2005: These tracks showed me getting away from the single day ideas into full-fledged projects. They may not be great technically, but all show some promise. Not coincidentally it was this period that I became active around CoasterSims and started seeing what other people were doing. Click on the bold links to download.

100 Mile Dash (August 2005) – This was not strictly a roller coaster per se, but some sort of simulation experience. I got the inspiration from another track on CoasterSims where the designer buried the track underground so the car appeared to be moving on it’s own. So I decided to take that idea to an extreme by basing it on the 100 mile dash sequence from the Pixar movie The Incredibles. I had seen that movie over 30 times (please don’t ask why, I’d rather not revisit that point in my life) so I guess it made perfect sense to me to make a roller-coaster-type-thing in homage. It actually is pretty fun, at least on your first ride through when you don’t know what direction it’s going to go next, dodging trees and boulders at a very fast rate, and there’s enough variety to keep it interesting to the very end. Unfortunately I didn’t have much in the way of 3D making skills at the time so it’s rather lacking in that much-needed regard, but I still think it’s worth dusting off to ride once every year or so. Additional photos can be found here.

Zach’s Zoomer (June 2005) – This showed the direction I was going with Thunderhead (I had already been working on that one for several months anyway) and despite some questionable trackwork it still boasts a surprisingly thorough custom support job. The physics are way off due to the enormous train size, but it actually does resemble a junior coaster more than any other NL track I’ve ever downloaded thanks to the painstaking process it was to move all the bents in closer to the track. Definitely worth a look if you’re a NoLimits re-creation completist, and by far better than the other Michigan’s Adventure re-creations I finished earlier that year.

Speed Demon: Backyard Coaster (Februrary 2005) – At least when I failed I got to fail interestingly. So this is actually a nifty little track; I wrote up this whole story about how some future theme park tycoon (i.e. myself) retired and wanted to build a personal roller coaster over his backyard hillside (apparently I move into a house in the country). Using a left over launching system (???) he designed a ride that was a mixture of “Dodonpa, Raven and Raptor“. Of course it has g’s that could kill you, and I was devastated when the first reviews came in on CoasterSims tearing it apart for those reasons. Some people got the idea and rated it better, but overall this is not the most technically accomplished ride. That said, this is easily my favorite original design from this time period until I made Quiver a few years later. Let’s see, a downhill launch into a lattice tunnel that leads into a tophat over the hillside, and I’m trying to pass this off as a homemade roller coaster? Crazy, to be sure, but still fun and original.

Shivering Timbers (January 2005) – People for some reason really liked this coaster right up to the end of CoasterSims’ life, and to be honest I really don’t understand why. I see why it was popular back in it’s day, before tool-building and year-long projects that never were finished became the trend around there, but even after I had released Thunderhead et al this one was getting high ratings that competed with the user scores on Fahrenheit or Modern Times. I guess Shivering Timbers just has that great of an appeal, that a re-creation of it that sports horrible inaccuracies can still be appreciated by many. The most obvious problem is it doesn’t fit into the building area. That’s not really an excuse however because I didn’t use as much as I could anyway. The main camelbacks are all way too steep, with long ramps and very tight pullovers and pullouts. The rest has more than it’s fair share of pumps and jerks, but it still has some redeeming qualities. The helix came off well, even with some semi-competent supporting and if you don’t pay too close attention the pacing seems to match to the real thing pretty well. Even soon after it was built, I knew I wanted to attempt a complete v2, but that never got off the ground.

Wolverine Wildcat (January 2005) – I released this along with Shivering Timbers and Corkscrew (below). Since the Corkscrew was a pretty simple project I actually already re-created a few times before, I guess this qualifies as my first real ‘project’; everything before it represents just a couple hours of noodling. Custom supporting (my first ever attempt at what would later become a life-sucking feature in later projects) and semi-realistic pacing and plotting offset some bad trackwork. So it’s exactly like the real thing. (ba-dum bum)

Corkscrew (January 2005) – This actually wasn’t my first re-creation, I made a re-creation of Busch Gardens Tampa’s Scorpion way back in 2002 or 2003 I think, unfortunately I lost that one. This was like my third separate attempt at Michigan’s Adventure’s Corkscrew, and the first one in which I figured out the drop is not parallel to the station. It still needs a lot more work, but it’s acceptable if you need to sim the Corkscrew in NoLimits now.

2004: These tracks were done on my mom’s then-new computer. Most were one-day projects, which is why there’s a lot of them, and not of the greatest quality. The ideas behind the rides were pretty ordinary, although there’s still some interesting things to be found here if you’ll excuse the bad pumping and jerks that are inevitable whenever you’re handbuilding a track for yourself in a couple hour’s time. During the end of this period I joined CoasterSims, and one of these tracks, the TornadoTex, became my first upload there.

Cobra – A stand-up coaster in the vein of Georgia Scorcher. Some attempts like a little Stengel dive didn’t pay off but at least show a bit of effort.

Coyote Trail – A Dinn-like wooden coaster partly inspired by the bowl section of the KW Thunderbolt, with an odd figure-8 finale. One of the better rides in this collection.

Diamondback – Sort of a single-out-and-back answer to Ghostrider, the g-forces unfortunately are deep in the reds at several instances.

Golden Zephyr – Pretty unique and bizarre Schwarzkopf looper, after the triple-downward helix it’s obvious I got bored with the project and wanted to move on with my life. At least I did so in a way that made a statement.

Grizzly – An attempt at a compact, layered GCI design, the tight building restrictions forced some really high g-forces at some points, although I admire how much I was able to fit into a tight lot without having any sort of plan while building it.

Hawk’s Eye – Intamin hypercoaster, I really liked this one when I first built it, probably because the g-forces were controlled the entire way and it looked semi-plausable as a real coaster.

Magnus – Story behind this one: when I was in 2nd grade I wrote a 13-page short story (huge for a 2nd grader) revolving around a haunted roller coaster at the fantasy park I imagined designing in the future. The story was clearly *inspired* by another roller coaster story I had read at the time. Some decade later I was looking over that story for old time’s sake and decided I wanted to design in NL that coaster I spent so much time fantasing about on the Interlochen Elementary School playground. Evidentely it wasn’t worth too much of my time.

Night Fall – B&M sit-down coaster. Zero originality, zero technical ability. I was embarresed by this one before I even completed it.

Rampage – B&M speed coaster I liked a lot when I built it, again probably because the G’s all remain in the green. Layout kind of sucks but it looks decent for what it is.

Speed Zone – What was this? Some sort of experiment I think. I imagined it as some cheapo-manufacturer prototype coaster built for a Florida tourist trap. Worth a look just for the general wierdness here.

TornadoTex – This was my first upload to CS and was warmly recieved by the four raters I had. It had a rating of 7.71 from those four rates at the end of it’s first week, and never recieved a single additional rate for the rest of the 4 1/2 years I was there. The ride itself was sort of inspired by the Georgia Cyclone at least in the sharp drop-offs on the endcapping turns, and featuring a double dip first drop. If there’s only one coaster you can check out in this collection, I’d recommend this one.

Wicked Dipper – Supposedly an extreme version of the Giant Dipper! Except it’s not extreme at all, in fact it barely makes it around one turn. But a fun ride, and it does have that sort of beach-boardwalk feel despite there being no terraforming.

Goliath (Walibi World) – Something grabbed me to make this coaster I had otherwise no association with. I remember spending quite a bit of work supporting it and trying to make the trackwork accurate. This actually turned out fairly nice, given the time I made it. I also had a Storm Runner re-creation from this time period but I appear to have lost it.

2001-2002: By a very random chance I came upon a NoLimits plug on a website shortly after it was first released in late 2001. These tracks were all made on my grandparent’s computer, before my dad got his own computer in 2003 which then became my primary NL workplace. I lost all of those tracks when his fatally crashed, but I was fortunate to have the foresight to save all my original tracks before my grandparents erased them. They are of very low quality craftsmanship, and there’s also a general dearth of originality since I was just wanting to make coasters that even looked semi-plausable. Still, there’s a couple interesting things in there, and a few that are rather hilarious just for their n00bish incompetence. Most will be displayed in alphabetical order, however my very earliest tracks can be found at the very bottom. Bear in mind when riding them I was only 13 at the time.

AIR – Xcelerator without the overbanks. Creativity was off the charts on this one.

Big Puma – B&M stand-up, sort of a Round 2 after Medusa, one of my earliest tracks built.

Corkscrew – First attempt at re-creating the Corkscrew.

Corkscrew Chaos – A cross between a standard loop-corkscrew and Drachen Fire, it’s halfway interesting.

CyberSpeed – Millennium Force meets SROS, this overlong creation features some hilariously awful hill profiles.

EXPERIMENT #1 – Okay, so this one actually kicks ass in an “OMG I’m a n00b!!!” sort of way.

EXPERIMENT #2 – Not nearly as cool as #1, this was merely a failed attempt at crafting heartline rolls.

HAWK – A really boring version of Raging Bull.

Mad Mouse – A pseudo Mad Mouse re-creation, not awful considering I did it from memory.

MEGAphobia – Large B&M floorless with some rather dangerous inversions.

Mission Velocity – Basic Intamin hyper L-shaped out-and-back.

Ninja – Steel Force imagined as an Intamin creation.

Quetzalcoatl’s Revenge – A B&M invert so well designed, it was worth breaking open the encyclopaedia.

Raging Wolf – Wildfire with a midcourse and without the terrain.

Red Baron – Floorless I intended to be my first extensively terraformed project, only to realize the layout did not allow for terraforming. Duh.

Sky Screamer – My favorite from this period, this one actually shows some creativity! (and custom supports…)

Slitherin’ Serpent – Kiddie coaster made in about 15 minutes.

Space Warp – Magnum/Steel Force inspired, watch out for that station on the return run…

Steel Power – Inspired by Carowind’s Vortex, I liked this one at the time perhaps because of the realisticness mixed with some original elements.

The Falcon – Totally non-descript B&M invert.

The Great White – A mini-Kracken, this one was complentary to Steel Power above.

The Thunder of Zeus – Apollo’s Chariot inspired, this is a case of how not to design brake runs.

Twister – Smaller version of Kings Island’s Vortex.

Twister Tantrum – SLC with a double pre-drop. (?)

Ultra Looper – Arrow multilooper with a cobra roll and helix between the final brake runs.

Vortex – Overdrawn B&M multilooper, I had to add a launch midway to get it through the course.

Xtream Scream – My first (and actually… only) shuttle coaster, this was tweaked when the 1.5 update came out so I didn’t have to rely on E-stop.

Zipper – My last coaster from this period, it shows I didn’t improve much from when I first started.

Now, counting down my six earliest tracks below…

Triple Loop – Somewhat conservative Schwarzkopf triple looper, this one shows me gaining some confidence in using the editor.

Speed Demon – Uhhh…. fail? This one is hilarious today, (actually it was back then, too) and not just for what I call the “haircut helix”.

Medusa – Woah, this was my fourth ever design? Okay, pretty bad trackwork in parts, but considering how little experience I had this was a surprisingly strong effort. Except for that brick wall…

Giga-Blast – Thrust Air 2000 seemed like such an easy coaster to build as my third attempt…

Blue Demon – Built less than an hour after my first design (below), this already showed some improvement.

Forest Flyer – First track ever! The cute-and-cuddly size and forest setting still brings me back to the day whenever I ride it.

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