Product Description

Complete Collection triples the fun by including all three popular games-Zoo Tycoon Marine Mania and Dinosaur Digs-along with bonus content providing players with an incredible assortment of land aquatic and prehistoric animals to build the ultimate zoo.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #3803 in Computer & Video Games
• Brand: Microsoft
• Released on: 2001-11-02
• Rating: Parental Guidance
• Platforms: Windows 98, Windows 2000, Windows Me, Windows XP, Windows 95
• Dimensions: .35 pounds

Amazon.co.uk Review
Zoo Tycoon bears more than just a title similarity to Roller Coaster Tycoon: it even looks as if it's based on the same basic game engine. Building pens and paths, decorating, placing buildings and managing your staff, even the way your patrons look and how you tweak pricing all are extremely similar to the fun of Roller Coaster Tycoon. The game play consists of a series of inventive scenarios, sometimes building a zoo from scratch, and other times taking over a failing or failed zoo and bringing it back from the brink.

Specifically, you've got to build pens and habitats with an eye toward the needs of each animal species. For example, putting bears in a savannah setting results in depressed, possibly sick, bears. You also have to tend to your human animals by including gift shops, restaurants, drink stands and bathrooms. Then you've got to adopt animals and hire zookeepers to tend your creatures. All of this costs money but cutting corners can result in irate customers and unhappy animals. Unhappy animals bore people, and worse they make it difficult to adopt more exotic and finicky creatures, such as pandas. Happy and well-fed animals will cavort and play, making your guests very happy. And happy guests mean more money for you to improve your zoo.

It's a balancing act, keeping all the animals, keepers and little wandering people happy, but the game is also a decorator sim. You've got to beautify your park and it's easy to forget the specific scenario objectives and lose yourself in building the ultimate zoo. If you ultimately tire of the objectives, you can delete some of your fences and watch the animals run amok on your guests (sometimes, through negligence, they can break free on their own). The carnivores grab, pin, and fling your guests (no blood, and no killing here) and this lowers your zoo rating and dissuades people from visiting for a while. Still, it's great fun to watch.--Bob Andrews

Manufacturer's Description
Microsoft Zoo Tycoon gives players the opportunity to build a zoo from the ground up. Build habitats, adopt zoo animals, staff the zoo, and monitor guest satisfaction. But remember, animals have unique ways of reacting to their surroundings, which present new challenges never before experienced in a tycoon game. The intuitive UI and interactive tutorials help players begin playing and enjoying the game right out of the box. Two gameplay modes - freeplay and scenarios - freeplay allows the player to build the zoo at will with no constraints other than the regular game rules in force. Engaging scenarios allow the player to try to meet challenges and objectives as a part of gameplay.

Choose from over 40 animals, 60 habitat building materials, and 40 building materials - bring in visitors using zoo favorites such as lions, giraffes, elephants, and bears as well as more exotic fare such as the Giant Panda and the White Siberian Tiger. Players can make their zoos bigger and better with fences, terrain, foliage, flowers, paths, benches, shelters, and rocks. While some attractions and materials are available at the start of the game, others become unlocked during the course of the game.

Customer Reviews

Buy this!
Hi,

In the game you get a plot of land, that you choose (There are loads to choose from) and on it you build a zoo, surprisingly enough, you build exhibits and care for animals whilst managing staff and making sure visitors are happy and you have to watch your bank balance at the same time.

Occasionaly letting the animals free and torturing a few people is fun too, but if you look after the zoo once you've spent money on the exhbits the money will come rolling back in.

The graphics are good,
but can take a while to load properly, depending on what system you have.

The game is really good but when you've got all the species it can become a bit limited.

Watching the animals grow and breed is good, and helping sick animals is also kinda nice.

The game is great fun and can become quite hard so I suggest you use the tutorial it really helps!

If you get bored with this game take a breather and leave it for a week or so, then you'll enjoy it much more the next time you visit it.

Zoo tycoon is a really good game, I would seriously reccomend buying it.

Zoo Tycoon
Great for kids and adults. Graphics fantastic although a closer zoom would be of benefit. Good one for teaching kids about budgeting and economics. Good choice of features although I think it would be better if it included more help on how to keep the animals happy!

If you like zoos you will like this game
Gameplay:- The gameplay is excellent.
I have never seen a game as good as this one.
I only got it on Monday 13 the December 2001 and I have completed the basic game goals already. I now have a laptop computer which I play the game on also. I have read the strategy guide for the game and in chapter 3 it gives exclusive details on all the animals that are in zoo tycoon including 2 mystery beasts that come along later on in the game. Some of the animals are easy to care for such as the zebra, black rhinoceros, Thomson's gazelle, common wildebeest, lion & the flamingo and some of the animals are very difficult to care for such as the clouded leopard, gray wolf, mystery beast 2, California sea lion, jaguar, black leopard, mandrill, cheetah, hippopotamus, olive baboon & the African elephant. In freeform games you have to research some of the endangered animals and the shelters that they need such as for the Polar bear you have to research the snowy rock cake before you can adopt a polar bear and for the cats you need a rock cave and for the panda you need a special shelter called the panda cave otherwise they will NOT produce any baby pandas without this shelter.

Story-: I have to build a zoo which entertains visitors so I have to use suitable exhibits for the animals and give the visitors something to do such as visiting a reptile house or having a ride on a elephant ride.

Audio/Video-: The sounds and graphics on this game are fantastic.

Replay ability-: This game needs to be saved every so often so you will not lose your animals or visitors who are in the zoo but you can be on it for several hours.

To Buy or to Rent-: I recommend buying this game because it is brill. I don't recommend renting this game because the game is just too good to resist. So anybody who hasn't got this game yet please go out and buy it as the game is BRILL !!! If you haven't been to a zoo before I would recommend that you rent the game then visit a zoo then decide if you want it or not.

Conclusion.
Zoo Tycoon is brill!!! I am really glad I purchased this game and also now I have the exclusive strategy guide for the game and it is helping me a lot. If you have got the game I recommend you get the exclusive strategy guide for the game and I also recommend that you do not insist purchasing a Giant Panda because they require a lot of dedicated care.