Getting Into Training

“A-Train” may be the best computer game we have ever played.

It is so good that within an hour of opening the box, we were both hooked. And within just a few days, we had logged four four-hour sessions with the game and one 14-hour marathon.

Developed by the Japanese firm Artdink and released in this country by Maxis (makers of the classics “SimCity” and “SimEarth”), “A-Train” is a city-building simulation, sort of a visual, realistic, 21st-Century version of “Monopoly.”

You are presented with six different landscapes where you must build a transportation system, apartments, factories, offices, hotels and other buildings. You lay your tracks and put on your trains. You dabble in real estate speculation and the stock market, competing for space and resources against other, unseen, land barons. The game lasts for as long as you stay in the black, meet your loan payments and pay your taxes.

It’s not particularly difficult to stay ahead of the game, but in the rush of overseeing the simulation, it is easy to lose track of when a payment is due. The game ends suddenly with no warning if you miss a payment. Save often.

The superb 3-D graphics are enhanced by hourly changes that pass the cityscape through day to night and seasonal variations that include fall colors and winter snows.

The basic description of “A-Train” doesn’t do it nearly the justice it and the game designers deserve.

What’s in the soul of this new software is a remarkable fluidity of function and friendliness. It works so flawlessly and effortlessly that it just feels right from the moment you first move the mouse.

“A-Train” is easy to learn, and its play is infinitely varied. It rates an A+.

A-Train

Rating: *****

IBM & compatibles; 640K; 12 mhz; hard drive required; mouse highly recommended. List: $69.95.

Computer games are rated on a five-star system, from one star for poor to five for excellent.