Theme Hospital

About the game

Theme Hospital is management sim as sitcom. Charged with building and running private hospitals, you place GP's offices, pharmacies and increasingly deranged cure machines while patients queue with invented afflictions — Bloaty Head (inflate, then pop), King Complex (Elvis impersonators requiring psychiatric de-programming), Slack Tongue and worse. A deadpan announcer narrates the chaos over the tannoy; rats appear in the corridors when hygiene slips.

Under the jokes runs a tight operational sim. Doctors carry specialisations — surgeons, psychiatrists, researchers — that gate which rooms function; training propagates skills at the cost of ward coverage; epidemics must be cured quietly before inspectors arrive, or bribed away. Room placement, radiator coverage and drinks machines all feed patient mood, and each level's targets (cure rates, reputation, bank balance) escalate until efficient cruelty becomes policy.

It became Bullfrog's beloved farewell to the tycoon formula and one of the most fondly remembered PC games of the late 90s; its spiritual successor decades later reused the formula almost beat for beat.

Technical notes

SVGA isometric engine with individually pathfinding patients and staff moods; the fan-made CorsixTH engine reimplementation keeps the original data files playable today. Documented here in its DOS release.