The Re:Retro Top 100 Games Of All Time, No. 83: Dr Fischer-Price Of Geneva
It’s interesting to note that the official (I assume) trailer for Theme Hospital started with… SPOILER ALERT…
…lots and lots of shots of Theme Park. No great surprise there - the point of this game is to bring the chunky cartoon-Lego aesthetic of Theme Park into a new and different arena of simulation management. I played this game around the block a couple of times on a much older machine, but I never really got to the later levels - presumably I got bored of the whole affair before the ‘training’ levels were over with. Certainly I don’t remember having to deal with Hairyitis or Jelly Disease - and is that the same jelly that was previously on the skeleton? Or is that a new creature morphing itself around the bones left behind? What if the doctors just scoop out a helping of the jelly from a huge collective bin of the stuff, leading to homogenised merged selves running around, hideously bland in taste and temperament but acting out the shared destinies of the individuals who make them up?
Nobody else can have that idea. That one’s mine…
Anyway, what I really missed was the priapic Dr Frank, who was evidently loose and out of control in your hospitals, banging nurses, taking untested drugs and performing unnecessary surgeries on people - unless he was only created for the purpose of enlivening the trailer, which would mean that Theme Hospital remained the vaguely lifeless day-glo construction that bored me solid during the short time that I owned it. Maybe some of you who’ve played to the end could enlighten me?
