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 Simulator 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.
General information
- GOG.com Community Discussions
- GOG.com Support Page
Availability
Source |
DRM |
Notes |
Keys |
OS |
Retail |
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Native Windows version has compatibility problems. |
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GOG.com |
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DOS version pre-packaged with DOSBox.[2] |
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Origin |
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DOS version pre-packaged with DOSBox. |
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Essential improvements
CorsixTH
- CorsixTH Github - A moderne engine for Theme Hospital, which aims to get the game running on modern platforms.
- For a correct installation for Linux, Windows 10 and MacOS, please follow the GitHub guide.
Patches
Mouse Lag Patch - this sets the CPU affinity to 3 instead of 1, though you may need to fiddle with this number. Save this file where your HOSP folder is and run it instead of Hospital.exe.
Music Fix
[1] Follow the instructions to fix the music in the GOG version
Game data
Configuration file(s) location
Save game data location
- 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.
Video
Input
Audio
Localizations
Language |
UI |
Audio |
Sub |
Notes |
English |
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German |
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Spanish |
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French |
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Italian |
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Polish |
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Fan translation, download. |
Russian |
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Unofficial translation, download |
Swedish |
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Network
Multiplayer types
Connection types
Other information
API
Technical specs |
Supported |
Notes |
DOS video modes |
SVGA |
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Executable |
32-bit |
64-bit |
Notes |
Windows |
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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