Dinopark Tycoon

Dinopark Tycoon is a 1993 educational business simulation from MECC, the same Minnesota outfit best remembered for The Oregon Trail. As the name suggests, it hands you the job of building and running a park full of dinosaurs, and like most MECC software it was designed with the classroom in mind: the goal is to teach economics and management concepts to younger players through the appealing hook of prehistoric beasts.

You buy land, purchase dinosaurs, keep them fed and healthy, set admission prices and try to keep the whole operation solvent while turning a profit. It predates the more famous Jurassic Park tie-ins and the later boom in "tycoon" management games, so it sits as an early, gentle entry in the park-builder lineage rather than a deep simulation. The presentation is simple and instructional in tone.

As a piece of edutainment it holds up as a curiosity more than a compelling game today; the economic model is basic and the pace slow by design. But for anyone interested in the roots of the management-sim genre, or who grew up on MECC's educational catalogue, it's a charming little artefact of early-90s school-computer culture.