Genre: City building, Simulation
Year: 1993
Developed by: Maxis
Published by: Maxis
Platforms: PC, the rest
#113
Feeling Like: Hooked
I don’t know if I can say the music is great, but this tune instantly transports me back to playing on our ancient 386 PC.
There are very few games our “computer” could run, even fewer that I played together with dad. The select few that we enjoyed as a team (Lemmings, Mario Golf) were a blast, but the one that really dug its claws in was SimCity 2000.
I’m fairly certain dad had to ask one of the tech guys at his office to create a boot disk in order for this to run. Don’t ask me what a boot disk is, I just know it was a roundabout way for the game to load in MS-DOS properly. Seeing it work was magical, like we’d finally convinced the machine to listen to what I wanted. It felt incredible to finally see the loading screen and then experience the freedom to create any kind of city I wanted, anytime.
It’s the isometric camera, I think. There’s an innate surge of pleasure we all get when looking at a nice view. I don’t know where it comes from; maybe we feel safer since we can theoretically see threats coming. Or it’s the likelihood that potential food and shelter are nearby. Or we just like looking at nice things. Regardless of the reason, I’m constantly surprised how hypnotized I am by simple screenshots like the one above. There’s just so much going on. There’s the ocean, then the river – ooh, can I build anything along the river? How many bridges do I want? Can I afford to flatten the landscape? Do I want to? Can I afford to not develop every square inch?
SimCity 2000 is why I’m forced to play every city builder/simulation I can. That high I first tasted 30 years ago will never be satiated, ever. It’s why Cities: Skylines is in my Top 10 for 2015, it’s why I’m beyond excited for Cities: Skylines 2, it’s why there are multiple SimCity games on the 500, it’s why I even played EA’s bastardized version of SimCity, despite frequent warnings to avoid it.
There are two ways I play these games – I cheat and give myself as much money as possible, or I play slow and steady. There’s no middle ground. Either I’m as patient as a monk, or I’m a rabid architect with OCD and limitless funds. Both have their appeal – the eventual sprawl and constant reminiscing about my first road, or power plant is a frequent reminder of how far New HenryTown has come. Or, I want a metropolis ASAP and see if I can figure out an impossibly intricate highway system.
I’m not very good at them, and this is where my father’s guidance helped. Taxes meant income, but not our digital population had their limits. Public transportation is great, but where should we put the bus depot? How do we handle the pollution and…dad, I don’t get how the subway system works! When empty space was abundant, we built everything we could. But once we got Fish Hooks established and financially stable, every decision had to be a compromise. Dad insisted that we turn the city into a utopian society that didn’t have a single car, where citizens would gleefully take trains, buses and subways to wherever they wanted to go. No doubt, this motivation stems from dad’s lengthy commute to work at the time – before he got his Tesla, there were few things dad hated more than the automobile.
I wanted the complete opposite, with roads and highways as far as the eye could see. After all, the proof was in the pudding – our stats showed that way more people drove than used the trains. “But that’s because we have WAY too many roads and not enough train stations!” Dad’s protests often fell on deaf ears, but eventually the pleasant squabbling turned into an Odd Couple-esque scenario, where the north side of the town was car-friendly and the south side was not. We left a portion of the middle ground undeveloped until we could come to some sort of agreement.
Eventually we got to the Arcologies, futuristic buildings that are mammoth in size. They can hold tens of thousands of inhabitants, and cost a fortune. I couldn’t get enough, and eventually I’d start logging on without dad’s approval and demolished established residential areas to make room. Sorry, cute little block of houses by the river, there’s science-fiction spaceship looking structures to be built! Apparently if you constructed enough of the Launch Arcologies, they all launched into space! Never did get that far.
Newspapers would flash up every few moments or so with breaking news! New types of zones were unlocked, there’d be power outages, crime surges, and natural disasters to deal with. Even if there wasn’t anything going on, there was always something going on. It doesn’t really matter to me how different, or samey, upcoming city building games are. I’m sure the graphics will be improved, or the traffic flow feels more natural, or you can customize your airport or you can zoom in and walk around your town in a first person view. There may be trades with neighboring cities, or you maybe you can name individual streets. It doesn’t really matter to me, as long as I can zoom out and survey my creation, I’ll feel like I’m 10 years old again sitting next to dad discussing which way the next road should face, or where the next school should go.
The 500 