10. Pixar Animation Studios absolutely blows every other park out of the water, which is impressive because the density is sustained throughout such a large map. It didn't make the top 10 largest spotlights, but merely by one place. LunaPark Adelaide is the densest SV6 park, which makes up for how it showed up in the list of smallest parks. The lower regions of the top 10 are made up of parks of comparable size from the transition era, in which hitting the object limit became the standard. Dimensions: Realms of Creation is one of the smaller spotlights, but Kumba evidently got a lot of mileage out of it.

 

Butterfinger again shows up as a master of quantity, this time with a negative record, somehow. Euroscape is massive, but sparse. The list is not very surprising - the only odd one out is Coasterbill's Emerald Pointe, a park that is mostly famous for the creative (and vulgar) ways in which Bill stretched the SV6-limits to fill an abnormally ambitiously sized map. Highball's DisneySea takes the top spot here, but as was pointed out previously, the park hit the object limit and the remainder of the map is grass, sparse filler trees and water. In the future, it would be of interest to correct for such things.

 

Densest Parks (LL)
1	Busch Gardens San Simeon	2.22		6	Visions Amusement Park	1.93
2	Silver Valley Theme Park	2.12		7	Disney's Movie Magic	1.93
3	Mount Sinister	2.10		8	Through the Ages	1.82
4	Walkman of my Brain	1.94		9	Aurora's Bay	1.81
5	Discovery Bay	1.93		10	DreamWorks Great Australia	1.78

 

For LL, pretty much every spotlight has the exact same map size of 126x126 - the maximum. the list of sparsest parks is identical to the list of emptiest parks. For the densest parks, the list is identical to the list of fullest parks, except the multi-map have fallen out of the top 10. In fact, the multi-map resorts are closer to the bottom of the list than the top. Unsurprisingly, it's Busch Gardens, Silvery Valley and Mount Sinister that pushed LL to its limit to make up the top 3 here. Most of the other parks here are rich in content as well, only Visions Amusement Park by Foozycoaster is stylistically unique and not as obviously dense. Perhaps this was quietly a precursor to Foozy's unfinished RCT2 project, which was ahead of its time by many years in terms of cramming a lot of objects on a single tile.

 

 

Busch Gardens San Simeon by Fatha'

Dimensions: Realms of Creation by Kumba

 

 

Language

 

Now that we got the serious statistics out of the way, we can look at some fun stuff, like what parks have the shortest and longest titles. In terms of characters, excluding spaces...

 

Longest Park Names				Shortest Park Names
1	Universal's Carribean Seas Resort	30		1	Liseberg	8
2	Pacific Ocean Park Vespucci Beach	29		1	Snow Drop	8
3	Harakiri's Islands of Adventure	28		1	Luna Park	8
4	Dimensions: Realms of Creation	27		4	Belle Isle	9
4	The Conquests of Quinlan Quinto	27		4	Dreamport	9
4	Meadowbrooke Falls Thrill Park	27		4	The Aegean	9
4	Islands of Adventure Hollywood	27		4	Coors East	9
8	Zippo's Wacky World of Wonders	26		4	Coors Park	9
9	Watkins Woods Amusement Park	25		4	Riverland	9
10	Legacies Themepark - Europe	24		4	Gröna Lund	9
10	DreamWorks Great Australia	24		4	Age of Sail	9
10	Disney's Forgotten Kingdom	24		4	Euroscape	9
				4	DisneySea	9
				4	Cataclysm	9
				4	egypTopia	9

 

The most often recurring string length is 9 - a helpful factoid for those who aspire to win a spotlight in the future. What specific words can you use to increase your chances of winning? Here's a list of most recurring words in spotlight names.

 

Most Recurring Words
1	of	15		5	resort	5
2	park	12		7	disneysea	4
3	the	7		7	gardens	4
4	disney's	6		9	[multiple]
5	world	5

 

Good spotlight titles using the words above with a length of 9 characters could be 'The Resort', 'Of Gardens', 'World Park' or simply another 'DisneySea', perhaps with unique capitalisation such as 'DISNEYsea' or 'dIsNeYsEa'. ChatGPT does a better job at this, however. Let's assume half the people reading this follows the advice to produce 9-character parks. The next ten spotlights could be...

 

Park	Creator	Game
Star Forge	J K	RCT2
Emberland	Liampie	RCT2
Aqua Wild	ottersalad	RCT2
Sunspire	Loopy	LL
Nightfall	Bluetiful_Monday	RCT2
Disney Skylands	Pacificoaster	RCT2
Neon Cascades	roygbiv	RCT2
Mystic Tides	Jene	RCT2
Eclipse Bay	Cocoa	LL
Solar Veil Resort	pants	RCT2

 

It's tempting to day dream of alternate histories and possible futures, but it's not as good as the real thing, so we will move back to actual RCT history from here.

Other communities

 

New Element isn't the only nor the first community to assemble a 'Hall of Fame' type upper tier of finished parks. In this section we will briefly look at a select few other list of spotlight-equivalents.

 

RCTSpace

 

 

RCT2.com, later known as RCTSpace, was a prominent site in the mid 00s. It still exists after Gymnasiast saved the website as owner Sambo (successor to Boomer) planned to pull the plug a few years ago, but it had long been practically an archive after activity died around around 2009. However, for the first half decade of its existence, the site was thriving with well attended contests and a regularly updated spotlight section. Winning parks would get a multi-page brochure presenting the park as if it were a real destination. Therefore, these parks were called 'Vacation Parks'.

 

The process of determining which submission would win was very complex, resembling NE's later Accolade Panel. Danimation tried democracy before, but RCT2.com's system was more intricate and robust. There were also monthly runner-ups, and smaller parks would be eligible for a Weekend Getaway.

 

RCT2.com had a different parkmaking tradition than NE, or less of a tradition at all. The name alone illustrates that the community was not standing on the shoulders of LL veterans, but a new generation of players that were exploring the new game as a sandbox. New custom scenery was embraced for better or for worse, leading to often eclectic but fun looking parks. The site and the style of parks was a viable alternative to NE's perceived (arguably real) elitism.

 

Vacation Parks followed the typical 'four corners center lake' format much less, and often focused on single themes and settings. Examples of single theme parks are The Wizard of Oz and LXG, both with a movie theme, but also Wisconsin, Polder Kolder and VOC Anno 2004, parks that both focused on a single place - the US state of Wisconsin, The Netherlands and Indonesia respectively. In the case of Utrecht Dwaze Domstad by Emergo, a single city served as the inspiration for a park. Duos and group parks were more common as well - often submitted by Clubs such as RCT Innocation, RCT Masters and RCT Fusion.

 

Wisconsin by cBass

VOC Anno 2004 by Six Frags

 

The first Vacation Park winner was cBass' Wisconsin, notable for its unique concept and well done NCSO architecture, a precursor to his later completely out of the box NE work. Someone who never interacted with NE much was rwadams, but his South Beach Amusement Park was not rarely mentioned as one of the best RCT2 parks out there, and much of the intricate art deco beach side architecture holds up to this day, and it's easy to see how it blew other parks from that time out of the water with its level of detail. Insular Insomnia by Mama Bear (rest in peace) and Todd Lee is a good example of the 'fun' anything goes type of parks that was popular on the site. It's neither realistic nor completely fantastical, but always charming. More realistic is the last Vacation Park, dcornel's Disneyland Canada. It shows less critical object choices, but it's arranged in intricate ways that could rival the parks on NE at the time.

 

It's interesting to note that the parkmakers here are more diverse than the parkmakers on NE. The list includes several women, and the players are typically older than NE's then-teenagers. The most prolific producer of Vacation Parks is a familiar name on NE too, however: Six Frags, producing five Vacation Parks of which three are solos. The last of these, Mythologix, came four years before his first NE spotlight; Europa Park World Showcase.

 

Pacific Island by RCTNW / RCT Masters	South Beach Amusement Park by rwadams
Insular Insomnia by Mama Bear and Todd Lee	Disneyland Canada by dcornel

 

After some successful years in the mid 00s, attention shifted away from RCT2.com. Their Road Rallies held out the longest, with some excellent competition and high quality parks produced. Whoever was still active here, was likely also active on NE, and RCT2.com lost its appeal.

 

Date	Park	Creator
2003-07-01	Wisconsin	cBass
2003-08-01	The Wizard of Oz	RCT Innovation
2003-08-28	Pacific Island	RCTNW / RCT Masters
2003-11-01	Polder Kolder	Mama Bear
2003-12-01	Asian Adventures	Mike Robbins
2004-02-20	Sparkly Paradise	Six Frags
2004-03-01	Scarborough Faire	supertrooper
2004-05-01	Disneyland Resort New York	lazyboy97O
2004-06-30	Billerica Bay	Xophe
2004-07-01	Portmeirion Village	Mama Bear, Mike Robbins, rwadams
2004-08-01	Disney's Imaginaria	wabigbear
2004-09-01	LXG	Six Frags
2004-11-01	VOC Anno 2004	Six Frags
2004-12-01	South Beach Amusement Park	rwadams
2005-04-01	Utrecht Dwaze Domstad	Emergo
2005-08-01	Disney's Imaginaria - Discovery Bay	wabigbear
2005-11-20	Gluttony Gorge	Xophe, Six Frags, Jacko Shanty
2006-04-01	Mythologix	RCT Fusion
2007-05-01	Insular Insomnia	Mama Bear, Todd Lee
2007-10-23	Disneyland Canada	dcornel

 

 

RCPro

 

 

Most general roller coaster websites had their own subforums for theme park related games, RCT foremost. A website that used the spotlight format was RCPro, curated by SboardeR. Unlike RCT2.com, RCPro emerged during the LL era of the community and therefore is closer to NE in style, with several NE parkmakers and familiar names showing up in the list of the spotlights. From some anecdotes by Ozone and Evil WME we can gather that RCPro was more volatile than NE, Danimation or RCT2.com.

 

Evil WME wrote:		Ozone wrote:
[About "The Many Ways of Amusing":] I sent this into RCPRO.. it didn´t win. Why? well i asked sboarder. "I´d love to make the park spotlight, but it just can´t be named that way!		I started making [Mystiquette] right after I downloaded all the rcPro spotlights. When it was finished, I of coarse sent it in for spotlight. I got an email a few days later saying that I had won, but it never went up.

 

The king of RCPro spotlights without a doubt must be Roberto Roboparks winning four, which is pretty impressive. Roberto is an example of a first generation NE parkmaker who started out with a good reputation, but who never really lived up to it during the NE years. His Two Flags Sandy Point is a good example of a pre-RCT2 realism park.

 

An even more forgotten parkmaker is Segaman75 - in fact Segaman earned a parkmaker spot in the early days of NE, but he was purged from the team along with a few others such as Pawn and sirspud. Heros Theme Park is an excellent semi-realistic park in the NE tradition - before NE existed.

 

Two Flags Sandy Point by Roberto Roboparks

Heros Theme Park by Segaman75

 

Some of the RCPro spotlight winners aren't obscure parkmakers, but rather players who are famous to this day, who hasn't reached their peaks yet. Before RRP's Busch Gardens Lichfield, there was Festival Resort and Crystal Clear Beach. Before Walkman of my Brain, mantis almost broke his brain during the construction of Tioman Island. Evil WME was starting out well with Music After Time, but it ain't Candlelight Times. And Turtle's Orinoco River showed promise, but it got nothing on Isole Calabria... Yet, these parks are solid, and absolutely would've won NE accolades had the system then resembled the current system. It is also nice to see another step in these players' development.

 

When sboarder lost his LL disc, RCPro spotlights became RCT2-only. The game was brand new and the first RCT2 spotlight, Fiat86's Forbidden Heights, came with a serious disclaimer... Sboarder eventually found his disc again after another RCT2 spotlight (Turtle's Orinoco River), and this is where the internet archive ends. 

 

Festival Resort by RRP	Tioman Island by mantis
Music After Time by Evil WME	Orinoco River by Turtle

 

Evidence suggests that sboarder was happy to wrap up the entire RCT section of the site months earlier, for reasons that were pretty typical for the early 00s. Moreover, the roller coaster scene was booming as Six Flags and Cedar Fair among others found large sums of money to invest in new innovative coasters, which relatively new companies such as Intamin and B&M were happy to deliver. The message on the side dates from November 3rd 2002, months after the last LL spotlight, but before the two RCT2 spotlights.

 

It is likely that the RCPro spotlights didn't continue beyond this. RCPro did host some successful RCT features later such as the Summer Showdown contest following NE's Head-2-Head format.

 

Date	Park	Creator
2001-01-18?	Two Flags Venice	Roberto Roboparks
2001-03-24?	Crystal Clear Beach	RRP
2001	Citrus Springs	DK	MISSING
2001	Rustic Waters	Holy Drool	MISSING
2001	Festival Resort	RRP
2001-10-01?	Tropico Lanzarote	Roberto Roboparks
2001-10-28?	Fair Haven Falls	Roberto Roboparks
2002-01-23?	Cypress Rock	Tony
2002-02-02?	Saffron Woods	Lumpy101 & Gazza
2002	Traveller's Tales	Chris Gray	MISSING
2002-04-15?	Two Flags Sandy Pointe	Roberto Roboparks
2002	Imagination Station	Andrew	MISSING
2002-09-17	Tioman Island	mantis
2002-09-27	Heros Theme Park	Segaman75
2002	Music After Time	Evil WME
2003	Forbidden Heights (RCT2)	Fiat186	MISSING
2003-06-26	Orinoco River (RCT2)	Turtle