[Throughout this project, I will be handing over this space to the viewpoints of others for guest posts. For this one I hand over to my awesome friend and e-commerce whizz Lucy Joy]
This is probably one of the first games I played on my hand-me-down Macintosh in the mid-90s, post-Gameboy and pre-N64. SimCity 2000 is one in a long list of games in the Sim franchise and the first Sim number one chart hit, though potentially in a format unfamiliar to all. SimCity 2000 was Maxis Games’ last independently released title prior to its purchase by gaming powerhouse Electronic Arts in 1997. The title serves as a bookmark into the decline of the SimCity franchise and it’s quick succession by the much more well-known The Sims – but more of that in 2003.
SimCity 2000, the sequel to 1989’s unexpected hit SimCity, was released by studio Maxis Games in 1993 for Macintosh, and later in 1994 for DOS, Amiga & Microsoft Windows operating systems. The game added to the list of playable disaster scenarios passed on from SimCity to include UFO attacks, increased budget control, offered a wider array of building and zone types (hospitals, who knew?) and most importantly added new layers to the map for a more user friendly experience and realistic neighbourhood terrain..
The game starts with the title screen I’ve come to so fondly miss, a robot monster on top of a Hollywood-style billboard in a cluster of buildings reading “SimCIty 2000”. From here you’re asked to either load a pre-saved city, build your own city or load a disaster scenario. Some people just like to watch the world burn (me).
One of the nice features we see here upon opening our game, is a newspaper detailing the events of the city in clickable headlines to open up the article in more detail. This is a feature we see commonly in more modern games, Plague Inc. springs to mind where headlines scroll atop the world map to let the user know the happenings and useful insights around the globe, the better to destroy it.
The newspaper isn’t the only useful tool the game has to offer. The smallest window lets you know what item you’ve clicked on as well as citizen demands, it also serves as a weather forecast including impending doom (disasters). On the toolbar a coloured bar chart lets you know which zoning requirements you should be allotting, and various buttons show you everything you might need to know from budgetary advisement, to population variance and industry growth. Whilst this information is important, I wouldn’t necessarily say it’s vital to the game depending on how you want to play it. Once you’ve got your bearings, you can decide how you want to play the game. Are you starting from scratch, managing budgets and an increasingly demanding population of citizens? Are you jumping into a major city and watching time play out at “Turtle” speed? Do you want to watch the world burn?
The year is 2050. A robot monster drops down from the sky, blasting circular laser beams and emitting a noise that makes you think of a diluted War of the Worlds, destroying everything you love by setting it on fire. Ideally you should be able to stop this with enough practice, but it’s up to you whether you want to sit back and enjoy all the fun. Maybe you’ve just loaded up a disaster scenario to see if you’ve got what it takes, maybe you’ve worked hard building your city from the ground up and you’ll do anything you can to stop the UFOs from taking over. But fear not. Your citizens aren’t doomed. You can always quit the game without saving and try again.
PC chart, Edge 008, May 1994