32 years of brilliant video game box art – #18 (1997) Theme Hospital

Another year, another countdown, another birthday. And I’m boxing it all up, tying a nice little bow around it, and turning the ripe old age of 32 with a celebration of 32 BRILLIANT examples of FANTASTIC video game box art. Join me, won’t you?

Theme Hospital (1997) – There is nothing I like more than clean and tidy design. I like unused space with contrasting colours in the form of flat shading objects or logos, with straight and perpendicular lines, and if there is a colour just enough to really make it pop. Theme Hospital is just that. The logo is a beautiful use of a inverted colours, bringing out the whimsy of the Theme series, and contrasting it to the pedestrian and corporate nature of the game’s hospital management. But it’s the striking use of the green medical cross sitting atop the white of a sterile white-tiled wall that really draws the eye, so much so that it’s easy to miss the dated and rather ugly plastic shaded model of the doctor and his giant syringe sitting right plumb in the centre of the box. It is the one blemish on an otherwise stunningly simple piece of box art, but with a bit of corrective surgery, it could be near bloody perfect.

theme-hospitalBoxArt

Miss previous entries in the countdown?

Space Ace (1983) – Transylvania (1984) – Impossible Mission (1985) – Defender of the Crown (1986) – Faery Tale Adventure (1987) – F/A – 18 Interceptor (1988) – Blood Money (1989) – King of the Zoo (1990) – Lemmings (1991) – Pinball Fantasies (1992) – The Ren & Stimpy Show: Veediots! (1993) – Super Mario Land 3: Wario Land (1994) – Primal Rage (1995) – Wipeout 2097 (1996)

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1

martianoddity on 16 November 2015 at 4:29 am

That Doc model sure is ugly, but as you say the cover is really good overall. I love this game, and I remember eventually cheating in it too, since the doctors I afforded made a lousy job and could just as well be quacks.

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  Sir Gaulian on 16 November 2015 at 9:23 am
  
  Have you played it recently? Some of the CG (featuring that Doctor) are very, very hard to watch! It is a great game, and I always preferred it to Theme Park, if only because it had a great sense of humour. I was hopeful we’d see a port over to the DS when Theme Park made its way to the system, but sadly it didn’t come to pass.
  
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    martianoddity on 17 November 2015 at 7:20 am
    
    Even back then I remember the CG being pretty bad. Watching it recently I thought the same of it. The sense of humor made me like this game much more than Theme Park too, and I’ve played it so many times. I’d say that doctor causes much more nausea than he cures.
    
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4

moresleepneeded on 23 December 2015 at 4:33 am

This is a very tidy design and seems quite simplistic. The graphics for the doctor seems very dated (with an extremely smooth surface) and his bow tie seems 2D. It also represents the eccentric humour of the game (with the green cross producing some liquid). It also reminds me of a lot of the gameplay, which consisted of watching an organised hospital fall apart.

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