Theme Hospital
Developer(s)	Bullfrog Productions
Publisher(s)	Electronic Arts
Release date(s)	1997
Genre(s)	Economic simulation
Mode(s)	Single player, Multiplayer
Rating(s)	ESRB: E (Everyone) ELSPA: 3+ OFLC: G
Platform(s)	PC (MS-DOS, Windows), PlayStation
Media	1 CD-ROM
System requirements	Pentium 75MHz processor, 8MB RAM (16MB if played on Windows XP), 1MB graphics card, 55MB hard drive space
Input	Keyboard, Mouse, Controller

Theme Hospital is a simulation computer game developed by Bullfrog Productions and published by Electronic Arts in 1997, in which the player designs and operates a hospital. Like most of Bullfrog's games, Theme Hospital is permeated by an eccentric sense of humor. The game is the thematic successor to Theme Park, a game also produced by Bullfrog. Front cover of the Theme Hospital installation CD. This work is copyrighted. ... A video game developer is a software developer (a business or an individual) that creates video games. ... Bullfrog Productions was a UK computer game developer that was founded in 1987 by Les Edgar and Peter Molyneux, and was one of the entrepreneurs of video gaming. ... This article or section does not cite its references or sources. ... Electronic Arts (EA) (NASDAQ: ERTS) is an American developer, marketer, publisher, and distributor of computer and video games. ... 1997 1997 in games 1996 in video gaming 1998 in video gaming Notable events of 1997 in video gaming. ... Video games are categorized into genres based on their gameplay. ... Typical view from Transport Tycoon. ... In computer games and video games, single-player refers to the variant of a particular game where input from only one player is expected throughout the course of the gaming session. ... Online gaming redirects here. ... The Entertainment Software Rating Board (ESRB) is a self-regulatory organization that applies and enforces ratings, advertising guidelines, and online privacy principles for computer and video games in the United States. ... The Entertainment and Leisure Software Publishers Association (or ELSPA) is an organisation set up in 1989 by British software publishers. ... This article or section does not cite any references or sources. ... This article needs additional references or sources for verification. ... Microsofts disk operating system, MS-DOS, was Microsofts implementation of DOS, which was the first popular operating system for the IBM PC, and until recently, was widely used on the PC compatible platform. ... To meet Wikipedias quality standards, the lead section of this article may need to be expanded. ... The Sony PlayStation ) is a video game console of the 32/64-bit era, first produced by Sony Computer Entertainment in the mid-1990s. ... The CD-ROM (an abbreviation for Compact Disc Read-Only Memory (ROM)) is a non-volatile optical data storage medium using the same physical format as audio compact discs, readable by a computer with a CD-ROM drive. ... This article does not cite any references or sources. ... MegaHertz (MHz) is the name given to one million (106) Hertz, a measure of frequency. ... Random access memory (usually known by its acronym, RAM) is a type of data storage used in computers. ... A graphics/video/display card/board/adapter is a computer component designed to convert the logical representation of visual information into a signal that can be used as input for a display medium. ... It has been suggested that Keystroke be merged into this article or section. ... Operating a mechanical 1: Pulling the mouse turns the ball. ... Look up simulation in Wiktionary, the free dictionary. ... A computer game is a game composed of a computer-controlled virtual universe that players interact with in order to achieve a defined goal or set of goals. ... Bullfrog Productions was a UK computer game developer that was founded in 1987 by Les Edgar and Peter Molyneux, and was one of the entrepreneurs of video gaming. ... Electronic Arts (EA) (NASDAQ: ERTS) is an American developer, marketer, publisher, and distributor of computer and video games. ... 1997 1997 in games 1996 in video gaming 1998 in video gaming Notable events of 1997 in video gaming. ... For the record label, see Hospital Records. ... Theme Park is a simulation computer game designed by Bullfrog Productions, released in 1994, in which the player designs and operates an amusement park. ...

General information

The game is set in a hospital, and requires the player to build an environment which will attract patients with different complaints, illnesses, emergencies, and diseases. The game has a somewhat dark sense of humor, which is similar to that of Theme Park in many ways. The player has no direct control over the patients that wander the hospital, although gameplay largely centers on influencing their actions in one way or another. The player does, however, have the ability to pick up any staff member in the building and move them to a different area (to speed up their movement from place to place) and to expel any patients from the hospital (if they are being a nuisance or causing rowdiness).

Each level consists of an empty hospital to plan and design, with set goals in the fields of financial attainment, patients cured, percent of patients cured, and hospital value. Holding negative funds or allowing sufficient patients to die will bring about losing requirements. When the goals have been met the player has the option to move on to a new, more elaborate hospital with tougher winning conditions and more diseases present. The final level in the game, 'Battenburg' consists of an enormous, yet somewhat awkward, hospital with all the diseases and rooms in the game present, all disasters frequent and very high winning requirements.

Gameplay

An example of a hospital.

The game revolves around buying and placing rooms (or facilities) in a hospital, and hiring doctors, nurses, site managers/handymen and receptionists to operate it. Some rooms are fundamentally required for the running of the hospital, such as GP's offices, Staff Rooms, and Toilets, while others provide optional services (such as General Diagnosis rooms, Scanner Rooms and X-Rays). Some rooms are dedicated to the treatment of a specific illness, and a number of rooms contain machinery that has to be repaired occasionally. In game screenshot of Theme Hospital This work is copyrighted. ... In game screenshot of Theme Hospital This work is copyrighted. ... // A nurse is a health care professional who is engaged in the practice of nursing. ... A janitor is a person who takes care of a building, such as a school, office building, or apartment block. ... A receptionist is an office/administrative support position. ... A general practitioner (GP) or family physician (FP) is a physician who provides primary care. ...

Patients are attracted to the hospital, in part, by the reputation of the hospital and the cost of treatment there. They arrive with a number of amusing fictional illnesses which must be diagnosed and cured to earn money and achieve targets set by the game. Rooms and equipment to treat fictional and comical diseases such as Bloaty Head, Slack Tongue, Heaped Piles, Uncommon Cold and The Squits must be researched before they can be placed in the hospital. Advanced levels in the game feature epidemics where the player must try to stop a disease infecting other patients by curing infected patients and vaccinating others. Medical emergencies also take place, where several patients must be cured within a specified time limit, and earthquakes occur which damage equipment. In epidemiology, an epidemic (from [[Latin language] epi- upon + demos people) is a disease that appears as new cases in a given human population, during a given period, at a rate that substantially exceeds what is expected, based on recent experience (the number of new cases in the population during... The term disease refers to an abnormal condition of an organism that impairs function. ... Cure can be: successful treatment of disease preserve (meat, for example), as by salting, smoking, or aging (see curing) prepare, preserve, or finish (a substance) by a chemical or physical process (one example is the curing, or seasoning, of a cast iron pan; another is the curing of an adhesive... Vaccination is the process of administering pathogens that cant reproduce (due to being weakened or dead) to a healthy person or animal, with the intent of conferring immunity against a targeted form of a related disease agent. ... A medical emergency is an injury or illness that poses an immediate threat to a persons health or life which requires help from a doctor or hospital. ... An earthquake is a result from the sudden release of stored energy in the Earths crust that creates seismic waves. ...

At the end of each year, the player can be presented with several awards based on their performance and management of their hospital.

Staff

The success of any hospital lies in hiring well-trained staff. Staff are separated into four categories of expertise: Doctor, Nurse, Site Manager/Handyman, and Receptionist. Stereotypically, all Doctors and Handymen are male, while all Nurses and Receptionists are female. // A nurse is a health care professional who is engaged in the practice of nursing. ... A janitor is a person who takes care of a building, such as a school, office building, or apartment block. ... A receptionist is an office/administrative support position. ...

Doctors usually demand higher wages than the other three occupations, and also serve a much larger role; they can diagnose and heal most illnesses, they can research new illnesses and equipment and they can train other doctors. Doctors can specialize in psychiatry, surgery or research and they pass their specialization to the doctors they train. Nurses run the Pharmacy, the room for Orthopedic casts and the hospital ward. Handymen clean the hospital, repair machinery and water the plants. Psychiatry is a branch of medicine dealing with the prevention, assessment, diagnosis, treatment, and rehabilitation of the mind and mental illness. ... “Surgeon” redirects here. ... Medical research (or experimental medicine) is basic research and applied research conducted to aid the body of knowledge in the field of medicine. ... For other uses, see Pharmacy (disambiguation). ... cast A cast is a shell, frequently made from plaster, encasing a limb (or, in some cases, large portions of the body) to hold a broken bone (or bones) in place until it has healed. ...

Staff are affected both by tiredness and warmth, which must be cared for if the staff are to remain content. Use of staff rooms allows staff to be rested, which can be furnished with a number of relaxing and entertaining devices. Placing a suitable number of radiators in rooms allows staff to be kept warm. Having the staff overworked often results in the staff demanding a raise and threatening to quit.

Micromanagement

Micromanagement is heavily present in Theme Hospital, and it can influence both the hospital's efficiency and its reputation. The player must arrange and furnish the rooms to minimize the time required for the doctors to perform their tasks and satisfy the needs of their patients. These needs include a comfortable temperature (neither too hot nor too cold), a clean environment, benches to sit on, and access to drinks and toilets. Furthermore, the player can manually pick up members of the staff and drop them where their intervention is needed (e.g. place a doctor in a room left unattended to visit a patient, or a caretaker over a vomit pool to clear it up), as happens in Dungeon Keeper. With no player intervention tasks are completed much more slowly, since in many levels the staff members have to travel from one end of the hospital to another. The player can also advance a patient in a queue for a room or dismiss them, in order to avoid a death in their hospital, which negatively affects the hospital's reputation and reduces the number of end-of-year awards. Micromanagement (often abbreviated to micro) is a term used in strategy computer games to describe a facet of gameplay. ... Dungeon Keeper is a PC strategy game released by Bullfrog Productions in July 1997. ...

Economic management is also important: the player can change the price for the treatment in all the rooms, balancing a low reputation with cheap prices to gain visitors or quickly raising money while maintaining a consistent number of visits due to high reputation. A common tactic is also to place benches and radiators next to one another, in order to make the patients feel too hot and buy expensive drinks from the vending machines.

References to other works

The opposing hospitals in the game are all names of well-known computers from fiction:

• "Akira" means "Life" in Japanese, and is the name of a powerful psychic in the manga and anime Akira (film)
• Deep Thought is from Douglas Adams' The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.
• HAL is from Arthur C. Clarke's 2001: A Space Odyssey.
• Holly is the computer in the British sitcom Red Dwarf.
• Multivac is from a number of Isaac Asimov's works.
• Zen and Orac are both from the BBC television series Blake's 7.

Akira ) is a 1988 Japanese animated film co-written and directed by Katsuhiro Otomo based on his manga of the same name. ... There are many minor characters in the various versions of The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy, by Douglas Adams. ... Douglas Noël Adams (11 March 1952 – 11 May 2001) was an English author, comic radio dramatist, and musician. ... The cover of the first novel in the Hitchhikers series, from a late 1990s printing. ... HAL 9000 (Heuristically programmed ALgorithmic computer) is a fictional character in Arthur C. Clarkes Space Odyssey saga. ... Sir Arthur Charles Clarke, CBE (born 16 December 1917) is a British science-fiction author and inventor, most famous for his novel 2001: A Space Odyssey, and for collaborating with director Stanley Kubrick on the film of the same name. ... A movie poster from the original release of 2001 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) is an immensely popular and influential science fiction film and book; the film directed by Stanley Kubrick and the book written by Arthur C. Clarke. ... Holly is played by Norman Lovett in series 1, 2, 7 and 8. ... Red Dwarf is a British science fiction comedy franchise, the primary form of which comprises eight series of a post-watershed television sitcom that ran on BBC2 between 1988 and 1999, and which has achieved a global cult following. ... Multivac is the name of a fictional computer in many stories by Isaac Asimov from 1955 to 1975. ... Isaac Asimov (January 2?, 1920?[1] – April 6, 1992), IPA: , originally Исаак Озимов but now transcribed into Russian as Айзек Азимов) was a Russian-born American Jewish author and professor of biochemistry, a highly successful and exceptionally prolific writer best known for his works of science fiction and for his popular science books. ... Zen Zen is a fictional character from the British science fiction television series Blakes 7, played by Peter Tuddenham. ... Orac is a fictional character from the British science fiction television series Blakes 7. ... This article is an overview article about the Crown chartered British Broadcasting Corporation formed in 1927. ... Blakes 7 is a British science fiction television series made by the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) for their BBC 1 channel. ...

See also

• Dungeon Keeper
• Evil Genius
• Hospital Tycoon
• Startopia

Dungeon Keeper is a PC strategy game released by Bullfrog Productions in July 1997. ... Evil Genius is a tongue-in-cheek take on the 1960s spy thriller genre offering the player the chance to play the villain himself and control a secret island fortress complete with powerful henchmen, loyal minions and a wide range of gizmos, gadgets and traps. ... Hospital Tycoon is a video game being developed by Big Red Software and to be published by Codemasters. ... Startopia is a computer game from Mucky Foot Productions (formed by ex-Bullfrog employees) and published by Eidos in 2001, in which the player takes the role of the administrator of various derelict space stations with the task of rebuilding them to their former states. ...

External links

• Theme Hospital Clinic, a Theme Hospital resource page, with forum.
• Theme Hospital at MobyGames
• Theme Hospital guide at StrategyWiki
• Downloads, including the Pregnancy patch and a save-game editor at alt-tab.net
• Theme Hospital at GameSpot