Amazon.com: Zoo Tycoon: Pc: Video Games

Amazon.com Review

Everybody likes the zoo. And why not? Casual walks, exotic animals, and fried foods are good fun. Managing a zoo of your very own is even better. Zoo Tycoon challenges you to build a zoo one path tile, one iron-reinforced fence, and one animal at a time. Zoo Tycoon bears more than just a title similarity to Roller Coaster Tycoon: it appears to be based on the same basic game engine. Building pens and paths, decorating, locating buildings, managing your staff, even the way your patrons look and how you tweak pricing are all extremely similar to the fun and intuitive Roller Coaster Tycoon. The gameplay consists of a series of inventive scenarios--sometimes building a zoo from scratch, other times taking over a failing or failed zoo and bringing it back from the brink.

Specifically, you've got to build pens and habitats with an eye toward the needs of each animal species. For example, putting bears in a savannah setting results in depressed, possibly sick, bears. You also have to tend to your human animals by locating gift shops, restaurants, drink stands, and bathrooms. Then you've got to adopt animals and hire zookeepers to tend your creatures. All of this costs money, but cutting corners can result in irate customers and unhappy animals. Unhappy animals bore people, and worse they make it difficult to adopt more exotic and finicky creatures, like pandas. Happy and well-fed animals will cavort and play, making your guests very happy. And happy guests results in more money for you to improve your zoo.

It's a balancing act keeping all the animals, keepers, and little wandering people happy, but the game is also a decorator sim. You've got to beautify your park, and it's easy to forget the specific scenario objectives and lose yourself in building the ultimate zoo. If you tire of the objectives entirely, you can delete some of your fences and watch the animals run amok on your guests (sometimes, through negligence, they can break free on their own). The carnivores grab, pin, and fling your guests (no blood, and no killing here), which lowers your zoo rating and dissuades people from visiting for a while. Still, it's great fun to watch. --Bob Andrews

Pros:

Plays like Roller Coaster Tycoon
Addictive and fun

Cons:

Plays, maybe, too much like Roller Coaster Tycoon
Simple graphics

Product Description

Build The Ultimate Zoo!

Product Information

This place is a real zoo and you're in charge! Go wild building the most fun and beautiful zoo you can imagine. Care forunpredictable and untamed animals-and those are just the guests. Plan wisely, if animals don't like their food environment or handling they interact poorly with visitors and fewer guests mean fewer dollars. Play smart, keep everyone happy and you'llbe a Zoo Tycoon!

Ready, Set, Go! With an intuitive design and interactive tutorials Zoo Tycoon is easy to learn - so you'll be put in the fun in no time.

Limitless Possibilities - Withover 200 different types of animals, exhibits and building materials, Zoo Tycoon delivers all the content and fun needed to really get into building, managing and maintaining a zoo.

Two Ways to Play - There's something foreveryone. Jump right in and start building a zoo or try the scenarios that start out easy and become increasingly more difficult.

More Fun Than a Barrel of Money - Create the ultimate zoo and reap big profits if you manageit well. Learn what it takes to make your animals and guests happy so you can be a Zoo Tycoon!

Manage the Unpredictable - Managing the animals and zoo guests is an unpredictable job - you'll never experience the same gametwice.

Product Features

Lions, Tigers, Bears, and More

Choose from over 40 unique animals for your zoo includingElephants, Cheetah, Penguins and many more!

Uncage your Imagination

Build with more than 175 exhibits and zoomaterials including wa

See all Product Description

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Customer Reviews

254 Reviews

5 star:		(154)
4 star:		(52)
3 star:		(29)
2 star:		(11)
1 star:		(8)

Average Customer Review

4.3 out of 5 stars (254 customer reviews)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

60 of 63 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Another Good God Game, September 30, 2001

stephanie spicer (Boise, ID) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Zoo Tycoon (CD-ROM)

This game takes up a lot after the Theme Park series but is a lot more in depth and better in my opinion. You have to keep the customers and your zoo animals happy. You hire animal handlers, tour guides, and clean up crew. If you played Theme Park you will find this game has a lot of the same tests and struggles. You have 50+ different animals to choice from and you get to choose their sex (Yes they reproduce). Now making the pens for your new found friends is fun! You start out with green grass... you have to make the enviroment for all the critters from the jungle to the artic from rocks to waterfalls. This is indeed an intense game. If you like god games you will probably like this...

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44 of 46 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Great Fun for All Ages, January 2, 2002

Lisa Shea "medieval swordfighting enthusiast" - See all my reviews
(HALL OF FAME REVIEWER) (VINE VOICE) (TOP 50 REVIEWER)

This review is from: Zoo Tycoon (CD-ROM)

The tycoon games get more and more fun as each new one comes out - the developers definitely learn from past experience and build suggestions into the new versions. Zoo Tycoon, the latest release, is about as fun and addictive as you can get!

This is just about the ultimate sim game from a number of points of view. First, like SimThemePark and RollerCoaster Tycoon, you've got the whole "please-your-people" aspect. You want them to have pretty paths to walk on, easy access to food, drink and restrooms, rides and attractions to see. Your visitors love looking at animals, and the happier the animals are, the more the people enjoy their experience.

But in Zoo Tycoon, instead of "boring" rides that you merely maintain, you now have incredibly animated animals! Put in a pair of lions, and you'll find them running around with glee, chasing each other, and lounging on rocks you give them. If you don't give them an environment they enjoy (say arctic tundra with cactusses) they'll pout and growl instead. If they're content, they might even have lion cubs, that you can watch grow over time!

The game is great for kids, adults, and everybody in between. I have friends with 3 computers in their house and all 3 are running this at the same time, as each little zoo is being worked on. You can have lions, tigers and bears ... flamingos and ostriches ... black leopards and rhinos, elephants and giraffes. You can research the ability to work with endangered animals, build aviaries and other special buildings.

The scenarios are great. You take over badly-run zoos, and cringe when you see the concrete-and-steel tiny homes these poor animals had! The pleasure you get when the once-miserable animal runs around its new home, happy and content, is very real. Their free-form games mean that you can build yourself your ideal zoo, too, on any number of map-styles.

Highly, highly recommended as a game that will be enjoyed for months and months!

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56 of 61 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Excessively COOL Game!, December 28, 2001

A Kid's Review

This review is from: Zoo Tycoon (CD-ROM)

The lions have escaped, and the panda is very sick, and all of the guests are hungry, and, and, and! Running your own zoo is not always easy. Many things can go wrong, but just as easily they can go right. Like watching the polar bear playing with her new baby or winning awards. In Microsoft's game, Zoo Tycoon, you get to experience running your own zoo with great graphics and features, awesome gameplay, and new suprizes everywhere!

There many games that are great but have terrible graphics. Zoo Tycoon is different. It has many veiw points, and beautiful scenery. All of the animals actually look real and not like robots. The people wander around and you can tell what they're doing. Whether it's sitting on the picnic table or cleaning up Zoo Poo. In conclusion, this games graphics are one of its strong points.

The best part of playing games is playing them! ZT has many features such as baby animals and wild animal escapes that make ZT one step higher than the average computer game. The people are a challenge alone to please and the animals are a whole other story. It is not impossible though and it is fun to get awards and extra cash for making everybody happy with animal toys and burger stands. On the other hand, for the more mischeveous mind, it is just as fun to build a zoo just to terrorize it! So with a last word, ZT is a great game to play, not just to look at its box:)

If you would like to have the full challenge of playing this game with no hints, I advise you do not read the following paragraph.
As in most games there are cheats in ZT. Perhaps you were running out of cash, you could just push Ctrl-4 and you automatically get 10,000 bucks. (do this before you build anythin as it destroys your fences) Or if you were feeling very mean you could name a gueest Alfred H. and birds would come and freak out all the people. Alfred Hitchcock lives on! There are many cheats to either help your zoo or make the people miserable. You can find them on many Zoo Tycoon web sites.

Overall Zoo Tycoon is a great game for all ages to play and I highly recomend it. I enjoyed it!

Pros:
-Great graphics
-Cool Cheats
-You get to pick male or female animals
-The animals have babies
-Good information on the animals
-You get to design exhibits with foilage and decorations
-Freeform or challenge zoos
-In freeform you can have up to 500 thousand dollars
-Terrorize the zoo and its inhabitants with one click of a mouse

-Build a beautiful zoo to please animals, guests and yourself

Cons:
-It can be slightly slow at times
-You can only have right angles on the fences limiting creativity
-The people and animals can be to hard to please

Overall it's a very neato frito game

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Most Recent Customer Reviews

5.0 out of 5 stars Great SIMS game!!
I can play this for hours. Many animals, stores, and additions you can unlock. Can be played many different ways, and it has several maps of all sizes. Read more

Published 10 months ago by Steve L.

4.0 out of 5 stars gameee
It is a fun game overall. But after a while, all your animals go sad. And non of its workers do anything, no matter how many u have. Read more

Published 10 months ago by Mary Walters

4.0 out of 5 stars Watch your polar bears
I originally bought Zoo Tycoon for my wife, who tends not to branch out much in variety of computer games. Read more

Published 16 months ago by Brent Butler

5.0 out of 5 stars Yes, it does work with Vista!
This is my kids' favorite game. I was worried it wouldn't work with Windows Vista, but it does! Life is good again at our house...

Published on January 26, 2010 by J. Memmott

5.0 out of 5 stars Zoo tycoon
The game arrived on time. Did not include anything more than the CD in a sleeve, which was fine with me. I was completely satisfied with my purchase and order.

Published on September 20, 2009 by Chris

1.0 out of 5 stars Microsoft no longer supports this game...DON'T BUY IT!!!
Microsoft no longer provides telephone support for this game. They only provide support for Zoo Tycoon 2. Read more

Published on May 20, 2009 by A. Gallant

5.0 out of 5 stars An Oldie But a Goodie
So I was playing this game the other day, and it prompted me to write a review for those who might not have been fortunate enough to play it yet. Read more

Published on July 21, 2008 by Zekeriyah

5.0 out of 5 stars Devilishly addictive
My 8 yr. old son and myself are hooked! Design habitats, zoo layout, organize your staff, and make those donors happy! Keep the customers satisfied... Read more

Published on March 18, 2008 by EugeSchu

5.0 out of 5 stars IF YOUR KID IS CREATIVE ....GET IT!
IF YOU HAVE A KID THAT IS CREATIVE AND IS WILLING TO SPEND SOME TO ALOT OF TIME CREATING THIS ZOO IT IS EXCELLENT! MY 9 AND 12 YEAR OLD LOVE IT. Read more

Published on January 7, 2008 by musiklover

4.0 out of 5 stars A Variety of Animals
Zoo Tycoon is a lot of fun. I like the challenge of making the animals happy. It was hard to learn at first, but now I've got the hang of it. Leveling the ground is hard. Read more

Published on February 7, 2007

› See all 254 customer reviews...

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