Checking back into Bullfrog’s management sim.
Theme Hospital has been through several stages of life. At launch in 1997 it was a big deal, the successor to Theme Park—the game that made Bullfrog’s fortune.
Theme Park was an irreverent, colorful management simulator that turned the Guildford studio from a domestic player to an international contender. Theme Hospital adopted Theme Park’s tone—and great swathes of its code—and turned it to a different purpose: The running of a profit-driven British hospital where patients suffer from a variety of comedic, and fictitious, diseases. It was softly irreverent in a way that drew flack from government and the press at the time, but would entirely pass under the radar now.
Then Theme Hospital found a second life as a bargain-bin perennial throughout the low years of the early ’00s. Visit any game shop (remember those?), and there it would be, in a number of different budget imprints. Millions have likely played it. It is kid-friendly but cheeky, lightly strategic but chiefly about having fun with your hospital, its beleaguered staff, and its comedy gadgets. It would run on your parents’ PC. It has been worth a fiver for about 15 years and is still worth a fiver today.
GAG ORDER
Indeed, it costs about that to pull Theme Hospital down from GOG complete with a DOSBox launcher that bypasses the Windows compatibility issues that plague a lot of games from this era. Brutal but necessary full screening of its 640x480 native resolution aside, the process of running Theme Hospital on a modern PC is relatively painless.
Esta historia es de la edición June 2018 de PC Gamer US Edition.
Comience su prueba gratuita de Magzter GOLD de 7 días para acceder a miles de historias premium seleccionadas y a más de 9,000 revistas y periódicos.
Ya eres suscriptor ? Conectar
Esta historia es de la edición June 2018 de PC Gamer US Edition.
Comience su prueba gratuita de Magzter GOLD de 7 días para acceder a miles de historias premium seleccionadas y a más de 9,000 revistas y periódicos.
Ya eres suscriptor? Conectar
YELLOW CARD
Flawed deckbuilder DUNGEONS AND DEGENERATE GAMBLERS rarely plays a winning hand
GODS AND MONSTERS
AGE OF MYTHOLOGY: RETOLD modernizes a classic RTS with care
SPACED OUT
After a strong first impression, WARHAMMER 40K: SPACE MARINE 2 runs out of steam
SLIDES RULE
Redeeming a hated puzzle mechanic with SLIDER
DINER HARD
Rewriting the rules of horror in ALAN WAKE
"Kay Vess, galactic tomb raider"
Feeling like Lara Croft in STAR WARS OUTLAWS
LETHAL COMPANY
A return to some explosive post-launch patches.
MARVEL: ULTIMATE ALLIANCE
Enter the multiverse of modness.
TRACK GPT
Al's teaching sim racers to improve-what about other games?
FINDING IMMORTALITY
Twenty-five years on, PLANESCAPE: TORMENT is still one of the most talked-about RPGs of all time. This is the story of how it was created as a 'stay-busy' project by a small team at Black Isle Studios