ScuzzBlog: Diaries October 2023
Entry 27th October 2023: Post 1: Project Sim City - Where there is a Will.
Project Sim City - Where there is a Will.
Sim City was the brain child of one Will Wright or to give him his
full name William Ralph Wright of Atlanta Georgia. The game was
designed in 1985 for the Commodore 64 but was rejected as lacking
any action based activity. It took four years for the game to find
its way onto the Amiga and Macintosh following the formation of
the small company Maxis by Will Wright and Jeff Braun.
The game went onto become a resounding success being ported to a
number of platforms. Maxis was eventually obtained by Electronic
Arts.
Fun fact regarding Will Wright and his love for an ancient Chinese
game called 'Go' which involves placing game pieces around a board
to capture territories. The game is 4500 years old and today has
a player base of ... wait for it .. twenty million world wide.
OK to the game. The challenge is quite simple and that is for you
to gain favour with small invisible sims in an effort to encourage
them to develop larger residential buildings to house more sims
and to develop larger commercial and industrial buildings. Your
success will depend on how happy your sims are with their work and
recreational home life depending on such things as crime rates,
risks of fire, travel distances and environmental unpleasantries
such as lack of parks and proximity to industrial buildings.
You are presented with a game map which you can choose to change
if you are not happy with the trees, waterways, coast line etc.
The first task is to locate a power source and then build a network
of roads linking residential, commercial and industrial zones.
The game starts in a very casual way and simply grows relatively
organically based on how you feel. Later though you become more of
a city planner and realise to succeed you need more of a grand
scheme so better order transportation and infrastructure. More
and more the bulldozer comes into play as the timeline of your
city evolves.
The game came on one DD disk and on my Amigas was always labelled
SimCity512K. The game became so addictive it was being played in
large offices during the day to the extreme that amnesties had to
be initiated to encourage office workers to hand in their disks
or face dismissal.
In addition to the original game there was the expansion packs to
enable terrain modelling and inclusion of architecture for more
options on building types and design.
The idea was so simple and yet truly addictive. It went on to spawn
a plethora of new and more complex games. I doubt there are few
games that I have spent more time playing. A true classic and one
well worth adding to your collection.
Project Sim City - Where there is a Will.
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Last updated 27th October 2023
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