Dinopark tycoon
Dinopark tycoon is a pretty original game, not in the game itself because there are other games that have you running an amusement park but this one has you running a park that has dinosaurs. You start the game with a 5000 dollar loan from the bank with which you can buy items to start the park. The first time you play you are told by a friendly dinosaur which of the building do what and these include a realestate broker, hardware store and dinosaur store. You’ll have to start your park by buying land and you can choose from three differents types of land, the better the land the more expensive obviously. This is the case with most items but in the beginning your choices are limited because you have very little cash. Other things you need to buy are fences to secure the dinosaur paddocks, food and hire employees. Once you do all that you can view your park and see all the people walking around.
If you get your park started things can become hectic because it’s now a matter of keeping your park running by having enough money come in to pay your expenses like feeding the dinosaurs and your employees but you’ll need to make a profit as well so you can invest it back into the park and attract more customers. This isn’t as easy as it sounds because if you make wrong choices in the beginning it’s easy to run out of money fast and you’ll have to start a new game. Once you get it running though it’s rewarding to keep expanding your park and buy some of the bigger dinosaurs to attract even more people.
The graphics are very colorfull and are drawn in a cartoonish way but they fit with the mood of the game well. It’s unfortunate that the layout and view of your park is always the same so you can only build paddocks on predetermined pieces of land, the same goes for giftshops and foodstands which are always placed at the start of the park. This might be a letdown for some who want to design the park themselves but this is more a limitation of hardware at the time because this game was released in 1993. I though this game was pretty fun and you can even learn from the game because it contains some basic information on all the dinosaurs you can buy. The menu screens are easy to navigate and the choices are depicted by large icons so this game is tailored for people who don’t like to read a lot of dry statistics and for younger folks. If you are looking for a fun but not too difficult “theme park” game then you won’t be dissapointed with this.
Ps. I checked the release date for Jurassic Park the movie and it was also released in 1993 and given the time it took to complete a game in those days compared to a movie of that magnitude it’s very likely they borrowed the theme of the game from the movie but hey I’m not complaining ;)
Overal rating: 8/10
| DOS | Released in 1993. Game has been tested but not completed on a DOS and win2k PC. Works just fine on windows machines despite that it’s a DOS game. |
| Others | I read that there was an apple version released but I have never seen it and so was unable to get it. |
| Date added | Jan-17-2005 18:59 |
| Name | Dinopark tycoon |
| Developer | Manley associates |
| Publisher | Mecc |
| First released | 1993 |
| Genre | Strategy |
