The concept is simple. It’s a hospital. People come in with illnesses, your
excellent staff cure them, and they go home happy – like holding a mirror up to
real life, in fact.

The hospital you will be building, however, is more
akin to the child of a diabolical union between Fawlty Towers, Green Wing
and Carry On Doctor. Your patients will be troubled by Bloaty
Head, which will need deflating, or Slack Tongue, which will need trimming up
with a guillotine. You’ll need to shoot any rats you find scurrying about the
place quickly, before anyone sees them. Scrimp on your cleaning budget and risk
entire corridors being literally swept away on a tidal wave of vomit.

It’s time, then, to snap on your rubber gloves, polish your stethescope
and prepare to cure the afflicted as we explore the demented world of Theme
Hospital.

This madhouse of a game perhaps best typifies Bullfrog Productions’ approach to
software design during their ten year romp around the hard drives, from 1987 to
1997. Theme Hospital was the sequel to Theme Park, and was
intended to be the second in a never-completed franchise that was eventually
beaten to the punch by the Manager series – Hotel, Golf Course,
Shopping Mall, Airport and so on, apparantly for ever.

Having
inherited what is essentially a big empty building, the player would set about
hiring staff – the best the budget would stretch to, with the crucial trait of
being able to work when tired – and designing the general layout of the curative
powerhouse he was to run. This was simple enough, and involved juggling GP’s
offices, diagnostic rooms, treatment facilities, and wards and special care for
long term patients.

Ah, the patients. It would be so much easier
without them, of course. They wander in, are directed to the appropriate queue
by your reception staff and stand around looking poorly until you sort them
out. Chuck a few yukka plants about the place – they like that sort of thing.
Also, some benches for them to sit on is a nice touch, and plenty of vending
machines. If you’re keeping one eye on your profits – and you’ll need to be,
this being an American hospital – you’ll have benches next to radiators so that
your patients get hot and buy, presumably, Theme Coke from your vending
machines. Whlie the player has no direct control over the ailing hordes,
individual patients can be picked up and moved about if, for example, they are
dying and need treatment quickly. Staff, too, can be hurled into areas where
they are most urgently needed by this method.

It all sounds like plain
sailing. Sounds like, yes. But really, this is a fiendishly difficult
game once it gets going, with epidemics, staff walk outs, emergencies, and the
attention of the Ministry of Health. The ability to micro manage is very much
required, as individual salaries need to be negotiated, treatment costs set, and
a constant attention paid to the overall reputation of the hospital – which,
ultimately, is what will make or break it.

Theme Hospital is a
visually lovely game, all bouncy and colourful, and aesthetically remarkable for
the time. In this particular respect, it has managed to pull off the happy
trick of being completely finished graphics-wise, such that having any
of the subsequent technological advances inflicted upon it would only detract
from the whole atmosphere. Get a copy from eBay or download it or something –
processing the poorly will never be this much fun again.