Theme Hospital (PC)

...discovered Ciao. I remembered playing Theme Hospital many years ago and found it too hard but I decided to give it another try.

The Developers - Bullfrog
====================
Bullfrog Ltd was founded in 1987 by two game enthusiasts - Les Edgar and Peter Molyneux. They wanted to provide people with more mind-provoking gaming than you got with the arcade type games that were out at the time. After a big success in 1994 ...
...similar type of game - Theme Hospital in 1997. But could it be as good as Theme Park? Or better? Of course it could!

The aim of the game is to build, maintain and run your own hospital. You play the part of the administrator/manager and your job is to keep the hospital running smoothly and the patients healthy. Sounds easy doesn't it? But of course it isn't!

To win the level these conditions must be met
•make ... more

When I'm not whiling the hours away on Ciao, this game is what takes up the remainder of my free time (which is not much!). After writing lots of reviews last month I was fed up and decided to see what PC games I had on my shelf - they'd been out of a job since I discovered Ciao. I remembered playing Theme Hospital many years ago and found it too hard but I decided to give it another try.

The Developers - Bullfrog
====================
Bullfrog Ltd was founded in 1987 by two game enthusiasts - Les Edgar and Peter Molyneux. They wanted to provide people with more mind-provoking gaming than you got with the arcade type games that were out at the time. After a big success in 1994 with the Theme Park game (which sold over a million copies!), Bullfrog came out with the idea of a similar type of game - Theme Hospital in 1997. But could it be as good as Theme Park? Or better? Of course it could!

The aim of the game is to build, maintain and run your own hospital. You play the part of the administrator/manager and your job is to keep the hospital running smoothly and the patients healthy. Sounds easy doesn't it? But of course it isn't!

To win the level these conditions must be met
•make a healthy profit
•build an expensive hospital
•get an good reputation
•cure a certain number of patients
•don't kill or turn away too many patients

First of all, treatment rooms need to be built. Only a few basic rooms will be available at the start such as GP's offices, General Diagnosis, Psychiatry, Ward and Pharmacy. The GP's office is essential as this is your patients' first point of call after meeting the receptionist.
Along the bottom of the screen are many different buttons but I'll just talk about the main four. When the first button is pressed a window will pop up, giving you the option of building rooms from 4 categories.

There are tons of rooms available to build as you progress in the game.
GP's Office - They visit here to find out what illness they have and what treatment room they need to go to.
General Diagnosis - If the GP can't figure out their disease then they will be sent here for further testing.
Research Department - If General Diagnosis still can't find out the illness then the patient will be referred to the Research Department where the cure will most probably be found.
Pharmacy - Various medicines are available here to treat a variety of illnesses.
Cardio - Another Diagnosis room to discover diseases.
Inflation - Used to treat patients with bloated heads.
Slack Tongue Clinic - Used to treat patients with Slack tongues
Fracture Clinic - To remove peoples casts from their arms, legs and heads
Psychiatry - To treat patients with King's Complex (where the patient dons a cat-suit, suede shoes and eats cheeseburgers) along with other various psychiatric problems.
Operating Room - Patients from the ward with various diseases are sent here to be operated on.
Ward - Patients are sent here for further study or in preparation for surgery
Training - Hire a Consultant and send doctors here to train them to become better doctors or even to learn a trade such as a Surgeon or Researcher.
Staff Room - Somewhere for your staff to rest and put their feet up. Or play pool - whatever takes their fancy.
Toilets - Self explanatory I think. Patients need these or they won't be very happy at all.

All the rooms come equipped with the items you'll need. You can buy extra items by clicking the second button, such as plants, radiators, fire extinguishers and coke machines to keep the staff and patients happy. By clicking the third button you can move items around or delete them.

Speaking of staff, you'll need to employ some if you want patients to come to your hospital. You can do this by clicking the fourth large button. Make sure you look at the green bar between the abacus and computer on the panel that appears when you are hiring staff, as this is their skill meter - the higher the better.There are four types of staff available to employ:

• Doctors - These can work almost anywhere e.g. GP's office, Operating Room, Psychiatry, Inflation Room. They can be employed at three levels -Junior, Doctor and Consultant. Obviously consultants are worth more and work better than Doctors so try to hire more of them, although you can train a doctor all the way up to a consultant at a Doctors wage. Surgeons, Researchers and Psychiatrists are needed to work in the special rooms around the hospital and doctors can also be taught these professions in the training room.
• Nurses - Only a few nurses are needed in the hospital as they only work in the Ward, Pharmacy and Fracture Clinic. They can also vaccinate patients when an epidemic occurs.
• Handymen - They are needed just as much as the doctors as without these men, the hospital would be full of rubbish with broken machinery and dead plants. You can make them have a priority for one of these tasks above which they will then carry out more than the others.
• Receptionists - They meet and greet your customers and guide them in the right direction of the room they need to go to. They never get tired, are always at their command posts and never ask for a pay rise.
  If they are not happy in their job they will tell you by way of a little icon above their head e.g. if they are cold then a blue face will appear, if they are thirsty a cup. These problems can be remedied easily but if you don't then they will ask for a pay rise.
  They need a staff room to rest in or they will overwork themselves and walk out of their job, leaving you in the lurch. If staff get the rest they need they should be happy and work to the best of their ability.

The patients get harder to please as you advance through the levels. They need seats while they wait to go into the rooms, coke machines for when they get thirsty and plants to improve their surroundings. They want a clean, warm hospital with up-to-date equipment and they don't want to wait long for treatment. If you don't meet all these requirements then you will lose a customer and most probably the level too if you don't do something about it. Some diseases you may encounter in the game are:
Baldness - The cause is Telling lies and making up stories to be popular. The symptoms are Shiny-headedness and embarrassment.
Gut Rot - The cause is Mrs. O'Malley's Good Time Whisky Cough Mixture. The symptoms are no cough but no stomach-wall lining either.
Slack Tongue - the cause is Chronic over discussion of soap operas. The symptoms are tongue swells to five times its original length.
Heaped Piles - the cause is standing around by water coolers. The Symptoms are that the patient feels like he/she is sitting on a bag of marbles.The hospital can get extremely busy and hectic, with hundreds of patients queuing up waiting to see the GP while he's gone off to the staff room, leaving an empty room and angry patients.
The machines need to be maintained regularly or they'll blow up leaving you with a useless room and maybe a death or two on your hands.
To make things even harder you'll get events that occur at anytime during the game:

1. Epidemics - When these occur you'll be given the option to announce it to the ministry of health and be fined around £3000 or keep it secret and try and cure the affected patients within a time limit. If you try to keep it secret you and fail you can be fined up to £10,000!
2. Emergencies - You can gain lots of cash with these and boost your reputation. A group of people - ranging from 1 to 10 - will come to your hospital to be cured, but it has to be done within a time limit or you'll have more deaths on your hands and your reputation will go down resulting in less patients coming to the hospital. You will receive a bonus if completed and a reputation boost.
3. VIP's - Sometimes a VIP will wish to visit your hospital. You can accept or deny but if he likes your hospital then you will receive a cash boost.
4. Earthquakes - These occur on the later levels and if your machines aren't maintained well enough will break them. It also makes patient fall over which can affect their health.

To help you out a bit there is a doctor who pops up on screen offering you helpful advice and a tannoy of where doctors are needed.

Along the bottom of the screen in addition to the four big buttons are a range of small buttons and icons. You can see your bank balance and if you need one, you can get a loan from the bank. You can also check your how your staff are doing, what they are up to and how happy they are. On another you can buy new plots of land to expand your hospital and turn up the heating. There is a screen to check how close you are to finishing the level and another screen to see how well your research is coming along.

When a level is complete you will get offered a better job in a better hospital - with a higher salary, which you can take straight away or you can carry on playing the level if you wish. You can save at any time during the level or use the auto-save feature. I recommend not using the auto-save as sometimes it can save just about when you're about to lose a level and then you lose your game.

What do I think of Theme Hospital?
---------------------------------------------
I really enjoy playing this game as it is such a challenge. I can spend 2-3 hours playing without realising and I enjoy playing it immensely.
It is not an easy game to complete and would take the more experienced gamers a good while to complete. The levels get progressively harder and can sometimes seem impossible. There are around 10 levels to get through with all manner of funny diseases. The producer of Theme Hospital Mark Webley commented, "Every conceivable aspect of building, designing and maintaining a hospital was meticulously researched by the Theme Hospital development team. That part of the game is quite realistic. However, in order to keep the game from being realistic, to the point of being offensive, we made up an entire list of afflictions, paying careful attention to probing the funny bone." There is no blood or gore, just the funny actions of the staff treating the patients.
The game is so diverse and in depth. The characters are very detailed when alone or interacting with others and have a mind of their own. The sounds are excellent (especially in the toilet department! eww) and are crisp and clear.

The cartoony graphics are good quality and add more humour to the game. No activity is left out what with plants shrivelling up in the heat, people being sick (not nice!) broken smoking equipment and litter being dropped on the floor, which gives it a nice touch and brings everything to life I feel.

The only annoyance is when the doctors decide to wander around when there is an emergency and your time runs out, and having to start the level over again if you fail. But other than that there is nothing bad I can say about this game. I thoroughly enjoy it and have still not completed this - although I am very close.

I'd recommended this to any age as the humour will appeal to children and adults alike and maybe boost your brain power solving the hospitals problems. Just don't get addicted like I did - there's no way back!

Cheats
======
I havent tried these yet so I dont know if they work.
Enter one of the numbers below by clicking on the relevant numbers on the fax machine. Then click on the white send button to enter the cheat.
7287 - Go onto a rat shoot level after you win the level
24328 - Enable the cheat mode in-game which is:
Shift C - +$10,000.
CTRL C - All research completed.
CTRL M - Go to the end of the month.
CTRL Y - Go to the end of the year

Some websites you may want to visit:
http://www.bullfrog.ea.com/
http://www.eudoxus.demon.co.uk/ - tips and hints to help you

Thanks for reading! 

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