How to play Theme Hospital in full HD right now

Many who know me are aware that one of my all time favourite games is Bullfrog’s classic management simulator, Theme Hospital. The game combined dynamic and compelling gameplay with an endearing sense of humour and a memorable visual style. Sadly, it remains one of the few late 90’s classics that never received a sequel, although, perhaps that’s for the better.

Today I was linked to an application, which as a long standing Theme Hospital fan, I am ashamed to admit I was not already aware of. It’s called CorsixTH, and it’s an open source application which basically re-skins the original Theme Hospital, allowing you to play it on current generation PC hardware and software at practically any resolution you choose. CorsixTH is a relatively new project, but through the tireless efforts of the developers, is currently in version Beta 6, and supports most of the game’s original functionality. CorsixTH supports 32-bit and 64-bit versions of Windows and Linux, as well as OS X.

The only limitation is that you will need the original Theme Hospital source files. Fortunately I still have my original Theme Hospital disk handy, so this was not a problem. If you have lost your original installation CD, I’m sure the god’s of gaming will look the other away while you download a +- 200MB ISO file for the game.

How to run Theme Hospital CorsixTH

First of all, you will need to download one of the following , depending on your operating system:

CorsixTH for Windows 7 32-bit and 64-bit
CorsixTH for OSX
CorsixTH for Linux 32-bit
CorsixTH for Linux 64-bit

You will then need to install Theme Hospital. If you are running 64-bit Windows you will not be able to install the game. Instead, with the game mounted, right click on your DVD icon in MyComputer and select “Open”. Then copy the folder “HOSP” from the Theme Hospital disk to your harddrive. IMPORTANT Copy the HOSP folder to the root directory of a harddrive ie. C:\HOSP.

Next, install CorsixTH. Once installed, simply click the CorsixTH chortcut which should be in your Windows Start Menu. You will be asked to point CorsixTH to the folder on your PC which contains the original Theme Hospital game files. Select the C:\HOSP directory, or alternatively the directory where you successfully installed the game.

The game will load, and using the “settings” tab in-game, you will be able to input a custom resolution.

And presto, you’re playing Theme Hospital in full HD. We’ve put the game through its paces and encountered no bugs as yet. Saving and loading works perfectly, and the game plays just like it did 13 years ago.

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