I was in junior high when I first played it. I wanted to be like the guy in this video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y5azQdQR35E

But the best I ever did was diagnose people correctly. Most of the time I ended up playing the game like this guy:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sczxk0IkcVY&feature=related

I played them, they were hard.
Maybe because I didn't exactly acquire them legally so there were no manuals...
But I did kind of like them, even if I did misdiagnose often.. sometimes because I wanted to do brain surgery on the guy with the sprained ankle.

I have a boxed copy. I played it once. These games were way too hard for a 10 year old.

i recall this awesome graphic game as well :)
Most of the time it was a coinflip. I went to school , to lazy to read all the symptoms and terminology and just remebered some basic keywords.

It reminds me now of the simpsons episode where the doc is operating a hamster.
The furry rodent eventually dies and he states "This is the part of the job that i hate" and tosses the hamster in the bin through a basketball ring.
That's how i felt during the game ;)

I played the second one, at least. But sadly the sound didn't work properly, and this proved fatal. Because when you were drilling holes in people's heads, you needed to listen to the noise the drill made so that you stopped drilling just after getting through the skull (before you got to the brain). I couldn't do that, so... people died.

Hahaha. Well at least I have the comfort of being in the majority on this one.

Heh, looks like the DS game Trauma Center actually had a grandaddy.

I had Life and Death on the amiga.It came with a surgeons mask and was so hard it was a joke.

I've killed more patients than Dr Kovorkian, and like him I did it on purpose. :P

I've played both games, bun only so much as to finish the basic surgery at each of them (I think it was appendix surgery for the first and a case of leaking brain for the second). I almost died laughing at the second game when if you kill someone "accidentally" when getting him a CAT scan when you fail to notice his allergies to shellfish or something, and then a few of the Doc's are eating pizza over a cadaver and making corny jokes about his "condition".

Suffice it to say, do not (and I can't stress this enough) allow me inside a hospital even if my life is at stake. You'll regret it.

That brings back memories... I played this while I was a computer sales rep at a Military Exchange years ago on a 286 PC. I nearly passed out while playing the PC version... broke into a cold sweat and had to sit down. ...Sure CGA graphics, but I have a vivid imagination. :) Embarrassing, yes, but I gave the Marines present a good laugh.

I did get better, all without the manual, just trial and error... lots of errors.