A-Train III is the first game in the series to use of near-isometric dimetric projection to present the city, similar to Maxis's SimCity 2000.

These can provide extra revenue for a passenger service, but also allowing the city to develop and grow can be seen as a goal in itself.

The game was tremendously popular in Japan, thus motivating Maxis to license it for US distribution as A-Train, available for DOS, Macintosh and Amiga platforms.

The PlayStation was a relatively new platform at that point and the game suffered many limitations, such as requiring an entire memory card (expensive at the time) to store a single map.

The economic model however fails to capture realistic land prices, which adds a major flaw to the games design.

Computer Gaming World's reviewer Stanley Trevena stated in 1992 that while he enjoyed the financial and management aspects of A-Train, "many people will miss out on a fine program because of a steeply graded learning curve".

[8] The game was reviewed in 1992 in Dragon #187 by Hartley, Patricia, and Kirk Lesser in "The Role of Computers" column.

[7] A-Train's isometric, tile-based graphics and animated elements inspired the visual style Maxis went on to adopt for Simcity 2000 in 1993.

The editors wrote, "Fascinating, absorbing and now quite cheap, A-Train is worth a place in any games collection — and don't be put off by the subject matter.