| Publisher | Electronic Arts |
| Developer | Bullfrog Productions |
| Release date | 1994 |
| Genre | Strategy |
Theme Park was originally released in 1994 and became Bullfrog’s most popular game at the time. Getting top marks from almost every magazine, this game was in high demand.
The goal of the game is to design and manage your own theme park. To do this, you’re given a starting budget and an amount of rides, shops, facilities & decorations. Depending on the difficulty level you’ll need to research more of these to expand your park.
The game lets the player chose how deep they want to delve. Do you wish to just design a park with no other worries or do you want to be thrown in the deep end, having to order all stock by hand, negotiating wages of the staff, buying & selling stocks, etc. ? There’s far more to be done that can be mentioned here but the game offers plenty for a beginner or die-hards.
All of this is done in a cartoonish colourful & cheerful style. The game is full of wonderful pixel art, tunes depending on which attraction is in view and all kinds of background noises to add to the atmosphere.
- Theme Hospital used the same engine as Theme Park
- Theme Park was aimed to be one of the first fun manager sim
- Peter Mollyneux travelled the world to visit different parks for inspiration.
- The game was extremely popular in Europe and Asia but less so in the USA whose audience preferred more “serious” games on the PC.
iOS release (2011)
Electronic Arts released a remake of the game for iOS in 2011. Some may argue this is not a remake and we’re inclined to agree but since this game shares the same name and many of the same attractions it’s worth a mention.
Be wary though: many of the original aspects have been simplified. The game is not so much about making a profitable park as it is collecting attractions. Managing your park and figuring out the ideal location, best queue design, placement of food stalls, etc. is extremely simplified.
In their stead you have quests which you can complete for various in-game currencies which in turn let you buy more attractions & decorations. In typical mobile game fashion, the player is pressured into paying real money for these. In other words: avoid like the plague.
Theme Park originally looked quite different. The user interface was on the left of the screen and looked quite different but they also had two very different perspectives compared to the final game. One straight on, the other isometric. A mix of the two became the final look.
These two screenshots taken from the first issue of PC Gamer (December 1993) give a glimpse at how the game could have looked like.
Begin a new game and enter “HORZA” as nickname to enable cheat mode. Then while playing the game, enter one of the following key combinations to activate the corresponding cheat:
- SHIFT + C : receive $50,000
- ALT + Z : receive all rides
- CTRL + Z : receive all shops
- SHIFT + Z : receive all facilities
- Play Guide (credits CheatCC)
No documents available at this time.
- No links available
- Text & screenshots: RedAvatar
- Video: Jimage
- Box art: MobyGames
- Guide: CheatCC
