There should be a game. Probably a computer game. It should be called 'Metropolis'. It should start in 1850. The game board is London, Middlesex and the nearer parts of the Home Counties, as they existed then. It should be a fairly realistic map, not a stylised one. You are the chairman of the Metropolitan Railway Company or one of its contemporaries. (Possibly a fictional contemporary). You have to raise capital, secure Parliamentary approval for routes, build lines, buy trains and run services. You can agree to joint ventures or get running rights over rivals' lines. You can buy land near your lines, build houses on it, and sell that. It is done on a maps-and-timetables level, with real prices for tunnels and trains. Where you build your lines and the service pattern you set up affects how London develops. If you decide that suburban Essex is the right place to expand into with your railway, maybe you don't even get a Metro-land in north-west Middlesex, or maybe someone else comes along and does it instead. Around 1890 you get the option of building tube railways too. I don't know when the game ends. Maybe it always ends in 1933 with the formation of London Transport. Maybe you can carry on.
Does this game exist already?
[Edit: It's not Transport Tycoon. That's far too stylised, I want a simulation].
Tags: bloody trains, computer games
