The reality might have been quite different but it was more important to go with what a man or woman in the street would expect." "So the kind of flow of what the patients were doing was kind of what we understood them to be doing. "The GP kind of makes a guess, maybe sends you for an X-ray or some blood tests, stuff like that, and then you go back to see the GP," says Mark. People, they assumed, see a GP first of all.
The small team, which ironically worked in offices next to The Royal Surrey County Hospital, began with some preconceived ideas of the medical process.
"The idea was that there was only so much you can do without assistance." It is about how people think they are run." "We had a good idea of what we wanted to do with the game and it helped that it was a genre of game that I enjoyed playing but the important thing with games like Theme Hospital and Theme Park is that it is not about how a hospital, theme park or a business runs. "Many ideas came in and disappeared," says Mark. In each case, they would build a hospital from scratch, determining the look of the building and the people working in it so that patients would be treated or discharged according to the whim – and education – of the doctors the player controlled.
#THEME HOSPITAL LETS PLAY TV#
A successful player would be able to move up the ladder and work on a larger and potentially more profitable hospital (each carrying the name of a famous computer from various films, TV shows or comics). Theme Hospital was a game in which profit was important and players had to think of it as a business. The game also distanced itself from the NHS model. Mark and Gary decided the best approach was to strip away any sense of the real so the graphics were made deliberately cartoonish. "We planned to make the game with four different time periods," says Gary of an idea that would need some major treatment later down the line.
#THEME HOSPITAL LETS PLAY FULL#
Peter wasn't involved at all – "he had his hands full with the really cool sounding Dungeon Keeper," says Gary – but the ideas flowed. Mark's task was to head up the project even though he was rather new to making original games, having previously managed a department that converted Bullfrog's games onto other formats.
Great! A sequel to the game I left the company for in the first place!" I was to work on a sequel to Theme Park called Theme Hospital. Then he eventually gave me the news – I wouldn't be working on Dungeon Keeper at all. He just smiled and said he would tell me soon enough. "I really liked the sound of that so I swallowed my pride and ran back," he says. Having left Bullfrog to work for The Bitmap Brothers, believing Theme Park would not be the success it had become, he thought he was rejoining work on Dungeon Keeper. But for graphic artist Gary, it wasn't entirely what he had planned. He turned up to find Mark and Gary in the initial stages of making Theme Hospital. I didn't hear back."Ī few months later, though, and James was hired by Bullfrog. He was most enthused by the hospital and prison and he asked me to write my ideas up and send them to him. "I recall mentioning a mine or quarry, a prison and a hospital. "As we talked, I suggested other things which might be fun to manage," says James. Peter had visited him to demo Theme Park and the pair took lunch together to chat about the game. Helping with the task of balancing real and unreal was stalwart journalist James Leach who had worked on numerous magazines including Amstrad Action, Your Sinclair and Amiga Format. Whether it was an inspection, a VIP visiting, messy wards, too few toilets, a wayward handyman, whether or not the temperature was too hot or cold or a chopper was bringing 15 victims of a crash it was a matter of spinning plates. They ensured there was always something to do – always an emergency around the corner. 10 games like The Sims that’ll help you live your best life
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