Theme Hospital

Theme Park
Theme Park	1994
Theme Hospital	1997
Shin Theme Park	1997
Theme Park World	1999
Theme Park Inc.	2001

Warnings

The macOS (OS X) version of this game needs a fix to work on macOS Catalina (version 10.15) or later (see API for details).

Theme Hospital is a building game developed by Bullfrog Productions and published by Electronic Arts in 1997 for MS-DOS and Microsoft Windows compatible PCs in which players design and operate a privately owned hospital with the goal of curing patients of fictitious comical ailments.

The game is the thematic successor to Theme Park, also produced by Bullfrog, and the second instalment in their Theme series, and part of their Designer Series. The game is noted for its humour, and contains numerous references to pop culture. Peter Molyneux and James Leach came up with the idea of creating a Theme game based on a hospital, but Molyneux was not directly involved in development due to his work on Dungeon Keeper. Designers originally planned to include four distinct gameplay modes corresponding to historical time periods, but this was dropped due to time pressures on the team. Multiplayer support with up to four players was added in a patch. The game received a generally positive reception, with reviewers praising the graphics and humour in particular. Theme Hospital was a commercial success, selling over 4 million copies worldwide, and was ported to the PlayStation in 1998. A Sega Saturn version was in development, but cancelled.

The game was re-released on GOG.com in 2012 and Origin in 2015, and the PlayStation version was released on the PlayStation Network in Europe in 2008, Japan in 2009, and North America in 2010. The community-made open-source reimplementation CorsixTH improves the game in major aspect to fix bugs and make it natively compatible with modern OS versions.

General information

GOG.com Community Discussions

GOG.com Support Page

Availability

Source	DRM	Notes	Keys	OS
Retail		Native Windows version has compatibility problems.
GOG.com		DOS version pre-packaged with DOSBox.^[2]
Origin		DOS version pre-packaged with DOSBox.

Free demo versions are available from Archive.org: pre-release, final.

Essential improvements

CorsixTH

CorsixTH is a community-made open-source reimplementation of Theme Hospital. It features native modern OS compatibility, high resolution support, zooming, improved game logic, option to remove destroyed rooms for a fee, unlimited saving, custom content support and more.

Patches

Official patch from Patches-Scrolls

Using ImageCFG to fix mouse lag

Sets the CPU affinity to 3 instead of 1, though you may need to fiddle with this number.

Modify exe CPU affinity^{[citation needed]}

Download ImageCFG
Extract imagecfg.exe to the installation folder.
Go into the installation folder and execute each in order:

imagecfg -u WINMAIN.EXE
imagecfg -a 0x4 WINMAIN.EXE

Game data

Configuration file(s) location

System	Location
DOS	<path-to-game>\HOSPITAL.CFG
Windows	<path-to-game>\HOSPITAL.CFG^{[Note 1]}
macOS (OS X)	<path-to-game> (mounted in DOSBox)^{[Note 2]}

Save game data location

System	Location
DOS	<path-to-game>\Save
Windows	<path-to-game>\Save^{[Note 1]}
macOS (OS X)	<path-to-game> (mounted in DOSBox)^{[Note 2]}

Edit HOSPITAL.CFG after where it says INSTALL PATH= to the installation folder, making sure to put a trailing backslash (\) at the end of the folder name. This tells the game where to save the save files.

Save game cloud syncing

System	Native	Notes
GOG Galaxy
Origin

Video

Graphics feature	State	Notes
Widescreen resolution		Use CorsixTH to enable widescreen mode
Multi-monitor
Ultra-widescreen
4K Ultra HD
Field of view (FOV)
Windowed		For DOSBox toggle with `Alt`+`↵ Enter` (see the glossary page for other workarounds).
Borderless fullscreen windowed		Use CorsixTH to enable windowed mode.
Anisotropic filtering (AF)
Anti-aliasing (AA)
Vertical sync (Vsync)		For DOSBox use an unofficial build (see the glossary page for other workarounds).
60 FPS and 120+ FPS

Input

Keyboard and mouse	State	Notes
Remapping		For DOSBox use the DOSBox Mapper (see the glossary page for other workarounds).
Mouse acceleration
Mouse sensitivity
Mouse input in menus
Mouse Y-axis inversion
Controller
Controller support		For DOSBox use the DOSBox Mapper (see the glossary page for other workarounds).

Audio

Audio feature	State	Notes
Separate volume controls
Surround sound
Subtitles		All speech is text-based.
Closed captions
Mute on focus lost		For DOSBox change the `priority` background value in the DOSBox configuration file.
Royalty free audio

Localizations

Language	UI	Audio	Sub	Notes
English
French
German
Italian
Japanese				Japanese retail release only.
Polish				Fan translation, download.
Russian				Unofficial translation, download
Spanish
Swedish

Network

Multiplayer types

Type	Native	Players	Notes
LAN play		4	Added in the last patch.
Online play		For DOSBox use DOSBox IPX/modem emulation.

Connection types

Type	Native	Notes
Matchmaking
Peer-to-peer
Dedicated
Self-hosting
Direct IP

Other information

API

Technical specs	Supported	Notes
DOS video modes	SVGA

Executable	32-bit	64-bit	Notes
Windows			CorsixTH allows the game to run with 64-bit support.
macOS (OS X)			CorsixTH allows the game to run with 64-bit support, thus allowing the game to run on macOS 10.15 and later.
Linux			CorsixTH allows the game to run with 64-bit support.

System requirements

DOS
	Minimum
Operating system (OS)	6.2
Processor (CPU)	66 MHz
System memory (RAM)	8 MB
Hard disk drive (HDD)	20 MB
Video card (GPU)	SVGA

Windows
	Minimum
Operating system (OS)	95
Processor (CPU)	Intel Pentium
System memory (RAM)	16 MB
Hard disk drive (HDD)
Video card (GPU)	SVGA

macOS (OS X)
	Minimum
Operating system (OS)	10.6.8 or later
Processor (CPU)	Intel Core Duo 2 GHz+
System memory (RAM)	1 GB
Hard disk drive (HDD)	200 MB
Video card (GPU)	64 MB of VRAM

Notes

↑ ^1.0 ^1.1 When running this game without elevated privileges (Run as administrator option), write operations against a location below %PROGRAMFILES%, %PROGRAMDATA%, or %WINDIR% might be redirected to %LOCALAPPDATA%\VirtualStore on Windows Vista and later (more details).
↑ ^2.0 ^2.1 File/folder structure within the installation folder reflects the path(s) listed for DOS game data. For the GOG.com release, file changes in DOSBox are redirected to <path-to-game>/cloud_saves/ even if GOG Galaxy is not used (this folder contains all redirected files, so some files in the cloud_saves folder might be temporary files or other files that do not contain saves or settings).

References

↑ GOG.com goes Mac ● GOG.com - last accessed on 9 June 2023
↑ List of GOG games using DOSBox, page 1 - Forum - GOG.com - last accessed on May 2023

[gamedir-3] 1.0 ^1.1 When running this game without elevated privileges (Run as administrator option), write operations against a location below %PROGRAMFILES%, %PROGRAMDATA%, or %WINDIR% might be redirected to %LOCALAPPDATA%\VirtualStore on Windows Vista and later (more details).

[DOSBox_mounted-4] 2.0 ^2.1 File/folder structure within the installation folder reflects the path(s) listed for DOS game data. For the GOG.com release, file changes in DOSBox are redirected to <path-to-game>/cloud_saves/ even if GOG Galaxy is not used (this folder contains all redirected files, so some files in the cloud_saves folder might be temporary files or other files that do not contain saves or settings).

[1] GOG.com goes Mac ● GOG.com - last accessed on 9 June 2023

[2] List of GOG games using DOSBox, page 1 - Forum - GOG.com - last accessed on May 2023

[1]

[2]

[Note 1]

[Note 2]

Developers

	Bullfrog Productions
Publishers
	Electronic Arts
Re-release	Sold Out Software
Release dates
DOS	March 28, 1997
Windows	March 28, 1997
Windows (DOSBox)	April 12, 2012
macOS (OS X) (DOSBox)	October 18, 2012^[1]
Taxonomy
Monetization	One-time game purchase
Modes	Singleplayer, Multiplayer
Pacing	Real-time
Perspectives	Bird's-eye view, Isometric
Controls	Point and select
Genres	Building, Simulation
Art styles	Cartoon
Themes	Comedy, Healthcare
Series	Theme Park