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.
この記事は PC Gamer US Edition の June 2018 版に掲載されています。
7 日間の Magzter GOLD 無料トライアルを開始して、何千もの厳選されたプレミアム ストーリー、9,000 以上の雑誌や新聞にアクセスしてください。
すでに購読者です ? サインイン
この記事は PC Gamer US Edition の June 2018 版に掲載されています。
7 日間の Magzter GOLD 無料トライアルを開始して、何千もの厳選されたプレミアム ストーリー、9,000 以上の雑誌や新聞にアクセスしてください。
すでに購読者です? サインイン
Special Report- Stacked Deck - Monster Train, a deckbuilding roguelike that firmly entrenched itself as the crown prince to the kingly Slay the Spire back in 2020, was the kind of smash success you might call Champagne Big.
Monster Train, a deckbuilding roguelike that firmly entrenched itself as the crown prince to the kingly Slay the Spire back in 2020, was the kind of smash success you might call Champagne Big. Four years later, its successor Inkbound’s launch from Early Access was looking more like Sandwich Big.I’m not just saying that because of the mountain of lamb and eggplants I ate while meeting with developer Shiny Shoe over lunch, to feel out what the aftermath of releasing a game looks like in 2024. I mean, have I thought about that sandwich every day since? Yes. But also, the indie team talked frankly about the struggle of luring Monster Train’s audience on board for its next game.
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