Sunday afternoon and I was getting pretty angry with Alone In The Dark: Inferno. I've been using this sparse release period to catch up on some of last year's games that I wanted to play but didn't for various reasons. £12.99 later I got Alone In The Dark: Inferno, a clever game that ultimately fails under the weight of its own innovations. So alas, pissed off with that games horrendous difficulty spikes, I thought I'd treat myself to that Theme Hospital that's been filling the Playstation Store. I've never played the PSone version of the game, I proposed it would be a terrible port of a game that I remember so fondly from my earlier gaming days. Interestingly Theme Park and Theme Hospital are about the only two strategy games I can tolerate and understand.

I short download from the Playstation Store, I was in business with my Theme Hospital download and had a quick test run on the PS3. Interestingly it was as remembered and the PSone version controls surprisingly well. A short tutorial later reminding me of the mechanics and I turned off. This was a game I need copied to my PSP ready for car rides/late night bed-time sessions with the headphones.

With the game copied to my PSP I returned to Alone In The Dark Inferno.

Many hours later, bed time. I hop into bed, plug in my headphones and pump up the PSP. Time for some Theme Hospital. I'm getting into bed about 10:30PMish -- didn't fancy a late one. Shouldn't have loaded up Theme Hospital. I'm curing patients, balancing the books and trying to find a way to position radiators that won't result in my patients being cold (I swear, they're always cold in Theme Hospital). I hit level 4 and check the time -- 2:11AM; so much for an early night eh?

The morals of this story: a) Theme Hospital still rocks; b) the PSone version is surprisingly very good; c) copying PSone games to the PSP is the best invention ever; d) sometimes nostalgia lasts longer than five minutes. In this case, nearly 4 hours.

I never played the PS1 version (didnt even know it existed), but I remember the PC version sucking hours upon hours of life. Although if you think 2am is bad, I still remember civilisation 2 tricking me into playing till 5.30am, back in the days of olde.

Theme Hospital and Theme Park were amazing games. More people need to play those game.

It's most interesting to me that I detest the genres both games are categorised under. Maybe that's because I don't give them enough time, but with Theme Park and Theme Hospital, it just clicked straight away the first time I played them. I'm so glad I can have a portable copy now. It's just awesome.

Installed this the other day, wow holds up with using awesome gameplay

I completely forgot about theme hospital. I played the shit out of that game on PC back in the day, plan on getting a PS3 after christmas. Awesome.

I played Theme Hospital's demo back when it was first released, but I didn't get far enough into it to know how well it worked.  Is it just that they have a good system that helps differentiate the game from others of a similar type?  The theme is refreshing, certainly. 

I've never tried out Theme Hospital before but you've piqued my interest. I may hafta try it out :D

Hmm. You'd probably like RollerCoaster Tycoon. Give that a go (on PC).

I love Theme Park, never played Hospital.

O GOD A PLAGUE HAS BROKEN OUT! WE NEED MORE LOUNGE AREAS!