I should preface this by saying I’m a huge SimCity nut. I should then add that I always sucked at SimCity games until I figured out the secret for cost-efficient city layouts.
Anyways, no matter how much I sucked at it at the time… I present to you the game that is solely responsible for teaching me what those mysterious signs in front of empty lots saying “Zoned Commercial” mean:
If you’ve never played SimCity, it might be one of those things that has you wondering “Wait, you find this fun?” You know, like Harvest Moon or one of those other simulation style games. Well, I’m here to tell you that planning and designing your own city is basically one of the most addictive things ever. Why? Because it goes beyond just the planning/design stage. You gotta keep your citizens happy. And make sure they have enough schoolhouses and hospitals and fire stations and etc. While somehow pulling in enough SimCash to do so.
Another way that they pulled you in was by dangling technologies in your face. Most SimCity games start by default in the year 1900. Not that SimCity is dying to be particularly historically accurate in most respects, but at the same time, they won’t give you much tech until you are actually able to use it. If you wanna run your city on nuclear power in the year 1900, tough luck. You’ve got coal and you’ve got oil. You’ll have to wait to get the nukes. SimCity 2000 was brilliant here, because not only did they give you presents of better power technology as you went along, but you got Arcologies, a.k.a. giant bio-dome-esque houses that would quadruple your population and also double as spaceships.
You got these babies in the year 2000. (Speaking of which, ten years on and we don’t have these in real life yet? What the heck? C’mon people!) And they were awesome.
For a bonus challenge you could turn on disasters and have to deal with things like hurricanes, fire outbreaks, or giant Godzilla monsters attacking your city– you know, just the normal everyday stuff you see in the newspapers all the time.
So yeah. SimCity 2000. Sometimes I wonder how many addicts of this game went on to become actual urban planners. Perhaps not many, because thanks to this game I have a tendency now to look at the way my own hometown is laid out and mumble about how inefficient it is…
as much as i liked this game, but the original is where it was for me. i just liked the feel of it better. *shrug*
@ Morkuma – I’ve never played the original… fail, I know… especially cause I’ve played most of the other versions, plus a bunch of the crappy spinoffs (SimLife anyone?)
@pike heh, i didn’t play much after 2000. but i did have simcity for snes, using the MOUSE!
oh that was awesome. i wonder if i still have the game around, i know i still have the system/mouse…….
I loved loved loved SC2000. Even if it did take us weeks to figure out how to put in plumbing, lol. We were always fond of using hydro-power, but the default maps never gave enough waterfalls.
So…my sister and I (we played separate games but shared strategy) would use the terra-former thingy to create a ring of mountains around the whole board, then add waterfalls to almost the entire thing. Tada! Hydro-power for everyone. Then we laid out the city in perfect squares.
I also loved SimLife, which was an evolution sim. It was really buggy though unfortunately. My sister also liked SimFarm, which was really the predecessor of Farmville.
Wow, this brings back a warm wave of nostalgia. I used to play this for hours and hours and hours. building “only trains” cities, terra-forming the crap out of maps to make big mazes or smiley-face mountains, and all that.
I miss it sometimes, just for casual brain-flexing sim-fun. 🙂
ehh I could never get into these games..every time i tried something bad happaned to them >_> stuff went boom…aliens came down and made bigger boom…you get the idea…
ahhh.. SC2k, the best SimCity ever. The ones that followed just didn’t cut it in comparison. I loved building up from a small village to an Arcology sprawling megalopolis in this game. Thanks Pike for those fond memories.
Oh my! I managed to build a massive, sprawling-to-the-edges, cheat-free city just once. And I lost the game somehow due to a Windows reformat. It was glorious though, glorious!
Thanks for the great post! 🙂
We seem to have very similar taste in video games tawtaw.
Creeeeepy! 😛 <3
I remember playing this game on SNES back in the daaaay. I think this is the best one of the entire series; it was just complex enough to keep your interested but overwhelm you like its many sequels.
I mostly built cities that only had train tracks. No traffic issues! Woo!
but NOT overwhelm you*
I loved Sim City, until a tornado or Godzilla comes along and wipes everything out. Then I’d rage quit for a couple of months (usually having to replace a controller) then come back and the cycle repeats. I’m a sucker for abuse. 🙁
you and me both. i use to do sim city tournaments so much so its on my phone 🙂
simcity is my all time favorite game, my dad even played that game “;-