Do You Tycoon?

As an adult, I find the Christmas holidays exhausting.  I'm cold and cranky.  I still have to work.  There's the added stress of holiday events at the zoo.  Most of my bill-chickens decide to come home to roost in early December, hitting the ol' bank account.  It seems like every year there are more people who snake their way onto the list of people I need to get gifts for.  This is offset by the fact that, as I am nagged annually by my folks about what I want for Christmas, my answer usually ends up being... nothing, really.  

I mean, there are things I need every year, like new work pants and small household objects and the junk food that fuels my will to live, but those are usually "I need now" kinds of purchases of the sort that can't wait until late December.

Oh, for the glorious, greed-fueled Christmases of yore, when the holidays were sparked with the joy of all the wonderful things I just knew I needed to be happy.  While visiting my family this Thanksgiving, I wondered up to my old bedroom and there, on a the shelf, was a blast from the past, my must-have Christmas gift from almost two decades ago.  It was a copy of the only computer game I'd ever owned - Zoo Tycoon.

For those not privileged enough to have enjoyed the game, Zoo Tycoon is essentially the SIMS for zoos.  You purchase animals, build enclosures for them to their liking, and hopefully get them to be fruitful and multiple.  You add attractions to lure in guests, beautify your grounds, and hopefully watch the money roll in, fueling your ability to get more animals and keep the cycle going.  Initially featuring forty species to choose from, including most of the zoo staples - elephants, rhinos, hippos, lions, tigers, polar bears, and gorillas, among them - a series of expansion packs and downloads brought the total up to over one hundred, including Marine Mania, with sharks, orcas, and other sea beasts, and Dinosaur Digs, where you can clone your way into making a Jurassic Park-style attraction with dinosaurs and other prehistoric beasties.  Zoo Tycoon has been replicated twice with newer, fancier features (including a visitor mode, where you can walk through your zoo and see the exhibits from the perspective of a guest, but I still have a special fondness for the original 2001 game.

As a kid I loved anything zoo-related, so this game was a natural draw for me.  The last time I played it, I was just starting off in the field.  I remember being somewhat jaded at how it took me only one click of the mouse to install a section of chainlink fencing in the game, while I had spent several hot, sweaty hours doing the real thing just hours earlier.  Also, I had the option of erasing a section of fencing and letting jaguars and hyenas chase down obnoxious zoo visitors who complained to much in the game without any real consequences, something that I suspect would have been frowned upon in real life.

My mother is always badgering me about when I'm finally going to settle down and get a permanent house somewhere so I can come home, collect all of my childhood belongings, and give her another empty room to tinker around with (which, I suspect, is her real life version of Zoo Tycoon).  This Thanksgiving, I made it a little easier and took a small batch of possessions back to my apartment with me.  Among them was my copy of Zoo Tycoon.  This Christmas, after I come home from work, I'm going to make myself a special dinner as only a bachelor living in a small apartment far away from home can, I'm going to get into my warm pajamas, and then I'm going to play some Zoo Tycoon for the first time in years.  In doing so, I'm going to remember what it was like when I got one of my favorite (non-living) Christmas gifts and got to first play with my longest-held dream of building my own zoo... even if the image was a little small and a little grainy.