new to the board. I was considering buying RCT 2 or 3, not sure which one will give me the better nostalgia fix.

I've played RCT 1 back in the day and I recently had the urge to play again.

Any recommendations, 2 or 3?

First, welcome to our forum .

RCT2 or 3? Well, i think a good Gamer, bought all three Versions

Every Part of the RCT-Series has its own flair:

RCT-1: Nostalgia pure, and for me its a nice challenge to make Scenary/Theming with the limitations

RCT-2: in my opinion the best mix of all three, you have the nostalgia flair from RCT-1 and you can use CSO/CTR like in RCT-3, only the limitations could be sometimes a problem if you build more than 10k objects
for some inspiration whats possible with RCT-2, check out "nedesign.com"

RCT-3: no limitation for CSO/CTR objects, so only your fantasy is the limit. but 3D-Grafik is not really nostalgia and i think RCT-3 has not this "Woozy"-Flair what the little peeps give you in RCT1 & 2.
Coastercam is an plus for RCT-3

Its hard to say which one is good/better. I think you should bought all 3 Parts with Addons and i'm sure you have enough fun with it .

Lg Cheleste

If you want nostalgia then it’s no contest. Go with RCT2 which is basically an extended re-tread of RCT1. Another thing to remember with RCT2 is it’s not possible to store much more than 5,000 scenery items in the scenery folder and that’s regardless whether they all are CS or if some come with the game. You’ll need a trainer to place CS into your game and it will definitely help if you keep a list of what scenery file you replaced, where in the list you made the replacement and what the replacement is for. RCT2 will never crash unless game/park/file corruption has taken place through an incompatible trainer.

Like Cheleste said RCT3 is much more limitless than RCT2. There’s a bit of a learning curve getting used to the RCT3 menus and all the new features but after that it’s all fun. You’ll also notice that beyond RCT1 and RCT2 after the adequate isometric view they provided, it takes some getting used to the new world of 3-D graphics in RCT3. With RCT3 you will feel the sky’s the limit and the possibilities are endless until you start building huge busy parks crammed with custom stuff and those parks make your graphics card, CPU, RAM and game engine run full tilt and flat out – at which point you’ll begin to get game crashes. Park CleanUp is a tremendous help at those times but is only a temporary measure.

RCT2 can be run on a mediocre system with a so-so graphics card. You’ll need a more powerful system and higher end graphics card for RCT3.