National Lampoon: University Tycoon

by ACTIVISION

Product Features

• Decide the curriculum for your school - Choose to focus on Medicine, the Sciences, Law & Humanities or less-reputable subjects like Magazine Studies
• Keep an eye on your school's finances - Balance your spending while hiring new teachers and improving facilities
• Every decision is in your hands -- from setting the tuition to deciding how much parking will be available
• Face the school boards and make important decision that affect the school's popularity - decide whether there should be cheerleaders, to allow smoking, etc.
• Meet multiple game goals to ensure you stay in control of the university - Improve enrollments, launch advertising campaigns to build your reputation and increase profits

Product Details

• Shipping: This item is also available for shipping to select countries outside the U.S.
• ASIN: B0004F3D82
• Item Weight: 5 ounces
• Media: CD-ROM
• Release Date: October 5, 2004
• Average Customer Review: 2.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (7 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #44,198 in Video Games (See Top 100 in Video Games)
• Discontinued by manufacturer: Yes

Product Description

National Lampoon's University Tycoon gives you a chance to get rich off the pursuit of higher learning! Take charge of a low-ranked school attended by dropouts and party kids, and turn it into a bastion of higher education. Use your business sense to keep the spending down while improving enrollments and academic performances -- and try to turn your little slacker college into a famous learning institution!

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

16 of 17 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Lacking Substance (And Programming), October 25, 2004

By 

aralissia "~aralissia" (North Norway) - See all my reviews

= Fun:2.0 out of 5 stars 

This review is from: National Lampoon: University Tycoon (CD-ROM)

National Lampoon is the type of game that after 20 minutes or so makes you think, "I want my money back". Alas, since I had read up on some previews before purchase I was disappointed to see it suffered from false advertising. Gamespot, for example showed preview pictures of students seen in a sim like manner and summarized it:" Create your own campus environment, complete with wild parties, beautiful girls, and plenty of alcohol." Well sure you can zoom in close and see that, but what is the point? This is not a "The Sims" type game; you do not control the characters what so ever. They do not have personalities and interact with you. Like Theme Park World or Zoo Tycoon, they are simply consumers with certain demands.

There are 5 types of students and 4 sub types that are similar but prefer something a touch more or less. Jocks, preppies, nerds, hotties, and outsiders. Building different sorority/fraternity houses allows them access to your campus. Each of the types has something that is very wanted, some of which overlap with other types. For example, Jocks want to eat a lot and nerds love pizza. So the pizza restaurant takes care of both these needs. They all kind of act the same, walk the same, talk the same but maybe this one drinks 1/8 less than this one. Gets pretty repetitive and boring and I found myself wishing I could "get rid of some of them". Here the game takes a genius turn, saving it from being a complete atrocity: You can build a clock tower and shoot the students. Pretty messed up when you think about it, but I guess they must've realized what annoying little creatures they had created and how angry consumers would need some way to vent their emotions.

The buildings are colourful enough, and some are locked (i.e. you have to place a jock frat house to get the mega jock frat house), but the system is pretty basic. Building placement is difficult sometimes as there is a predetermined layout of four square path sections in every mission. Plus, with most buildings, you can't really see where the entrance to the building is since they are highlighted almost white when you are going to place them. There isn't a whole lot of variety, with only three categories (student housing, campus/town buildings, and stuff/party buildings) and no decorative objects of any kind. You can't get a peek inside the buildings to see what's going on unless their open, and then the graphics are pretty straightforward. Watch in amazement as the character chugs a bottle of alcohol, repeating the same movement for 2-3 minutes.

Which brings us to the speed of the game. Every tycoon game needs to be able to allow the user some control over time. Not this one. Which can be quite irritating when you find yourself sitting for 20 minutes so you can earn enough money to pass a mission.

Navigation is basic, and it's pretty easy to move around, just using your right mouse to alter the angle and scrolling to the to edge to move. With my mouse I used the mouse wheel to zoom in and out, but this was kind of messed up and led to some weird crashes. Be prepared for a buggy game.

One of the problems is the variance of difficulty between missions. Even missions one level apart are plagued by this. You sweep from a mission suited for a 5 year old (we give you 1000 dollars. Build 2 buildings for 1000 dollars. Done) to one where you must find that one exact strategy to win. I.e. you have to put this building down, then this one, and finally that and this is the only way the mission objectives can be achieved. Game plays so boxed in sometimes I felt claustrophobic. The campaign only lasted me a day and a half. Replay value? Next to nil.

I also thought it a bit strange the only females in the game were hotties (and one outsider). A female nerd, jock, or preppie would have been neat to see.

Like the National Lampoon movies expect it to be very very politically incorrect and lacking substance. It does have its small moments of humour though.

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Complete rubbish, January 16, 2005

By 

Kim Jones (USA) - See all my reviews

= Fun:1.0 out of 5 stars 

This review is from: National Lampoon: University Tycoon (CD-ROM)

This game was overly simplistic with the effect that I was bored out of my wits within an hour of game play. The graphics are poor and the game lacks any intuition whatsoever. Very repetitve and boring.

6 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Terrible Terrible Terrible, June 12, 2005

By 

Ron W. Cousins "cuzman" (Denton, TX United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: National Lampoon: University Tycoon (CD-ROM)

This game is horrible. I saw it at Best Buy for $9.99 so I grabbed it thinking it would have depth like most of the Tycoon series. I was sadly mistaken.

It has 1 dimension of things you can do and that is about it.

Don't waste your money.