About

Inspired by the old Zoo fan content sites and partially based off of the many iterations of the Zoo Tycoon series' official websites, Nano's Zoo 2 Zone is a nostalgia-fueled tribute to a period of Zoo Tycoon 2 history that passed many years ago. Though it is built with the tools for, and has the basic functionality of, a modern website, just about everything about it is designed to be evocative of the mid-late 2000's; insofar as that can be achieved with the modern, inflexible iteration of Google Sites.

All of the content hosted here is in the style of the vanilla game, though I intend for most of it to lean closer to the slightly more realistic animals offered in Endangered Species, African Adventure and Marine Mania than some of the more explicitly cartoony offerings in the base game and Extinct Animals. Most content here was made with Zoo Tycoon 2: Ultimate Collection in mind, and the frankly-monstrous Folksy Facelift requires all of the expansion packs and bonus downloads, but I've made an effort to try and have it so smaller downloads only require one or two expansion packs at most, if that.

About using NZ2Z downloads for projects

Though I would definitely appreciate credit being given where it is due, all downloads hosted here are free to be edited, upgraded and used as bases for new Zoo Tycoon projects. Things like space and biome hacks or variants and reskins are completely fine by me. Porting the content here to other, non-Zoo Tycoon games, like Jurassic Park: Operation Genesis, is in a weirder spot; unless you can get in contact with me and ask permission, I'd rather this not be done.

Keep in mind that the above only applies to transformative works, please don't chop up parts of the downloads hosted here and release them standalone or in a different package without any meaningful changes.

About uploading NZ2Z downloads to other websites

Please don't do this. If you ever see a mod from Nano's Zoo 2 Zone like Folksy Facelift or Vanilla-Friendly Fixes uploaded to a place like Nexus Mods, GameBanana or ModDB, I did not sanction the mods being redistributed. If you're able, please file a report to get the mods taken down from those sites.

If you want to share a NZ2Z mod, just link back to Nano's Zoo 2 Zone proper.

Do you take requests? I'd like you to make a...

No, I don't take requests. I've been tempted to ask to have my stuff taken down from the Download Library for this reason; whenever I check there for constructive feedback, I'm rarely met with more than lengthy grocery lists for animals I have no interest in making.

What do you think of realistic-styled mods?

This is all down to aesthetic preference. I totally see all of the arguments for and against the look. Purely personally I prefer the cartoon look, but the craftsman-ship of a good realistic mod is impossible to deny; so long as care is put into things being functional, there's absolutely nothing wrong with realistic mods. I'm not against dipping my toes into more realistic-looking stuff in the future, though it'll never be the focus on NZ2Z.

Of all things, I think the limitations of the game's engine are the weak point here, namely how entities (like the leaves of trees) only cast shadows on terrain and not other entities. I've done some personal experimenting to try and improve things like lighting and the environments, but none of it is anything I'm comfortable releasing here for a number of reasons.

Have you played the 2013 Zoo Tycoon game?

Nope, not interested. The initial impressions I kept hearing back when it was new are all I needed to hear, and I'm inclined to seriously doubt that them just adding more animals to the Steam version made it any more worthwhile.

By the way, stop calling it Zoo Tycoon 3. It's not Zoo Tycoon 3. It's a weird botched attempt at a reboot, not the third installment in the series.

Have you played World of Zoo?

For the longest time, I only had convenient access to the demo for the PC version, but a few years down the line I got ahold of a re-release. It's definitely not a zoo management game, but it's still a fun, cuddly pet-the-animals game. There's nothing wrong with it going for what it goes for. I know that there's a more robust console version, but I've only ever emulated that, and only fairly recently.

By the way, the reissue I bought also came with something called Jungle Kartz, a strange kart racer game with very few things online that acknowledge it. "Shovelware" is an apt description from what I've played of it.

There are lots of other zoo-building management sims out there besides the Zoo Tycoons. What do you think of those games?

Blue Fang's zoo duology are comfortably still the king and queen in this field as far as fun goes. It's based off of a movie series that I've frankly grown to strongly dislike, but Jurassic Park: Operation Genesis is strong as well, even if it struggles in the decoration department. Prehistoric Kingdom shows a lot of promise, but the user interface is a major turn-off and I have personal grievances with sim games that place an emphasis on their gridless, modular building mechanics.

The vast majority of other zoo games I've played or glanced at haven't really sat right with me. The demos I've played of the first two Wildlife Park games are very odd beasts that I don't really gel with (it'd probably help if I played them in English and not German), the demo for Zoo Empire struck me as outright bad, and truth be told I've come to have very pointed opinions on the "games" put out by Frontier Developments that I probably shouldn't elaborate on here. I try to keep this site PG, and the best descriptors I think there are for Planet Zoo and the Jurassic World Evolution set are very much not family-friendly.

Speaking of Frontier's output; where did your mods for those two games go? You know, those games?

I have backups of most of them on hand, but I have zero interest in re-releasing any of them. If you want them available for download again, forget it.

Maybe the sequel will be better.

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