The original Thrillville made you a rollercoaster mad scientist in charge of your own left-field amusement parks, but unlike its customization-obsessed competition, Rollercoaster Tycoon, the game delivered a bigger payoff when you unlocked the numerous minigames (from miniature golf to bumper cars) hidden throughout it. Thrillville: Off The Rails continues that theme, but this time, the coaster action is so intense that you'll want to take your time getting to the parks' other diversions.

Because of Thrillville's relatively limited customization (you can go wild building attractions, but the sandbox has obvious borders), kids will take to the theme-park builder much faster than they would in a Tycoon game. It's still not easy, but if your kids can work Tony Hawk's skatepark builder, they should adapt quickly to the principles here.

Each of the five customizable parks has three themed areas -- from spooky to snowy -- in which you can place attractions, and as you move about the parks, you get to observe and interact with your guests (some of whom are downright rude!) and learn what makes them tick... and yak. To that point, the coaster action this time is just bananas, with features such as nitro-powered jumps, parachute landings and full 90-degree drops making good on the title's premise to go literally off the rails.

Again, this wouldn't be a Thrillville title without tons of minigames, and besides bringing back 20 old standbys from the original, Off The Rails adds 14 new minigames to the mix ("Stunt Rider" is shown below). And, just as the game experience varies across consoles, so does that of the minigames. (I personally reviewed the Xbox 360 version, which, besides having Xbox Live content, also packs easily the sharpest graphics next to the PC version.) You haven't truly experienced "Robot Boxing" till you've punched and swung it out on the Wii remote.

Thrillville: Off The Rails is available now for Xbox 360, Wii, PlayStation 2, PSP, PC and Nintendo DS.