Retro games are a touchy topic. Say the wrong one and you might send your coworker into a dangerous downward spiral that is only reversible with an offer of a cup of tea*. Or, say one of the unlikely suspects that are due for a remake and you’ll receive a wave of raised eyebrows under those rose-tinted glasses. The retro games that truly deserve recognition are those on the PlayStation. Them’s the rules, loser.
What about my brethren born in the final few years of the 20th century, or heaven forbid, some of us be the first to be born in a brand new century? We were too small to play Syphon Filter, Legacy of Kain, Escape from Monkey Island, and so on. And, irrespective of whether or not we could hold our own head up at that time, our retro games were the ones we were allowed to play. Shelves were stacked with simulation games of all stripes, like Theme Hospital, Rollercoaster Tycoon, Emperor: Rise of the Middle Kingdom. There was one, though, that turned the tide for me on the majesty and mystery of video games. Zoo Tycoon 2 is as deserving as any other retro game of the love.
Check out the trailer for Zoo Tycoon 2 here- oh wow. That’s a lot scarier than I remember it being.
Composed solely of right angles, just like Cillian Murphy’s face, the animals were real this time. As real as they were able to be without me being a footnote in a documentary. Keepers were useful but you could attend to the animals yourself, brushing their fur, replenishing their food and water, and sweeping up their waste, all with the spacebar. What a dream. This must be what it’s like to be a zookeeper, give or take, I thought. The difference would be that at the end of my shift I would drive home to my seaside flat in the city centre where my boyfriend and our two dogs lived together.
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Reader, I cannot drive. Yet, when the memories of Zoo Tycoon 2 bubbled back up on a Monday afternoon, slightly soupy from a head cold, I longed for the magic and majesty of the game again. The simplicity of the sim, ticking tasks off the lists, crunchy .wavs when you set the fences up, and the slowly sharpening glow of the screen as the sun starts to set and you haven’t turned the big light on.
In the first game, the animals needed their hunger, health, happiness and environment meters maintained, whereas the second game asked that the player balance habitat, hunger, thirst, stimulation, privacy, sleep, social, exercise. The big leagues.
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Players were also handed the hammer and chisel of a god with the Biome Brush. Each animal has its own preferred habitat and this time you could carve out the pools, raise the earth to create hills and mountains, and daub it with sand, grass, snow, rock and more. These features were arguably rudimentary in the original game, as you had to fill squares with different terrain paints and levels to satisfy the animals’ requirements, however this was actual artistry. Like Monet with his brushes, with my wired mouse.
And if you still don’t believe me, in this one, we could make waterfalls. Imagine the beauty of something that sort of resembles a Bengal tiger standing in front of their simulated habitat. Like an Attenborough documentary filmed on an Android.
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Animals would interact, too, with what was placed in their enclosures. You just had to drop the beavers a pile of sticks and they would make their own lodge. Elephants could paint, though I’ve since learned that this isn’t fun for the animal at all so let’s pretend this game did its research. Grizzly bears would scoop the honey out of the log and primates would pick apart their fruits to snack on them during the day. Zoo Tycoon’s isometric perspective made all the animals, their exhibits and the visitors look like miniatures. But this.
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This was my Red Dead Redemption 2. I had never seen anything so gorgeous as when the sun set on my glorious empire. All I needed to do was not look at the bank balance. The only money that mattered was the coins I occasionally got under my pillow and also off the countertop after my mum had emptied pockets to put jeans in the wash. And it was good.
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I miss Zoo Tycoon 2. I miss the uncanny valleys of my own creation. I miss giving zero shits about the visitors, providing them with one toilet, one restaurant and one gift shop in the entire park because they were ugly. I don’t miss being in debt but I would likely be better at the game now that I have a better grasp of the financials.
*may or may not be based on real events.
Topics: PC, Retro Gaming