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Is there a doctor in the house?

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 14 / 14
Date: January 24, 2005
Author: Amazon User

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.

Is there a cure for game addiction?

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 4 / 4
Date: December 23, 2004
Author: Amazon User

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.

THE WONDER THAT IS THEME HOSPITAL!!!

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 2 / 2
Date: August 05, 2005
Author: Amazon User

THEME HOSPITAL IS INDEED ADDICTIVE AND SO INFURIATING WHEN YOU WATCH YOUR STATUS GET LOWER AND LOWER AND THEN YOU DIE. WHAT A TERRIBLE FEELING!! COMPARE THIS WITH THE AMAZING FEELING ONE GETS WHEN HAVING COMPLETED A LEVEL AND YOU ARE WAITING FOR THE LETTER TO ARRIVE FROM THE MINISTERY OF HEALTH. BUT HOW CAN I IMPROVE MY REPUTATION?!?!? IT IS SOOOO HARD!

Know how to run a hospital lol

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 2 / 2
Date: September 21, 2006
Author: Amazon User

I love this game. Its so addictive and its so much fun. It always gets harder as you get to the next level and there is so many little funny things about it. Like the machines that they operate. For example: theres a machine that is suppose to get a person with a swelled head back to a normal size head and the head actually pops lol. Theres nothing like bloody about it. Its just plain fun and its been one of my fav games since it came out.

An oldie but a goodie

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 1 / 1
Date: January 28, 2007
Author: Amazon User

This is a hillarious SIM-type game; graphics may be dated, but its wonderfully addicting and timeless. Disorders like "the squirts" and "the piles" keep you laughing throughout!

A Hospital Where The Staff Are Just As Funny As The Patients

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 0 / 0
Date: October 07, 2007
Author: Amazon User

I love the pc game "Theme Hospital". You design rooms, hire and manage staff, cure patients, research diseases, kill vermin, and invite officials to check out the hospital (to award grants). Every once in a while, you will receive an invitation (depending on how well you are doing in the game) to oversee a bigger hospital and get a promotion.

When I receive an invitation to go to another hospital, I usually turn down one or two offers (don't worry, they'll keep coming) until the other hospital offers a better salary. At the end of each level, a statistics sheet appears and you can see how many patients you've cured, killed, what your hospital rank is and how much your hospital has made.

At the bottom of the game, you can click a screen to hire staff (doctors, nurses, receptionist, maintenance men). Be sure to look over their qualifications carefully before hiring them or you may end up with a lazy doctor who kills more patients than he cures. The same is true for the nurses. When a patient dies, the Grim Reaper usually appears to take their soul away. .

Maintenance men can also get lazy. Click on the maintenance man and adjust the level of their duties to perform certain tasks. Hire one maintenance man to only pick up garbage, another to water plants and another to fix deteriorating hospital equipment. All staff will get tired so make sure that you build them a staff room. They may also occasionally ask for raises. You can choose to give them a raise or fire them.

In the advanced levels, you will receive bigger hospitals. You can buy more buildings to house other rooms such as The Inflating Room, The Cast Remover Room, Operating Room, Ward, Research, Training Room and more. Once the rooms are built, the game will tell you which staff member (doctor or nurse) can perform in that room. If you run out of money, you can borrow money from the bank. Just be sure to pay them back ASAP to avoid high interest charges.

You will know if you have lost the game when a newspaper heading appears with a scandal written about your hospital.

very fun game

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 0 / 0
Date: April 11, 2008
Author: Amazon User

this game is really fun, despite it being as old as it is, it seems as though the, the sims serious was copying this game because they both seem to play alike a little bit. The graphics are good, but the gameplay is really fun, i highly recommend this game to anyone that likes simulation games.

It only hurts when I laugh!

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 6 / 7
Date: October 26, 2004
Author: Amazon User

This game is great. I've played all sorts of the theme and Sim games, I've built cities, theme parks, Malls and the like. I've run a railroad and many a war. But, this game has a fun element that the others are missing. Everything is designed to bring a smile.

I have polayed it off and on for years and am about to buy a new copy on account of my UK version doesn't play on my US playstation 2. *sigh* whatever happened to compatibility?

The greatest thing about this game is that it's so addictive, you just can't stop trying to get the next diagnostic improvement or build that new wing.

The worst thing about it is that it needs more depth! Theme Hospital 2.0 please. Never mind the mind-boggling graphics and cinematic realism, how about some more of the wonderful humor and wit, and FUN, evident in ths game, only with even more options and even more stuff to do? Please?

But this if you love creative things!

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 5 / 6
Date: October 10, 2004
Author: Amazon User

Have a taster of being in charge of a bustling hospital. Enjoy the ups and downs as well as the money and bankruptcy.

I love this game because of the feel of being in charge and bossing everyone about continuously! Build scanners, wards, reception, and well, nearly everything you can think of!

Some of the' illnesses' may come as a little joke to you e.g. inflation of the head' (where the man/woman head has completely expanded) but consequences could be fatal if you let them go untreated. May they rest in peace!

The slight problem in the game is it can get confusing, and boring, it's all the same thing through the game: cure people.

The graphics are not great either, but if you like comics, this cartoony style of graphic is the one for you!

I love this game because of the strategy involved, and the level of difficulty in the game. I would recommend this to people above 8+. Believe me it's really a good laugh!

Micromanagement fun!

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 4 / 4
Date: July 25, 2007
Author: Amazon User

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!

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