Theme Park (video game)

Theme Park is a construction and management simulation game designed by Bullfrog Productions and originally released in 1994, in which the player designs and operates an amusement park.

Theme Hospital is Bullfrog's thematic successor to the game, while Chris Sawyer's RollerCoaster Tycoon series has evolved the concept to offer a far more realistic selection of rides.

Gameplay

Starting with a free plot of land in the United Kingdom and few hundred thousand pounds, the player must build a profitable amusement park. Money is spent on building rides and shops and on staff, and is earned through sale of entry tickets, merchandise and refreshments. The goal is to increase the park's value and available cash so that the park can be sold and a new lot can be bought from another part of the world and start building a new theme park. Newer products can be bought after researching them. Once enough money has been made the player can move on to newer plots. Plots are located all over the world and have many different factors that affect gameplay, including the economy, weather, terrain and land value.

Amusement park

An amusement park (sometimes referred to as a funfair) or theme park is a group of entertainment attractions, rides, and other events in a location for the enjoyment of large numbers of people. Amusement parks have a fixed location, as opposed to travelling funfairs and traveling carnivals, and are more elaborate than simple city parks or playgrounds, usually providing attractions meant to cater specifically to certain age groups, as well as some that are aimed towards all ages. Theme parks, a specific type of amusement park, are usually much more intricately themed to a certain subject or group of subjects than normal amusement parks.

Amusement parks evolved from European fairs and pleasure gardens, which were created for people's recreation. World's fairs and expositions were another influence on the development of the amusement park industry.

In common language, the terms theme park and amusement park are often synonymous. However, a theme park can be regarded as a distinct style of amusement park. A theme park has landscaping, buildings, and attractions that are based on one or more specific themes or stories. Despite many older parks adding themed rides and areas, qualifying the park as a theme park, the first park built with the original intention of promoting a specific theme, Santa Claus Land, in Santa Claus, Indiana, did not open until 1946.Disneyland, located in Anaheim, California, built around the concept of encapsulating multiple theme parks into a single amusement park is often mistakenly cited as the first themed amusement park, but is instead the park that made the idea popular.

BMX Bandits (band)

BMX Bandits are a Scottish 1960s-influenced guitar pop band who have been making music from 1986 to the present day. They have shared members with other Bellshill bands Teenage Fanclub and The Soup Dragons.

History

BMX Bandits were formed by songwriter and lead vocalist Duglas T. Stewart out of the ashes of The Pretty Flowers, a group that featured Stewart alongside Frances McKee (later of The Vaselines), Sean Dickson and Norman Blake. The group have had many line up changes throughout the years.

Their songs mix melodic qualities and humor with, at times, raw and heartbreaking pathos. Stewart has written many of the group's works solo including "Your Class", "The Sailor's Song" and "Doorways" but also has collaborated with many of the other members. Stewart's most regular songwriting partners have been Francis MacDonald, Norman Blake and, more recently, David Scott of The Pearlfishers.

The group's most celebrated song is the autobiographical "Serious Drugs", recorded in 1991 but not released until 1993. The song featured in the movie This Year's Love and was covered by American stadium power pop group Gigolo Aunts. Oasis did their first UK tour dates supporting the Bandits as a favour from Stewart to Creation label boss Alan McGee. BMX Bandits admirers included Kurt Cobain, who was photographed wearing a BMX Bandits T shirt. Cobain claimed on a New York radio show that if he could be in any band it would be BMX Bandits.

Alvin Curran

Alvin Curran (born December 13, 1938) is an American composer. He is also the co-founder, with Frederic Rzewski and Richard Teitelbaum, of Musica Elettronica Viva, and a former student of Elliott Carter. Curran's music often makes use of electronics and environmental found sounds.

Curran was born in Providence, Rhode Island. He was a professor of music at Mills College in California until 2006 and now teaches privately in Rome, Italy, and sporadically at various institutions. His works include solo performance pieces such as Endangered Species, TransDadaExpress, and Shofar; radio works such as Crystal Psalms, Un Altro Ferragosto, I Dreamt John Cage Yodeling at the Zurich Hauptbahnhof, and Living Room Music; large scale musical choreographic works such as Oh Brass on the Grass Alas, for 300 amateur brass-band musicians, and the Maritime Rites series of performances on and near water; sound installation works such as Magic Carpet, Floor Plan, The Twentieth Century, and Gardening with John; chamber music such as For Cornelius for piano, the trio Schtyx, the string quartet VSTO, the saxophone quartet Electric Rags II, the percussion quartet THEME PARK, a series of works for chorus SATB, the work for chamber orchestra and video Circus Maximus; The Book of Beginnings for orchestra, youth orchestra, self-playing pianos, and cellphone app; and many collaborative dance and theater works. Since 1996, Curran has worked on a growing series of solo piano pieces entitled Inner Cities, which together form one of the longest non-repetitive piano pieces ever written. Daniela Tortora has edited a book about his work, Alvin Curran Live in Roma (Die Schachtel 2010). In 2015 he published The Alvin Curran Fakebook, an atypical autobiography that includes photos, writings, and sketches alongside more than 200 scores and fragments ranging from raw sonic materials to conceptual musics and completed compositions.