![]() ![]() It ranks up there with deliberately not repairing your bouncy castles in Theme Park and waiting for them to explode, ejecting hapless park attendees 20ft into the air. Bloaty Head disease, and the treatment of popping your afflicted patients with a needle like a helium balloon, was surely one of the most ridiculous ideas ever injected into the traditionally stodgy management genre. The production team wisely decided to use made-up diseases instead of going for realism. The characteristic daftness of Bullfrog Productions’ games, as evident in the highly sarcastic Theme Park (released for a variety of PC and console formats starting in 1994), was amplified in Theme Hospital. Yet all of this was conveyed in an entertaining manner, perfectly striking the balance between micromanagement and good fun. Building a staff room too far away or messing up a corridor layout could be enough for disgruntled employees to threaten a walk-out or for patients to get lost. You could pore over balance sheets and isolate individual points of financial weakness, if “winging it” wasn’t your thing furthermore, to build a successful hospital, you had to have a knack for complicated fields such as architecture and HR. The level of control it gave you in running a well-oiled healthcare moneymaking machine, combined with great UI work, was laudable for the era in which it was launched. ![]() While Peter Molyneux came up with the idea alongside James Leach, Molyneux left the bulk of the work to his team while he focused on what would become the critically-acclaimed Dungeon Keeper, which was released just three months after Theme Hospital. As already mentioned, the game was originally developed by Bullfrog Productions, though Krisalis Software did work on the PS port. ![]() Theme Hospital was first released for the PC in March 1997, with a PlayStation port arriving the following year. So, what was so special about TH and why did it and its siblings attract me to management sims more than its competitors? Grab a KitKat from a nearby vending machine inexplicably placed in the middle of the floor while I regale you with a bit of the history behind Theme Hospital, my background with the comedic cult classic, and a little bit of information on what followed for Bullfrog Productions. What’s more, Bullfrog Productions were the first game production company I considered myself a fan of, starting back with Theme Park but fuelled even further by Theme Hospital. It was not only instrumental in igniting my interest in games, but it was the first title I ever wrote a proper blog post about. In fact, it is a cornerstone of my gaming history in so many ways. Despite the relatively high price point for a non-AAA game, I was very excited about the release of Two Point Hospital, precisely because Theme Hospital was a milestone in my gaming history. The game is a tad more than a spiritual successor to Theme Hospital, with key figures such as Gary Carr and Mark Webley involved in both games, and operates on the same principle, but with more finesse. And if you were to suggest that I piece together a decent gaming rig and stop being so horribly dependent on Sony, you may as well be asking me to remove someone’s appendix.īut indeed, it has come back to haunt me, since I currently have no way of running Two Point Hospital - yes, my laptop is that craptacular. I’ve grown complacent about the fact that everything I want either 1) comes to the PS4, or 2) is so bare-bones in terms of its technical requirements that my cheap-as-chips elderly laptop can handle it, no probs. Usually, I’m quite indignant about any suggestion that my commitment to the PlayStation brand could bite me full force in the arse.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |