Theme Hospital

by Electronic Arts

Product Details

• ASIN: B000094TCG
• Item Weight: 3.2 ounces
• Media: Video Game
• Average Customer Review: 4.1 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (24 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #3,705 in Video Games (See Top 100 in Video Games)

Product Description

Can you balance the books and the bedpans?Product InformationIt's a matter of laugh or death in the sequel to Bullfrog's best selling ThemePark.  Design maintain and manage a hi-tech hospital facility making themost of limited resources and turning cures into cash.  The Grim Reaperstalks the corridors the ill have some very odd aliments and the staff want toplay doctors and nurses together.  You will be struck by the fun if youdon't struck off! Product Features Detailed graphics Improved Artificial Intelligence Research and develop your own cures Deal with emergencies and epidemics as they arise Over 30 weird diseases to diagnose - including hairy-itis bloaty head and slack tongue.Windows Requirements Windows 95 98 Me XP Home Edition Pentium 75 MHz processor 16 MB of RAM 55 MB Hard Drive space DirectX 5 compatible Sound Card DirectX 5 compatible Graphics Card 4X CD-ROM drive Mouse Keyboard 

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

32 of 33 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Is there a doctor in the house?, January 23, 2005

By 

Daniel Jolley "darkgenius" (Shelby, North Carolina USA) - See all my reviews
(HALL OF FAME REVIEWER)    (TOP 100 REVIEWER)    (VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

= Fun:5.0 out of 5 stars 

Theme Hospital, released in 1997 by Bullfrog, is a relatively simple but addictively fun game that truly stands the test of time. It puts you in complete control of a series of hospitals, working your way up from one larger institution to another. The job gets harder as you move up the ladder, as greater crises and burdens lie in wait to bring you down. It all starts fairly simple. At your first hospital, you just need to set up a general practitioner's office or two, a general diagnostics room, a pharmacy, a psychiatric office, and get your researchers working on new diseases and ways to go about combating them. You've got to hire doctors, nurses, handymen, and a receptionist - and you get a wide range of folks to choose from. Will you pay top dollar for the efficient GP's and specialists, or will you settle for abrasive, lazy types who smell of cabbage? Cure enough patients, make enough money, and establish a good enough reputation, and job offers for bigger and better assignments will come your way.

As you progress, you'll get access to an assortment of fancy diagnostic equipment and treatment clinics. For those hard-to-diagnose cases, there are X-ray rooms, cardiology exams, high-dollar scanners, and the like, and before long you're even ready to build an operating theater and put scalpels in the hands of those crazy doctors of yours. As for the diseases and conditions, they aren't your typical fare: alongside gastrointestinal-type ailments such as the squibs, you have folks with Elvis Complex (who do indeed show up in Elvis leisure suits), invisibility, Bloaty Head (just pop their head and reinflate it), Slack Tongue (chop chop), Baldness (wait'll you see how to cure that), and an assortment of silly afflictions. Of course, you have your basic fractures and uncommon cold cases, as well. Each condition is more funny than serious (especially in terms of how it is contracted), but keeping your hospital up and working efficiently gets to be pretty serious when you've got patients queued up in the aisles, tired doctors recuperating in the staff lounge, diagnostic machines temporarily down for repair, emergencies bringing in a number of new patients who must be cured quickly if your reputation isn't to suffer, earthquakes shaking things up, and epidemics popping up and wreaking havoc. Patients can be pretty messy, as many of them tend to throw up all over the place. If you don't have enough dependable handymen around to clean up the mess, the Ministry of Health will be all over you.

The graphics look surprisingly good even today - although 1997 graphics certainly don't compare to those of recent games. There is a decent variety of looks among patients, and it's almost worth killing a few of them just to watch them ascend to heaven (or, on occasion, drop through the floor on their way to an alternate destination). The game is simple enough for anyone to play and enjoy, although things get pretty challenging as you progress deeper into the game. A lot of games today sacrifice fancy graphics for actual gameplay, but Theme Hospital is the kind of game you enjoy playing years and years after its release.

10 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Micromanagement fun!, July 25, 2007

By 

Barbara Pohland (New York City, NY United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

= Fun:5.0 out of 5 stars 

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Theme Hospital (Video Game)

This is a pretty old game, so you probably won't be impressed with the graphics. I played this about 10 years ago and still love it.

Basically you manage a hospital. You are responsible for building different types of rooms, hiring nurses/doctors/handymen/receptionists, and control your in and outflow of money.

I'm not sure how many levels there are since I've never beaten the game, but there seem to be plenty. In order to move onto the next level you will have to meet the goal of curing a certain number of patients, maintaining your popularity, and earning a certain amount of money. Sometimes the game throws in curve balls in the harder levels such as epidemics.

I cannot think of what other game this game is similar to, but if you like micromanagement and challenges, then you should probably give this a try. But don't forget, this is a pretty old game so you may not have the control and graphics of today!

7 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Is there a cure for game addiction?, December 22, 2004

By 

mwreview "mwreview" (Northern California, USA) - See all my reviews
(TOP 1000 REVIEWER)   

= Fun:5.0 out of 5 stars 

Let me start by stating that I am an Atari 2600 girl who does not normally like the games of "today" because I find them too complicated and too time-consuming to figure out. That is, until I found this game. For some reason, I was attracted to the title. It sounded like a fun game. When I started playing it, I found it to be not only fun but very easy to learn and quite addictive! All you use is a mouse and you can build your hospital the way you want (including restrooms, staff room complete with pool table and arcade game, soda machines, etc.), hire staff, purchase property for more rooms, etc. The higher the level you get, the more neat stuff you can build (scanners, x-ray room, operating theatre, even a hair restoration clinic) and the more obstacles you face (earthquakes, emergencies, epidemics, etc.). There are so many things to control in this game from making sure each staff member is in the proper place to shooting rats that roam your hospital. Sometimes a stomach virus will spread in the hospital and you have to hurry maintenance men to clean up the vomit (the sound effects are also a hoot). The game even keeps stats like how many times a bench or soda machine is used so you can rearrange your hospital more efficiently. The ailments patients suffer are hilarious: things like slack tongue, spare ribs, and bloaty head. My favorite is King's Syndrome where patients come in dressed as Elvis and have to see a psychiatrist. Once they take off their Elvis outfits, they're cured! I find myself playing this game for hours! My only criticism is that it freezes up in later levels and sometimes patients get stuck in doors which makes a diagnosis or treatment room useless and you keep having to drag your doctors out of there. Theme Hospital is definitely worth the money, but you can also buy this game as part of the "Top Ten Blue" pack for less.