and Tremor Entertainment developed the Dreamcast port, which released on June 30, 2000. This replaced the original 2D graphics with new, full-3D ones. Reception Sales Before its release, Gathering of Developers' marketing director estimated that Railroad Tycoon would sell 250,000 units during the 1998 holiday shopping season. He speculated lifetime sales of 500,000 units. The game proceeded to become a commercial success. Its sales surpassed 500,000 copies globally by February 1999, and its computer version alone sold more than 1.5 million copies by August 2001. In the United States, the game and its Gold edition together sold 351,000 copies by October 2001. According to Franz J. Felsl of PopTop, much of Railroad Tycoon IIs success came from European markets; he explained that it "did better in Europe than it did in the US, which is not the way things usually end up." By August 2000, Railroad Tycoon II had been released in 39 unique SKUs worldwide, including eight Windows versions in English alone. PopTop's Phil Steinmeyer wrote that roughly 33% of the game's sales were derived from the Gold edition and Second Century expansion, and that the port for Macintosh "sold respectably", while the PlayStation version was unsuccessful. He accredited the game's number of versions with its commercial success, and wrote in August 2000, "Overall, had we only released the original game, in English, for Windows only, our sales would be less than a quarter of what they are now." In 2003, Steinmeyer remarked that Railroad Tycoon II continued to sell "pretty well". Critical reviews Awards Railroad Tycoon II won Computer Games Strategy Pluss and CNET Gamecenter's 1998 "Strategy Game of the Year" awards; the former magazine's editors wrote that it "capture[d] almost all of the things gamers had come to love about the original." It also received IGN's "Best Soundtrack" award. The game was a finalist for Computer Gaming Worlds 1998 "Best Strategy", GameSpot's "Strategy Game of the Year", IGN's "Best Strategy Game of the Year" and PC Gamer USs "The Best Real-Time Strategy Game" awards, all of which ultimately went to StarCraft. Computer Gaming Worlds editors lauded Railroad Tycoon II as "a brilliant update of a gaming classic", and the staff of PC Gamer US wrote that the game "did a terrific job of immersing the player in a richly detailed world of empire-building, commerce and micro-management." In 2000, the PlayStation port of Railroad Tycoon II received a