Software:Atlantis Underwater Tycoon

Short description: 2003 video game

Atlantis Underwater Tycoon
Developer(s)	Anarchy Enterprises
Publisher(s)	Activision Value
Producer(s)	Alex Jamieson, Zvonimir Miksic, Tim Whitehurst
Designer(s)	Joseph Cho
Platform(s)	Microsoft Windows
Release	March 21, 2003
Genre(s)	City-building, construction and management, business simulation
Mode(s)	Single-player

Atlantis Underwater Tycoon is an underwater city-building simulation game in which the player acts as a tycoon to simulate the real-time design and management of an underwater civilization. It was developed by American studio Anarchy Enterprises and published by Activision Value, and released on March 21, 2003, for Microsoft Windows.

Atlantis Underwater Tycoon was the first building sim to be set underwater.

Gameplay

In Atlantis Underwater Tycoon, the player can choose to play in missions or in a sandbox-environment map to start building their underwater colony. The player chooses a tycoon character to play as who comes with their own positive and negative traits, such as providing bonus starting money, or having a disreputable attitude towards sea life.

The player starts on the ocean floor with a home base and a set amount of money. The player then expands the underwater colony by constructing various residential, utility, commercial, industrial, tourist, and military buildings that extend outward from the home base in a design conducive to the ocean floor, linking them with air tubes, and terraforming the seabed if needed. The player is able to collect and store items produced by commercial and industrial buildings in warehouses and sell them off in a market. The player can also breed new wildlife to live in the city's waters, such as dolphins or sharks, as well as create underwater vehicles to roam around the city. As the city grows, a wider range of buildings and residents become available. Such buildings include whale sanctuaries, sea turtle aquariums, shopping malls, oil drills, and prison facilities. New and better buildings bring in more citizens and tourists, generating more income for the city. Over time, buildings nearing their life expectancies can be demolished to make room for new buildings. In the late stages of the game, the player can unlock the ability to build Atlantean structures.

In addition to having to manage the economic aspects of the game, the player must also contend with attacks from enemy pirates and from enemy Atlanteans, as well as deal with underwater natural disasters. Military vessels and friendly Atlantean defenders can be recruited to defend against such attacks. Military defenses, such as sonic cannons and missile turrets, can be controlled by the player to shoot projectiles at hostile vessels and destructive debris to destroy them.

On the whole, the player prevents the city from falling into harm by keeping a watchful eye out for enemy invaders and natural disasters, while managing the city's businesses so that population happiness, tourism, and sea life can prosper, all the while avoiding the city plunging into financial trouble.

Reception

Reception
Review scores Publication Score GameWatcher 7.5/10 PC Games (Germany) 57% JeuxVideoPC.com 9/20 GameStar (Germany) 46/100 Worthplaying.com 7.8/10

Atlantis Underwater Tycoon has been praised for its well-done visuals and its snappy underwater music track. The ability to see into buildings and view the people within nightclubs and movie theaters is also a nice plus. The visual depiction of night and day from the rays of light shining down on the city also provides for a nice ambiance effect. The top moments in the game can be attributed to the times when a player's prospering city "[comes] under attack from enemy subs, and the player reacts to mount a counter-attack to avoid all the player's hard work from being obliterated."

One reviewer says that the game's biggest weakness lay in its lack of variety in building models and resources.

See also

• Deep Sea Tycoon

External links

• MobyGames is a commercial database website that catalogs information on video games and the people and companies behind them via crowdsourcing. This includes over 300,000 games for hundreds of platforms. Founded in 1999, ownership of the site has changed hands several times. It has been owned by Atari SA since 2022.

Features

Edits and submissions to the site (including screenshots, box art, developer information, game summaries, and more) go through a verification process of fact-checking by volunteer "approvers". This lengthy approval process after submission can range from minutes to days or months. The most commonly used sources are the video game's website, packaging, and credit screens. There is a published standard for game information and copy-editing. A ranking system allows users to earn points for contributing accurate information.

Registered users can rate and review games. Users can create private or public "have" and "want" lists, which can generate a list of games available for trade with other registered users. The site contains an integrated forum. Each listed game can have its own sub-forum.

History

Logo used until March 2014

MobyGames was founded on March 1, 1999, by Jim Leonard and Brian Hirt, and joined by David Berk 18 months later, the three of which had been friends since high school. Leonard had the idea of sharing information about computer games with a larger audience. The database began with information about games for IBM PC compatibles, relying on the founders' personal collections. Eventually, the site was opened up to allow general users to contribute information. In a 2003 interview, Berk emphasized MobyGames' dedication to taking video games more seriously than broader society and to preserving games for their important cultural influence.

In mid-2010, MobyGames was purchased by GameFly for an undisclosed amount. This was announced to the community post factum , and the site's interface was given an unpopular redesign. A few major contributors left, refusing to do volunteer work for a commercial website.{{Citation needed|date=June 2025} On December 18, 2013, MobyGames was acquired by Jeremiah Freyholtz, owner of Blue Flame Labs (a San Francisco-based game and web development company) and VGBoxArt (a site for fan-made video game box art). Blue Flame Labs reverted MobyGames' interface to its pre-overhaul look and feel, and for the next eight years, the site was run by Freyholtz and Independent Games Festival organizer Simon Carless.

On November 24, 2021, Atari SA announced a potential deal with Blue Flame Labs to purchase MobyGames for $1.5 million. The purchase was completed on 8 March 2022, with Freyholtz remaining as general manager. Over the next year, the financial boost given by Atari led to a rework of the site being built from scratch with a new backend codebase, as well as updates improving the mobile and desktop user interface. This was accomplished by investing in full-time development of the site instead of its previously part-time development.

In 2024, MobyGames began offering a paid "Pro" membership option for the site to generate additional revenue. Previously, the site had generated income exclusively through banner ads and (from March 2014 onward) a small number of patrons via the Patreon website.

See also

• IGDB – game database used by Twitch for its search and discovery functions