Have You Played... E.R. The Game?

Have You Played? is an endless stream of game retrospectives. One a day, every day of the year, perhaps for all time.

E.R. The Game represents one of my all-time favourite moments in gaming. Given to me to review by PC Gamer, back in 2005, I had expected some crummy adventure tie-in along the lines of the abysmal CSI games Telltale used to poop out. I got something totally different. There were fairies.

ER The Game is, in fact, more like Theme Hospital than anything else. You could ungenerously call it a Theme Hospital rip-off, but that suggests there's something wrong with that. We need lots more games like Theme Hospital. Sadly, we also need them to be good.

ERTG was not good, but wow was it weird. This was a game in which you fall into a drug-induced fantasy where you treat multiple patients while American football players appear and disappear like ghosts around you, and fairies appeared on the furniture. On waking from this hallucination, the hospital has been invaded by a ninja, who was hiding in a cupboard. There's an accident at a sci-fi convention, and you have to treat the cosplayers. There's a Samurai master who requires your medical attention. And you get to snog Dr. Carter.

How this ever came to be, how it got the official E.R. license, I cannot fathom. But I'm so delighted it existed. (I imagine a charity shop would be your only likely place to find it now.) I'm so intrigued to know I've contacted developers Legacy Interactive to see if they'll tell me.