Weekend Diversion: The CTA Video Game

By Marcus Gilmer in Miscellaneous on Dec 20, 2008 7:00PM

No, that's not a typo. There really is a CTA video game. It's called "Railfan" and it's a Japan-only release for the Playstation 3. After a bit of digging, we discovered the game is actually two years old and was one of the launch titles for Playstation 3 in the fall of 2006. As train simulators are apparently huge across the Pacific, it's no surprise that the game wasn't released here as...it's a train simulator. Though we suppose there are some CTA history buffs and Metra-steering teens out there who'd dig it.

Chicago was the one American city offered in addition to the Japanese cities of Tokyo and Kyoto. A sequel was developed allowing the user to steer high speed trains in Taiwan. One more quirk: the Chicago edition appears to only offer the Brown Line. Sorry, South Siders.

A few things we hope the game includes:

• Drunk college kids
• Chads and Trixies talking way too loud on their cell phones
• A bonus game where you decided whether or not to kick homeless people off the train
• Clean the cars so they don't smell like urine
• Going Express at will
• Doing that thing where the train slows to a stop so everyone gets up to get off the train, and then it lunges forward another 20 feet making everyone who stood up fall over

If you're the kind of tech geek that has the equipment to crack region-restrictions or play region-free games, you can find copies of the game online for your enjoyment. As for now, we're left the following riveting videos that also demonstrate the PS3's Blue-Ray capabilities by capturing the Chicago cityscape in pretty nice detail. [via the-jet-set]