SimCity 2000

Maker:
Maxis
Year:
1994
Systems:
Amiga (AGA) / PC (DOS) / PC (SVGA)
Genre:
Strategy
Tags:
Business / Politics
Languages:
English / German
Median Rating:
5/5

Thoughts by Mr Creosote (20 Jun 2009) – Amiga (AGA)

SimCity – father of the whole sandbox genre, i.e. games in which the player just builds something without a final goal. In this case, you build up a city from the perspective of a mayor. That means, apart from a few central functional buildings (e.g. power plants) and roads, you don’t actually build anything yourself. Industry, residential and commercial zones can only be declared and depending on several factors, they’ll be used or not.

A fairly run down commercial and industrial district
A fairly run down commercial and industrial district

Part 2000 of the series introduces quite a few improvements which make things more refined and realistic. Zones can now be of any shape and size and they can have two different densities (e.g. skyscrapers versus suburban homes). Electricity can be produced using additional means (e.g. water power) and it isn’t the only supply buildings require anymore: You also have to take care of water (though there seems to be a bug there… people still move in without any water supply). Public transportation also has taken a step forward. In addition to regular roads and railways, you can build highways and subways.

Among the administrative issues you have to decide about, there is taxation. You can create a fairly detailed list of taxes for different types of industry – for example to attract ‘clean’ industries and let the ones who are polluting the air pay for it. Likewise, you can try to attract inhabitants by offering services like free health care.

My real-life employer wouldn't invest in this city…
My real-life employer wouldn’t invest in this city…

The game’s primary strong point is the way the city comes alive on the screen. You actually see the buildings in a not too abstract way and something is always moving. You get newspaper headlines which offer some indication about your progress. You’ve got advisors (with real faces) telling you what they think should be done (with a certain amount of prejudice, of course). This makes it fun even just watching your city grow (which happens provided you’ve laid the appropriate basis) and ‘live’.

In the sandbox genre, SimCity 2000 is one of the best. It’s great for people who just want to build and plan carefully, always optimizing transportation and take care of all these questions. Players who get their sense of achievement from challenges, though, might not feel at home here: After the first few thousand people have moved into your city, you’ll basically never have problems with money again. And after that, it’s just a question of how to build and not if.

Archived Thoughts

Thoughts by RetroBunny (25 Oct 2018) – PC (DOS)

Back in the 1980s and early 90s, the original SimCity had grown to be a very popular household brand name. Many people loved Sim City. It had been released on the Macintosh, IBM’s PC, Super Nintendo and many other consoles over the years. So, when Maxis set out to create Sim City 2, the developers knew they had to meet some huge expectations.

And, oh how they delivered! SimCity 2000 – yes “2000”, because back in the 90s everything with “2000” in it sounded cool apparently – was a major improvement over its predecessor. It still had the familiar gameplay mechanics, where the player had to use residential, commercial and industrial areas to create a living and breathing city. But now everything was in glorious 3D and SVGA resolution. I remember, as a kid, I drooled over pretty much every single 3D model. It was so cool! The Super VGA standard seemed to be made exclusively for this game!

SimCity 2000, at its core, was very similar to the original SimCity. You could even import your oldschool SimCity cities into Sim City 2000 by renaming the files to *.sc2 . The program would then convert everything into 3D and you could continue your mayorship duties in style.

The game added many new features to the otherwise classic gameplay. Besides electricity, SimCity 2000 adds a complex water supply system, including pipes, pumps and watertowers. Every few days, the player would get a newspaper issue delivered with all kinds of funny and useful information about the state of the community. Many new buildings and interesting options were added to make the game way more interesting, for example a variety of different power plants, from sun, water to nuclear powerplants. There were so many new and more polished features, and they all looked very, very cool with in SuperVGA resolution!

Even from the perspective of 2018, SimCity 2000 is still one of my favorite SimCity versions of all time. The graphics have aged very well and it still looks very cute.

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Amiga (AGA)

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Amiga (AGA)

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PC (DOS)

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