I, Blittie of blue fuzzy fur, have found myself recently involved with creating zoos.  Okay, they are just computer generated zoos, but the game is one of the best and most involved I have ever seen.  I would like to introduce everyone to Zoo Tycoon the Complete Collection.  Within the last ten years this game has been in my possession, I have had one computer completely break down and the first game purchased got scratched.  Both of these events lead me to lose all the zoos I had created and I had to start the scenerios all over.  Terrible disappointment indeed!  About a month ago after becoming enthusiastic about the Angry Birds app on my iPod, I started thinking about creating zoos again.  I already had a cheat sheet created for making some of the animal exhibits, so I was ahead of myself this time around. 

If you are not aware of this game, let me tell you a few things about it:  during the simulation, you, the player, are to pretend you are a tycoon and would like to create a zoo.  Very exciting.  You can play the game two of the following ways that I will list: first, you can select a freeform scenerio that will allow you to create any zoo you please; or second, you can challenge yourself to follow a specified scenerio in which the game creators have a list of instructions/criteria you must follow in order to pass it.  Currently, I am a little over half way done with the latter scenerios.  This is the furthest I have ever gotten with the game.  Whoohoo!  Go Blittie!  The sad part of all this new enthusiasm for the game is that the websites that used to be up are no longer existent.  Boo!

Now, I realize there is a newer version of this game on the market, Zoo Tycoon 2, but this older version just has so much more charm to it.  The newer version with it supposed more advanced graphics just isn't the same game.  I think the animals look particularly phony and the zoo itself just is unappealing.  What is most disappointing about this is that the players' websites are starting to disappear and the information on how to make better zoos for this version is becoming harder and harder to look up online.  I wish Microsoft would reevalute their so-called improvements to the game and take a second look at this older version.  I believe it is the better of the two versions (this is an opinion shared by others) and I believe that there is a customer base for selling more scenerios. 

Alysa Salzberg's Open Call