A Closer Look at the Sim City Game Legacy

Within all of the Sim City titles, your responsibility was that of Mayor and City Planner. You typically begin with a plot of land, a small amount of cash, and the freedom to do whatever you deem necessary to start a population. This is done by laying out roads, adding utilities (Power, Water), then adding city services (Police, Fire, Hospital, School) and finally, designating zones (Industrial, Residential, Commercial).

The game can be as simple or as complicated as you wanted: either speed your way to a big city, or take your time to make things look the way you want, perform the way you want, or simply look and act differently. Parks and recreational venues added to land value, and also served as eye candy.

Another major aspect of the game was to adjust the taxes to the three zones accordingly: in times of high demand, raising the tax brings more income, but can lower demand. Players had to constantly check their population and status to ensure that taxes were at an optimal level. In essence, the game was also a learning tool that reviewed basic supply & demand, taxation and other such topics.

As cities grew, they demanded better transportation, such as commuter or freight rail lines, subways, seaports and airports. Highways moved mass transit more easily to a certain destination, when regular roads started to become congested.

Disasters could be turned on or off (or be selected at a whim), and would feature a host of natural and supernatural occurrences which could be seen as challenge of a nuisance. They included, but were not limited to tornadoes, earthquakes, fire, flooding and giant robot attacks.

The first Sim City title came out in 1989. Its concept was somewhat that of an "accident," as creator Will Wright had used a map building program to develop one of his other game titles at the time, and found that he actually had fun using the map program - therefore, creating the city simulator idea.

This original game was published by Maxis, and it became one of their only two titles at the time. It was released for the Amiga, Mac, Commodore 64 and PC, and later made it to the Super Nintendo Entertainment System.

Players first experienced the city-building genre in this game, which laid out the foundations of street grids, building placement and disaster recovery that would later become enhanced in future series. The original title had a top-down or blimp's eye view of the city, rather than the dimetric views as seen in the sequels. Players could choose from pre-built, real world cities - while attempting to help them recover from disaster scenarios, or reach monetary or population-based objectives.

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The next installment to the Sim City series, Sim City 2000, featured an advanced terrain editing toolset, new building designs, excellent music and better overall game play. A new system of land elevation not only allowed players to create mountains, hills and cliffs - but also allowed them to use a fun new water and river tool to create cascading streams, waterfalls and more. Water and land elevation could be globally adjusted to one's desire.

An amusing Newspaper addition brought the player several headline articles, which actually served as a guide to let you know how well (or poorly) you were doing, as citizens ranted or raved over your progress.

Many new buildings and features were included, such as prisons, museums & libraries, hospitals, stadiums, schools, and new power plant types such as the hydroelectric dam, wind power, coal & natural gas power plants, nuclear power plant, and futuristic microwave & fusion power plants. Seaports and airports were now available, to expand industrial and commercial horizons, respectively.

Another great feature that game owners could play around with was the SCURK or Sim City Urban Renewal Kit - an included software program that let you "paint" your own buildings, then save & view them in the game.

New disasters included nuclear meltdowns (only if a nuclear power plant were present in the city, and under certain conditions), and the dreaded robot attack from what some fans called the "eye monster."

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Two additional and separate games, Sim Copter and Streets of Sim City, were released in 1996 and 1997 respectively. They used the same format as Sim City 2000, but allowed you to view a Sim City city from a 3D, 1st-person and 3rd person perspective. Both of these games even allowed you to import your own cities via their save game files, and fly or drive within them.

In Sim Copter, you're a helicopter pilot on your own tarmac, and can own and earn several different copters used for MEDEVAC rescue, crimefighting and firefighting missions - by implementing your waterbucket and hose, winch, spotlight, megaphone and tear-gas cannisters. Additionally, you were able to call for an ambulance, police car or firetruck, which would rush you your location at the best of its ability. If you didn't want to do missions, you were free to fly (or walk) anywhere you wanted, making the game have an unreal amount of replay value and added fun. The game's music only kicked in while you piloted a helicopter and used the radio station - as all channels played smooth jazz. The game had many cheats, including a strange destruction cheat that created the sight and effect of a nuclear explosion.

In Streets of Sim City, players took to the road with their own customizable car and combat other players. Unlike Sim Copter's polished programming, Streets of Sim City was peppered with various glitches and gameplay errors.

This game included various "pick up and drop off" missions, racing, and other scenario-based missions. An online deathmatch mode was also available. Players were able to equip their vehicles with weapons that ranged from machine guns to missles and oil slicks. Additionally, various tires could be interchanged for improved driving conditions.

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Not long after New Year's 1999 came Sim City 3000, a graphical upgrade to 2000 with the same basic elements and a few enhancements. One of the most notable additions was the light industrial or farmland addition, which would sprout up crop fields and barns. Farmlands were extremely difficult to create and maintain, since they would immediately disappear at the sign of any pollution. Another addition was trash collection - trash piled up and required a viable landfill, in which garbage trucks would pile everything onto. Landfills brought a great deal of the "NIMBY" (Not In My Back Yard) effect, and residential areas would have extreme difficulty developing anywhere near them.

Utilities could now be shared amongst cities - by simply dragging a power line or pipe to the city's edge, and striking a deal with the neighboring city (which, in essence, was a pretend city). The addition of city advisers were there to offer commentary on your progress, or suggest your next move within their realm of expertise.

As usual, new real-world landmark structures were added to the game. While mainly functioning as eye-candy, they also improved tourism to an extent.

An interesting note about Sim City 3000 was that it was originally planned to be a 3D game, and a preliminary 3D version was completed and displayed at the E3 Convention in 1997, never to be seen again.

Sim City 3000 included the "BAT" or Building Architect Tool, enabling players to create their own buildings and import them into the game.

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In 2003, the EA Corporation published this next Sim City title, which was produced by their newly acquired subsidiary, Maxis. The change in hats worried die-hard Sim City fans, and quality-related issues were certainly seen.

Sim City 4 broke the traditional mold of naming game versions as a multiple of 1000, and it featured an entirely re-vamped landscaping tool: featuring the ability to create smooth slopes, jagged cliffs and realistic mountain ranges. The graphics were improved significantly. Land mass was, well, massive - regions came in small, medium or large sized "map mode" squares. Each square, when clicked, brought you down into that sector's build mode, virtually giving you your own continent to play with.

Transportation was greatly expanded, as there were now streets (lowest capacity), one-way's (for forced traffic directoinal flow), roads (higher capacity than streets), highways, elevated highways, and a host of great new bridges.

The most notable aspect of Sim City 4 was that it was very expandable by community modders. Maps could be created (in Photoshop, for example) or imported from real satellite imagery, modified, and imported directly into the game, as it would then create a topographic 3D map that could be built upon. The game featured a great day/night cycle, illuminating buildings as it got dark.

The near-impossibility of easily maintaining a farm was eliminated in Sim City 4. However, obvious disappointments were found in the way the game handled water - no longer could you adjust variable water levels (for instance, no ponds on top of a mountain, no waterfalls, etc.), the water tool's removal from the game was an outrage, and overall - it did not have the flawless programming that the previous systems enjoyed. A common problem was the "zoom out & crash" issue that frustrated gamers, regardless of how high-tech their computer was.

A Rush Hour expansion pack later added more functionalities, such as new transportation facilities and tracking abilities.

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