The first game was created by Scottish programmer Chris Sawyer, with assistance from various leading figures from the real-world roller coaster and theme park industry.

[1] The rest of the series contains three other main games, expansion packs, a number of ports, and a mobile installment.

[citation needed] Licensing for the series is currently held by Atari Interactive, who renewed their deal with Chris Sawyer on 11 October 2022, for ten more years.

RollerCoaster Tycoon received two expansion packs: Added Attractions (released in North America as Corkscrew Follies) in 1999, and Loopy Landscapes in 2000.

RollerCoaster Tycoon 2 has two official expansion packs: Wacky Worlds and Time Twister, both released in 2003 and had no involvement from Chris Sawyer, instead being handled by Frontier Developments.

In April 2014, an open-source project, known as OpenRCT2, was launched to enhance the gameplay of RollerCoaster Tycoon 2, including fixing bugs and allowing the game to run natively on macOS, Linux and modern Windows.

A remastered version of the game titled RollerCoaster Tycoon 3 Complete Edition, developed and published by Frontier Foundry, was released for Windows, macOS, and Nintendo Switch, featuring widescreen support and revamped controls to accommodate for Switch features.

RollerCoaster Tycoon World was developed by Nvizzio Creations for Atari Interactive and RCTO Productions and released on 16 November 2016.

While using many assets and engine content from Rollercoaster Tycoon 3, this game reverted to an isometric view and, due to the limitations of the Nintendo 3DS, removed features such as additional scenery and pools.

It was criticized due to Chris Sawyer's absence in the making of the game and the heavy use of microtransactions and wait times.

Like RollerCoaster Tycoon 4, it contains in-app purchases and wait times, but expands upon the social media integration.

[21] In 2023, Atari released an updated version with new content and features, titled RollerCoaster Tycoon Adventures Deluxe.

[25] The free-to-play title is based on the tile-matching genre, in which the tiles to match move each turn on rollercoaster tracks within each level.

Completing levels helps the player to restore a run-down theme park as part of the game's narrative.

Many of the rides that can be built are roller coasters or variations on that, such as log flumes, water slides and go-kart tracks.

The player can build these out with hills, drops, curves, and other 'special' track pieces (such as loops, corkscrews and helixes), limited only by cost and the geography of the park and other nearby attractions.

The guests, who are integral to the gameplay, are treated as separate entities which can each have particular characteristics and be tracked by the player around the park.

Parkitect, released worldwide for Microsoft Windows, Mac OS X and Linux on 29 November 2018 after two years in early access, is similarly considered to be a spiritual successor to the first two RollerCoaster Tycoon games.

[28] OpenRCT2 (2014) is a free and open-source re-implementation of RollerCoaster Tycoon 2 which adds some additional features and fixes numerous bugs.