You are given money by your parents (god bless their giving hearts) with which you open your very own office and start turning money at the stock market. It is now up to you, to make as much money as possible in the shortest possible time!
The game Rags to Riches is a 1993 stock market simulation. It features two scenarios, the 1929 Stock Market Crash Scenario and the Current events in today’s economy. You can play in three different difficulty modes and you can select up to four computer opponents (you do not need a computer opponent to play).
No mater what game type you choose you start in your office and need to hire people to work for you. The one you really need is your PIT RUNNER as he is the one who actually buys and sells the shares you want. Without him you can not do anything.
To hire people you need to phone the J.A.R. (you can also phone some other people, like your folks back at home, or donate to the local orphanage) and select the employee you want to hire. Every employee will cost you a certain amount of money, so think twice before hiring them. When you have enough money, you can even hire enough assistants to do all your work for you (so you won’t need to constantly watch the prices).
Naturally you can have more then one person working at a certain position, especially since they are limited in the amount of work they can do.
The main business takes place while New York stock market is open, but there are certain things you can do even outside that. Make sure to have as much information as possible before acting.
There are also some events that remind you, you can’t spend every day from dawn to dusk in your office (such as paying living cost for your family), so the business is an income that has to provide for you as well, so it’s not just money you can freely gamble away on bad investments. You can also go out the office door to have lunch (and socialize in hope of getting a useful tip), go to the mall (where you can spend your money on just about anything), go to the news stand and get the latest business news, or simply head home early, locking your office down for a day.
For more information about the gameplay itself or the details of certain parts of it you should run the START.EXE file or at least read the START.TXT file (same text, different format).
What surprised me about the game was its graphic. The setup gives two possible modes VGA and Super VGA mode. I was quite disappointed that the VGA mode only supports 16 colors and was in lower resolution, while Super VGA supports high resolution 256 color graphics (this is the preset graphic mode). The sounds (or better said the lack of them) are nothing impressing, but to tell the truth I was unable to set the Soundblaster sound (only Adlib).
But then again, a business simulation is not a game that necessarily requires great sound and visual effects. All in all it’s a solid game worth playing and I guess you will spend quite some time making that first billion before you reach thirty, so you can retire young (ah, if only real life was that simple).