Release Date: 1989
Genre: City-Building
Developer: Maxis
For Starters:
Sim City. The very name should conjure up memories in the minds of most gamers, of all ages and platforms. SIMply put, the Sim City series has been a cornerstone of the video game industry for a long time. Sim City has been available on PC's and consoles for decades. It's success has even spawned sequels, and spin-offs (The Sims, Sim Pets, Sim Copter, Sim Tower, etc.), and even clones.Two of the versions that found their way on to the Super Nintendo were the original Sim City, and Sim City 2000. Super Nintendo also provided Sim Ant, and Sim Earth, but those are entirely different games than the original Sim City. Now that I have some of the background out of the way, let's move on to my own experience with this fine game.
The Good:
Even though this game was available on the Super Nintendo, the graphics used for this game were not a full demonstration of what the SNES could handle. But when it comes to Sim City, it's not necessarily required to use full graphic capability. That being said, the graphics used for this game were good enough to
provide a basic feeling of an overhead city scape. Could some of the graphics been better? Yes, did it matter that they weren't? Not at all. Sim City is about planning and designing, and managing a city's growth and it's associated problems (crime, pollution, traffic etc.), so who has time to worry about weather or not the skyscrapers look realistic enough? So to begin with, you choose a name for your city, and a name for yourself (mayor). Then you can select the land structure, and finally the difficulty level. The 'Easy' setting has the highest amount of starting funds, so who wouldn't choose that( I know I always did)?
Now begins the actual game play. Move the D-pad to control your on-screen cursor, to select the building items from the menu, and begin building the city of your dreams.All seems fairly easy as you get started, but you soon find out that the money goes quickly when you go on building sprees, and it takes an eternity for you to earn enough back in taxes to meet the demands of the citizens, when they begin demanding stadiums, or when you are finally prompted to build things like an airport, or a seaport to boost commercial and
industrial growth. The best thing to do is to bump up your taxes for a while, and then go outside and jump on the trampoline, stopping occasionally to check on the growth of your funds.
When all is said and done, the over all game play is fun, but very time consuming for a SNES game. You can literally spend hours, days, and weeks playing this game. Mostly due to two facts, one being that it takes forever to accumulate funds, even with the game speed set to high, and the second being that the game is more or less open-ended. Meaning that even though the goal is to eventually reach the level of 'Megalopolis' (500,000 population). Even after reaching the level of Megalopolis, the game doesn't end, it just continues to
run, and run, and run. Of course reaching that level is tough enough considering that you have to run through statures of town, city, capital...etc. The best advise is to just keep plugging away at it, and turn off the disasters.
The Bad:
Normally I follow my good comments with the bad comments, but with a game like this, I will skip it, due to the fact that, even though it can take a long time acquire money and the Megalopolis status, there really are no bad aspects to this game.
Overall:
SimCity has been on multiple platforms over the years, and each one provided the same basic gaming experience, so anyone who has played SimCity on any platform already knows that this game is addictive and fun. The SNES version rewarded players with special Mario Statue gift, as well as a city attack by
none other than Bowser himself. But other than those two things, the game is the same from system to system. Enjoy!
Update: I have made a video about SimCity and posted it on YouTube. PLease visit it here:
ROM With A View: SimCity
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| With a little patience, you can build a Megalopolis like this one. |
