Staff Blog: If You Build It... - Sim City (DOS)

If You Build It... - Sim City (DOS)

On 12/04/2020 at 06:14 PM by Matt Snee

The original Sim City was a city-building game designed by Will Wright and released by Maxis in 1989. Players are tasked with building a city from scratch, deciding what goes where, managing taxes rates, and dealing with the consequences of their decisions. The game isn't really winnable... it can go on forever, potentially, and the player can enact natural disasters for extra challenge. This little game eventually spawned other Sim titles, leading to the famous Sims games.

I was a little obsessed with this game for a while when I was a kid. It's really fun. I like laying things out and trying to anticipate traffic and growth, etc. But no matter what I did, I'd always have to adapt to new challenges.

I was never into the natural disasters. Why would I want to destroy my city?

EA, who owns the series now, still releases these games occasionally, but their quality has diminished compared to the legion of other city builders out there that do it better.

KnightDriver

12/04/2020 at 09:04 PM

I'd like a good and simpler take on Sim City for consoles.

SanAndreas

12/05/2020 at 05:15 AM

Cities Skylines is a game to try. It's the best city sim out there these days, especially since EA killed Maxis and SimCity with the 5th game.

12/05/2020 at 08:47 PM

I tried it once and bounced off it because of it's complexity, but in a better mood, I'd try it again.

Super Step Contributing Writer

12/05/2020 at 12:00 AM

Oh you never wanted to detroy your city? You must never have been a disafected youthful person. Vonnegut would be ashamed. How dare you.

#HunterSThompsonWasRight

#Onlythemosteducatedcollegestudentssayso

#Innowaywasheuntrustworthyatall

Matt Snee Staff Writer

12/06/2020 at 12:34 AM

ha ha. I must have played this before puberty really kicked in.

Joaquim Mira Media Manager

12/05/2020 at 02:30 AM

Sim City 2000 was my entry into this series. Was never good at it, but it was fun just trying to see what you could build with the money cheat code.

12/06/2020 at 12:35 AM

I haven't played one since this first one. But I always wanted to.

12/05/2020 at 05:22 AM

I had this when I was a teenager and was obsessed with it. I loved SimCity. I kind of wish I'd gotten the NES version so I could see the origins of Mr. Write in Link's Awakening. The next year my parents got me SimAnt for Christmas, which was also fun. But I was also frustrated because I couldn't get my city's population higher than 250,000, which is about the size of Scottsdale or Glendale. My dreams of building a Tokyo-sized megalopolis never came to pass.

I didn't play a Sim game again until I picked up the PS2 version of The Sims, and in 2005 I got a laptop and got SimCity 4 for it. After that Maxis and EA went downhill. But I got Cities Skylines on the Switch a couple of years ago, and it's tied with Pokemon Sword as my second most played Switch game, behind Breath of the Wild. Cities Skylines handles traffic much better than SimCity ever did, although I seem to have ambulances everywhere on my city's freeways for some reason. And despite the fact that the city I built looks like downtown Los Angeles, its population has topped out at 170,000, about the size of Tempe. But it's still the best city sim out there these days.

12/06/2020 at 12:36 AM

I think I have Cities: Skylines, but I haven't played it yet. I really want to though, cause I want to get back into these types of games.

Cary Woodham

12/05/2020 at 08:36 AM

I remember seeing SimCity EVERYWHERE in computer game stores back in the day. I even remember the weird box art that looked like a steampunk Game Boy or whatever. I never played it on the PC, but my friend had it and he'd print out his city and bring the papers to school to show me what it looked like, and I thought that was pretty cool.

I didn't actually play the game proper until I rented it on the SNES. I didn't think I'd like it, but it was surprisingly addictive. I never bought it, though. Many years later, when the Virtual Console first came out on the Wii, Sim City on SNES was one of the first games out for it. I remembered how fun it was, and I wanted to try out a Virtual Console game anyway so I bought it. When I showed it to my brother Jeff, he LOVED it. So much so that immediately after playing it, he downloaded the latest Sim City game on his computer, which I think was Sim City 3000 at the time.

Ha ha, I forgot you could print out the cities. Yeah, this was definitely a big game at the time.

PixlBit