The Making of Theme Hospital featured in magazine “games™”

The UK games magazine games™ recently (Issue 113, Sept 2011) had a section about the development of the game “Theme Hospital”.

The game way programmed by Mark Webley, Gary Carr, Andy Bass and Rajan Tande. Webley says the following in the interview:

“[Using fictional diseases] was actually Gary’s idea. I started off using real illnesses but Gary was rightfully concerned that people might find it distasteful. Using made-up illnesses gave us the opportunity to use humour as well as being able to make up our own curses. We went with British Earling Comedy/Carry On kind of style – we definetely played it for laughs to try to keep it light.”

Talking about diseases which did not make it into the final game:

“Animal Magnetism would have been people walking into the hospital with animals stuck to them. We also had Saturday Night Fever, when the patient walked in wearing the white suit and black shirt, and as they did all the floor tiles would up underneath their feet!”

The latter idea there seems really good, and it’d be great to see it somehow implemented in CorsixTH. Later he speaks about how Kings Sydrome was supposed to be called Elvis Impersonator, but could not be as they could not get permission from the Elvis estate. The KitKat vending machines in game were also apparently rewarded by a box of chocolate bars being sent to them.

It also mentions about a Telegraph article entitled “Sick computer game used by BMA to train senior management”, although I cannot find any references to this article online.

You can download scans of the article here.