DinoPark Tycoon (A Forgotten Diamond)

I clearly remember the very first game I ever stayed up all night playing.  I think I was around eight years old.  I didn't even realize I'd stayed up all night, I simply decided it must be about bedtime so I ought to stop.  When I checked the clock, I discovered it was 4 AM.  I couldn't believe that my parents hadn't told me to go to bed; somehow I had slipped their radar.

That game was DinoPark Tycoon (of course; what's the name of this post?), and it had me hooked.  It came out the same year as the Jurassic Park movie, so the idea of an amusement park with dinosaurs was very high in my mind.

Basically, DinoPark Tycoon is a business sim like the Sim[X] franchise.  I believe this was before the "Tycoon" franchise, and it's by a different developer.  It's meant to be both a business sim and an educational game, allowing the player to look up the dinosaurs they put in their park.  The info is helpful, like dinosaur diet so the player knows how much food to buy (and whether to buy plants or animals), so the educational content is blended with the game.  This was back in the day when educational games were good at that.

Another example.

You had to manage many aspects of running a park, including buying property, fences, concession stands, dinosaurs, dinosaur food, hiring employees, fixing ticket prices, advertising, paying off loans, and even going to auctions.  You even had to pave new parking lots and put up restrooms.

I pretty sure real theme park managers buy their restrooms and parking lots from catalogs.

I remember I always had a personal goal of making it ten years, but after three a multitude of problems kick in, and after five the park really goes to hell in a hand basket.  Dealing with escaping dinosaurs is the least of your problems.  Vandals, managing employees, dinosaurs getting sick, running out of food, running out of money; all of these problems always seem to hit at once.  You have to maintain a high enough profit or the first to go is your employees.  They will leave the first week they don't get paid, and if the concession stand operators leave, you lose more money, and if the vet leaves, your dinos will get sick or overeat, and if your maintenance men quit, the dinos will break through the fences, and if your tour guides quit, visitors will be unhappy, and if your manager quits, the remaining employees will be unhappy.

It's a great big downward spiral of despair that contrasts with the perky internal speaker music and colorful graphics.

On the other hand, sticking the T-Rex behind the chainlink fence wasn't the brightest idea.

I never got into SimCity, and I always had this notion that it was because there was no win state.  I don't think that's true anymore, because DinoPark Tycoon had no win state, but I was obsessed with it.  I think ultimately a lot can be said for theme.

On the surface, you might assume this is a cash-in on Jurassic Park, and it might be partly true, but this takes a much different spin on the concept.  Jurassic Park is really about the characters trying to escape, but DinoPark Tycoon is much more about building and managing such a park.  For some reason, as a little boy, the management of a dinosaur theme park seemed far more interesting than watching dinos eat lawyers.

I think this game is a bit of a hidden diamond.  I don't know too many other people (except those I grew up with) who ever played it.  There were some similar games, like a licensed Jurassic Park themed game, and a dinosaur expansion to Zoo Tycoon, but I think this one has the right level of complexity (or perhaps simplicity) that helped get me into the genre.

DinoPark Tycoon can be found on most abandonware sites, so if it works on your computer, give it a try.  Even if you don't like SimCity (and I don't), this game might get you interested in simulation games.