Due for release in the next few months, Atari's Tycoon City New York casts you as an ambitious business type looking to fill your pockets with cash and the streets of Manhattan with assets. But to anyone who's not familiar, it can look a wee bit complex.

To clear the fog of confusion, we sat down for a detailed interrogation with Jon Law, lead designer and top info-giver, and got him to explain just how Tycoon City New York works.

For anyone who's never played a Tycoon game, what's the crucial aim?
To build up a variety of businesses, upgrade them to bring in the customers, earn enough cash and become the city development king of New York. By the end you will have built a fully populated, fully functioning Manhattan.

How many options for market or product choice are there? Can you build coffee shops and set up exclusive wine bar empires?
We've taken the businesses found in New York and balanced the variety to reflect the real place. There's a lot of variety in clothing stores, restaurants, bars, clubs.

Each variant appeals to different markets, so in a diversely populated area you can have every type of club. In a more focused location only some clubs will be popular. There is a mass of businesses to choose from.

How much freedom is there in presenting your shops/areas to the public? Can you create shop fronts for each new shop, for example?
Each district has a building for each business. A coffee bar in Greenwich will come in a small, narrow building. In midtown it can be twice the width and three time the height. These are preset and help keep the architectural integrity of the area – a must when trying to recreate the city.

Once placed there are loads of upgrades to place; customising the building, not only to your tastes but also based on the businesses needs. If you need to increase the Sphere of Influence of the business (the catchment area), you add signs, add staff to improve a customer's experience, use advertisements and pavement signs to attract people in, and use plants to increase the general beauty of the area.

Loads of pavement furniture can be added, too, which customers can use before entering a store.