Theme Hospital

While I love the premise of Theme Hospital, there are so many glaring issues with the game that I couldn't play beyond a certain point. Rooms will spontaneously stop working, leaving a mass of patients piling up in the queue, maintanance staff often won't repair rooms without prompting, leaving you with broken, useless rooms (with no warnings to let you know that a room is no longer functional) in later levels. If there's an issue with your hospital, the game will frequently let you know that you aren't running things properly and that patients are complaining, but you'll never be informed of why (which is especially frustrating when everything seems to be running smoothly). The game will tell you that you need more radiators (even if you have them in every room), but there's never an indication of where or how many you need. The concept of the game is great; there's plenty to love about the construction options and how great it is when the hospital is running smoothly. But some levels drag on long after the player has 'finished' the hospital, and there's not quite enough variety in the conditions and construction to keep each level unique enough (especially when you begin each level with no completed reasearch). I appreciate this game for its place in the history of sim games and for it's style and quirkiness. But the myriad of issues that plague Theme Hospital make me feel like the history books are the only place it belongs today.

Right I'm going to start by saying I love, love, LOVE this game and always have, and it's exactly as I remember, trickier the further into the game you get, it's humorous and witty, and the same cheats exist to bail you out if you want to bypass the more challenging elements like a wuss. However on quite a few occasions now I have experienced the game glitching out on me, or just crashing altogether. You will occasionally get staff members or patients coding getting stuck, meaning their physical form is where it should be, but a second version of the same form stuck in one or two squares on the map, meaning you either have to reload from an earlier point in the game, or restart the level completely, which is just irritating. Granted these things were part of the game in the 90s as well, and it was by no means bug free, it's just hampered my playing experience more than it had when I was a kid.

The reason being that if you get too big for your pantaloons, the game will take you down a notch. It will actually slam you every 3 min with an epidemic, and cost you 12-20k a pop. Otherwise the graphics are awesome, even for being so old, gameplay has some realism with a toss of humor, and controls are relatively simple. Spread out your floor plans, take your time, and this will be one of your favorite games of all time. ALSO: I had a problem with graphic corruption, there is a file in your main installation folder called Launch Graphic Mode Setup that you must run to change the necessary settings. Fixed mine right up. Phenom II 1100T, Radeon 6950 2Gb.

Still a fun game to this day. Especially for a 25+ year old game. Get the CorsixTH(dot)com mod for this. Available for Win, Mac & Linux. You'll be happy you did.

I waited for this one, because it's one of my golden classics: easy to play, hard to master and soooo much fun. Design the rooms of your own hospital and work your way up from a small village to the big city. I always loved the crazy illnesses, the "theme series" typical handling and overall details. Bullfrog (best developer ever, imho) gives you so much to discover, see and laugh while rising the level step by step. And it gets messy quite fast, especially when a dozen new emergency cases make a run to your reception for immediate help - and they are all invisible! ;)