Original Release: Interplay, 1993, PC
A very basic stock trading / life management sim in the manner of Wall Street Kid
Rags to Riches: The Financial Market Simulation (PC, Interplay, 1993)
Where to Buy: eBay
How to Emulate: MS-DOS Emulation Guide
Apparently (loosely) based on a little-known board game called Speculation, this is a greatly simplified stock trading game that pares you down to just four different investment options to keep track of.
One neat touch is that you can opt to play in either a modern day (circa 1990s) setting or the 1920s, each with their own graphics sets and little gameplay alterations. The menu system makes it look like maybe future expansions were planned, but the game didn’t seem to draw much of an audience.
Why is that? Well, the title is a misnomer, for a start. In either setting, it’s really more like Generational Millions to Billyuns. You basically play a trust fund kid who inherits $200,000 upon graduating from college, and opts to dive right into the world of Manhattan finance instead of backpacking and pretending to be homeless for a few years.
The whole package has kind of a neat look, but a disjointed feel. The biggest challenge is that each game day whips by at like 10 or 15 minutes per real-time second even on the slowest time setting. You’re given a variety of sources to pursue information from: daily newspaper, TV, ticker, going to a restaurant for a power lunch, hiring an informant, tip line. But you aren’t really given time to effectively explore all this stuff, the trading day is literally over before you know it. “You got greedy, Martin!”
The game is basically meant to be played like a hyper day trading simulator, but you’re dealing in markets that you’d usually be making longer-term investments for, not flipping stuff every hour like its cryptocurrency. Ultimately it’s best to just sit there and watch the stock charts since everything whips by so fast, you can basically just make constant micro-buys and grind out money that way, never bothering with any of the other ancillary stuff. Not that there’s much purpose to grinding other than “score attacking” your previous efforts and buying a bunch of random crap to decorate your office and house with.
Links
Board game the title was based on?
Videos
The making of Rags to Riches (the guy who coded the engine to the original Fallout worked on this as a first project)