Theme Park | Code Like It's 198x

In 1983 Peter Molyneux wrote a business simulation and sold it by mail order. “Back in 1983, all a programmer had to do was write a simple shoot ‘em up and they’d be a millionaire,” he told Edge in 1994. “But with my business acumen I decided to write a business simulator.” It got two orders. Eleven years later, with Populous, Powermonger and Syndicate behind him, he tried again. This time the business was an amusement park, the customers were cartoon visitors who threw up after the rides, and Edge reported that it was “many critics’ Game of the Year in 1994”.

Fast facts

Developer: Bullfrog Productions, Guildford.
Publisher: Electronic Arts.
Released: June 1994 on the PC; September 1994 on the Amiga (A1200 on 9 September, A500 on 23 September).
Price: £44.99 on the PC, £34.99 on the Amiga.
Programming: Peter Molyneux, Demis Hassabis, Mark Webley, James Robertson, Phil Harvey and Mike Diskett, with sound by Russell Shaw.
Later versions: 3DO, Mega Drive, Mega-CD, Super NES, Jaguar, Saturn, PlayStation and others; a Nintendo DS remake in 2007.

Running the park

The game opens with a story: the player’s crazy aunt has left a fortune, on condition that it is spent building the world’s biggest and most profitable theme park. The player starts with a bare field. “You lay out paths, install life-threatening rides, and build shops and fast food joints,” Edge wrote in its review. Handymen sweep up, mechanics keep the rides from exploding, security guards throw out troublemakers, and entertainers in animal costumes, “a bunch of second-rate, out of work actors” in CU Amiga’s words, keep the queues cheerful. The park competes with up to ten computer-run rivals, and the money flows out to research, stock, wages and rent.

The visitors are the heart of it. Molyneux told Edge that each one took about 200 bytes of memory, “enough to give each one a unique personality”: they grow hungry and thirsty at different times, and show what they think in thought bubbles. Edge found the detail “incredible”. Put an ice cream shop next to a fast ride, and a queasy customer may lose their lunch; other visitors who see it are likely to follow, “resulting in what the manual gracefully refers to as a ‘chain chunder’”. More sick means more handymen, more handymen means a bigger wage bill, and an unhappy workforce goes on strike and pickets the gate. Settling it means a negotiation screen and a race against a plate of biscuits: fail to agree before the biscuits are eaten and, as Edge put it, “the strike stays solid”.

There were three ways to play. The Sandbox game left out most of the business and let the player build; the Simulation game added research, unions and stock prices; and the Business game added ordering stock for every shop and buying shares in rival parks. A successful park can be sold at auction and the money taken to a new site. CU Amiga noted that Britain was the only country the player could afford at the start, while “the American parks are pretty straightforward because the weather is good and the population is rich”.

Molyneux and Hassabis

The Edge preview of June 1994 listed five programmers: Molyneux, Phil Harvey, James Robertson, Mark Webley and “Dennis” Hassabis. The misspelt name belonged to Demis Hassabis, who had come to Bullfrog through a game design competition run by Amiga Power. His entry, a mix of chess and Space Invaders called Chess Invaders, came second. Amiga Format reported that it so impressed Molyneux that he tried Hassabis out on a week’s work experience in October 1992, and that he had been at Bullfrog “on and off” ever since. Molyneux called him “intimidatingly intelligent”.

Hassabis later described the work to PC Gamer: “I did the simulation, the AI of the people, the computer players and a lot of the support screens. Overall, the bulk of the programming and designing was shared between Peter and myself.” For the last six months the project moved into Molyneux’s house, “14 hours a day, 6 days a week with no distractions”. Molyneux told PC Zone in 1999 that Hassabis had joined in the last eight months of a two-year project, did “a brilliant job on the engine”, and got the simulation AI “right first time”. It had such an impact on the finished game, Molyneux said, “that he deserved a co-creator credit.”

Molyneux did not step back to manage. “I did the programming for Theme Park,” he told PC Gamer in August 1994. The artist Fin McGechie made his debut drawing its character sprites; “we certainly owe the humour of the sprites to him,” said the art department’s Paul McLaughlin. Every object was first modelled in 3D Studio, and the introduction was rendered on Silicon Graphics workstations.

Reception

PC Gamer gave the PC version 95% and made it Game of the Month in June 1994, and PC Zone gave it 93%. Edge was more wary. At the hardest level it thought the game “perhaps a bit too complex and clever for its own good — far more so than its nearest competitor, Sim City 2000”, though it found “enough variety and graphical appeal to make the challenge worthwhile. But, as the manual says, just don’t expect it to be a walk in the park.”

The Amiga version came first for the A1200, because, CU Amiga explained, Bullfrog were developing mainly for the PC and an AGA version was easier to convert from it. Amiga Format gave it 91% and its Format Gold. In CU Amiga, Cal Jones wrote: “I haven’t enjoyed a game this much for ages.” A version for older Amigas followed a fortnight later; CU Amiga scored it 92% and found “minimal changes in graphic content”. Molyneux was pleased by the response in Japan too. “The Japanese are going crazy over Theme Park,” he told PC Gamer that summer.

On consoles

Conversions reached most machines of the mid-1990s. The Mega Drive cartridge came out in May 1995, and Sega Retro’s account of it describes a game stripped back from the PC, without share dealing or stock ordering, and with staff who find broken rides and litter on their own. Mark Healey, who drew the Super NES and Mega Drive versions, told Retro Gamer that memory was far tighter than on the PC, “but my C64 background made me an expert in using character-based graphics, so I managed to squeeze most things in”. 3DO Magazine reviewed the 3DO version in its first issue in 1995, Amiga CD32 Gamer made the CD32 release one of its Gamer Golds, and Sega Saturn Magazine covered the Saturn version in its first issue, in November 1995. There were versions for the Sega Saturn, the PlayStation, the Atari Jaguar and the Super NES as well.

Sales and what followed

In late 1998 both Edge and PC Gamer put Theme Park’s sales at over three and a half million copies. The idea carried on without its original team. Theme Hospital (1997) moved the formula into a hospital, and Theme Park World (1999) followed as a 3D sequel after Molyneux had left Bullfrog. He said he would have liked to make it himself: “I had some clear ideas in my head as to what the original should have looked like.” Retro Gamer noted in 2007 that a straight port of the PC original had just come out on the Nintendo DS, and that it thought Theme Park “may have been surpassed by the likes of Rollercoaster Tycoon”.

Hassabis went to Cambridge, co-founded Lionhead with Molyneux in 1997 and left the next year to start Elixir Studios. In 2010 he co-founded DeepMind, and in 2024 he shared the Nobel Prize in Chemistry with John Jumper for the protein-structure program AlphaFold.

Sources

Edge, issue 9, June 1994, pp. 34–35: Theme Park preview (Molyneux’s 1983 business simulator; the aunt’s will; the three game modes; 200 bytes per visitor; 3D Studio and Silicon Graphics; the credits).
Edge, issue 11, August 1994, pp. 54–55: PC review (£45; ten computer rivals; thought bubbles; the “chain chunder”; strikes and biscuits; the comparison with Sim City 2000).
PC Gamer (UK), issue 9, August 1994, pp. 44–49: Bullfrog profile (Molyneux on programming Theme Park and on Japan; Fin McGechie’s sprites; Russell Shaw); p. 97, tips feature (95%, Game of the Month, £44.99).
PC Gamer (UK), issue 11, October 1994, p. 33: buyer’s guide, Theme Park 95%, £39.99.
Amiga Format, issue 63, September 1994, pp. 46–48: Amiga review (programmers, £34.99, release dates); issue 64, October 1994, pp. 14–15: coverdisk demo and “A rising star”, on Demis Hassabis; buyer’s guide listings in later issues, “FG 91%”.
CU Amiga, September 1994, pp. 70–71: A1200 review by Cal Jones (the three levels, staff, negotiations, countries); December 1994, p. 59: A500 review, 92%.
Amiga CD32 Gamer, issue 8, January 1995, p. 5: CD32 version among its Gamer Golds.
3DO Magazine, issue 1, August 1995, p. 32: 3DO review.
Sega Saturn Magazine, issue 1, November 1995, p. 64: the Saturn version.
Edge, issue 30, March 1996: “many critics’ Game of the Year in 1994”.
Retro Gamer, issue 43, 2007, pp. 53–57: Bullfrog company profile (Mark Healey on the console versions; the DS remake; Theme Park World).
Edge, issue 63, October 1998, p. 78: Hassabis’s column on founding Elixir (sales of “over 3.5 million copies”, Lionhead).
PC Gamer (UK), issue 63, December 1998, p. 156: Matthew Pierce, interview with Demis Hassabis (“over three and a half million copies sold”; his role; the Amiga Power competition; the last six months at Molyneux’s house).
PC Zone, issue 79, August 1999, p. 147: interview with Molyneux and Steve Jackson (Hassabis’s role, the co-creator credit, two years’ development, Theme Park 2, PC Zone 17’s 93%).
“Theme Park”, Sega Retro (web, secondary): Mega Drive, Mega-CD and Saturn release dates, the Mega Drive version’s changes, and the list of other versions. https://segaretro.org/Theme_Park
Google DeepMind, “Demis Hassabis & John Jumper awarded Nobel Prize in Chemistry”, 9 October 2024 (web, secondary). https://deepmind.google/blog/demis-hassabis-john-jumper-awarded-nobel-prize-in-chemistry/ ; “Demis Hassabis”, Wikipedia (web, secondary): DeepMind co-founded in 2010. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demis_Hassabis