Train

The Swiss company Epsitec SA is not a major name in games history, but it is one of the survivors. Its founder, Daniel Roux, was writing software for home computers from the eighties onward, and the studio still exists, even though games are no longer its main business. Train, from 1991, comes from its DOS period.

The game is catalogued as a single-player simulator. Trains hold an unusual position within the simulation genre: unlike aircraft and cars, the appeal is not really about operating the machine but about time, routes and schedules. A train cannot turn around, cannot overtake, and needs hundreds of metres to stop, so every decision has to be made well in advance. That pushes the genre closer to puzzle design than to action.

The early nineties were a good period for DOS simulators. VGA graphics were becoming standard, machines had enough memory for more demanding calculation, and the audience was accustomed to reading manuals — often a necessity here, since the interface consisted of keyboard shortcuts and tables rather than icons.

The publisher is listed as Artdink, a Japanese company known precisely for simulators and strategy games about transport and planning.

Specific routes, modes or scope are not described here, because they are not verified.

On OldGame.cz, Train runs directly in the browser. With a 1991 simulator it is worth expecting the first few minutes to be spent finding out what each key does.