Zoo Tycoon Complete™

I remember as a kid I once made a "human zoo" where i captured a bunch of guests and made themed exhibits for them to live in while the animals roamed free... good times

“Hippo 23 does not like the single patch of sand in the far corner of the exhibit that he never visits.” Guest dissatisfaction soars

This was EXACTLY how I played this game as a kid! Slave away for hours failing to acheive some goal, then inevitably get frustrated and feed all my guests to dinosaurs. What a trip down memory lane

2:17 You don't get your first big paycheck by making a zoo, you get your first big paycheck by selling the entire perimeter fence you start with in the original zoo tycoon, any real fan knows this

I remember playing this in English, which is not my native language, and making a mistake: The tutorial had told me that each guest had meters depicting their needs, and one of those needs could be fulfilled with a restroom. At the time I did not know what "restroom" meant, but I assumed it was a room where you get rest. I then spent the campaigns going: "What? That meter is depleted again? Look, I've placed plenty of benches; just sit down and get some rest there!".

You know the game is good when developers think about animals "accidently" escaping their enclosures.

"Cheese? This rat gets the meat!" - Catholic Corn-Corn, 1665

As a kid I liked creating "gauntlets" of exhibits where guests would have to run from one dangerous animal after the other to get out of a long, fenced-in maze. As an adult I'm actually trying to beat all of the scenarios lol. Just successfully completed Save the Great Cats 🐯

I love it when the tutorial teaches you how to release your animals from the exhibit and watch them maul your visitors

whenever I went to our local zoo as a kid, they always let the peacocks roam around freely among the guests and exhibits. I’d never known anything else so when I built my zoo I just plopped them down in the guest areas. Did not understand what everyone was so upset about. Edit: it's fascinating that this seems to be a universal phenomenon! For the record I was at the Detroit zoo, but it seems like a ton of places do this! All the more reason it should have been a real feature.

I don’t think any video has ever given me a bigger dose of nostalgia than this one. I spent WEEKS of my life playing this gem of a game as a child

The low res sprites and textures of the grounds are so charming to see. I'm so fond of this.

Zoo Tycoon was the first video game I ever played, I spent hundreds of hours building the perfect little pixelated zoo for my pixelated animals. It filled my young elementary school mind with such joy. Thank you for bringing back those memories

This Zoo Tycoon >>>>>>>> Every other Zoo Tycoon

I feel like the destructive aspect of this game makes it full circle, you spend hours and hours playing god creating the perfect environment for these picky guests, only to smite them for not conforming to your rules. It’s perfection

I love this channel as the inverse of “Let’s Game it Out”. Both are endlessly entertaining in their special ways.

This man is recreating my childhood, game by game. I've never found a YouTuber whose gaming history aligned with mine so much. I missed a lot of the common ones. But Mr. Phibian is going like 8 for 8 on games I lost uncountable hours on.

My absolute favorite thing to do in this game was to make mermaids. There is a mermaid statue that, if you put it in a marine exhibit, will "hatch" into a mermaid. I think you needed to research the statue to get it, but I'm a little fuzzy on the details, having not played this game for maybe twenty years. Also the ethics of housing a creature with human or near-human intelligence in a zoo is a little cringe... though so is feeding your guests to the wildlife. I also remember there being rumors of unicorns in the game, though I never figured out if they were real or not. Also, I loved this video, if that wasn't already obvious. This was my absolute favorite game to play when I was little. It was a real treat to see it again.

Calling the Wild Hunt upon the guests of your Zoo was truly always the capstone and finisher move of Zoo Tycoon.

I remember learning that penguins, when starved, would eat anything including predatory animals and guests. Between this, RCT and Sims, things kind've got...weird from there. I guess that explains a lot