SimCity was released in 1989, was originally called Micropolis and was designed by the infamous Will Wright. For those that don’t know Will Wright, its suffice to say he’s one of the most popular and influential game designers of our time. SimCity, TheSims, SimAnt, SimFarm and Spore are a few of his hits and TheSims has taken many records since its original release.
Wright had trouble finding a publisher for a game in which you couldn’t really “win or lose.” Turned down by Broderbund, Wright eventually pitched the idea to Jeff Braun of Maxis. Maxis agreed to publish Simcity as one of its first two games.
When near complete, Wright and Braun took the game back to Broderbund to clear the rights for the game. Broderbund executives Gary Carlston and Don Daglow saw how addicting the game could be and signed Maxis to a distribution deal. Four years after initial development, SimCity was released for the Amiga and Macintosh platforms, followed soon after by the IBM PC and Commodore 64. On January 10th 2008, the SimCity source code was released under the GPL license as… Micropolis!
The objective of the game is simple, build and design a city. Though the player could focus on building a highly efficient city with an ever growing populace, it was by no means required. In a sense, open ended, the player was free to design the city as they chose.
Included in the city building experience was the possibility of natural disasters such as flooding, tornadoes and more. Pre-designed scenarios were also included in the game such as the Boston 2010 nuclear meltdown, or mass coastal flooding of Rio de Janeiro of 2047 … even a Godzilla attack of Tokyo in 1961.
In the years to follow, the SimCity franchise would continue to expand with greater detail as SimCity 2000 (1993), SimCity 3000 (1999), SimCity 4 (2003) and a host of other “Sim” games and until the release of “The Sims” in 2000, the SimCity series was the best-selling line of games made by Maxis.
In Fall of 2008, EA will release the next child in the SimCity family, SimCity Creator for the Nintendo Wii and DS systems. And thus, history continues!
Wii Supply
Erm, it’s a … different … intro 🙂
I guess this is due to Mass Effect?
In the hospital?! Diabetes?! Man … Jonah, I think you’re now avoiding the doctor just so that you don’t get diagnosed with God knows what.
@Microsoft: Xbox Live Arcade will be phased out eventually
Erm, dunno. I don’t think that an established digital distribution channel will be removed on a whim. You don’t back out from a market unless it generates losses, and I doubt this is the case for XBLA.
Ok, change the name, don’t care. But I think Microsoft will keep providing the service.
@Leaked images “nothing to do with” Doom 4
Doom 2 was set on Earth however. Dunno. From my point of view, anything goes.
The engine is idTech 5, that powered the Rage game.
@SimCity 5 coming in 2013:
never played, never cared.
@GAME drops 5% in shares after Mass Effect 3 no-show
Tough times for retailers. A lot of publishers either use Steam, or have developed their own digital distribution channels. So now they can afford to place heavier conditions to the retailers.
Now if you also add bad management in the mix, well, that’s a recipe for bankruptcy.
@Rumor: PlayStation 4 ditches Cell processor tech
To be honest, as long as you manage to create a nice API for the game developer, it doesn’t really matter if it’s a cell processor or 2-4 80×86 compatible cores.
I still can’t forget what they said at one point, that the cell processor was intentionally made hard to work with, so that the PS3 has a longer life.
Who thinks like that?!
Thanks Paul for sending my PD, my lil 5 yo bro will love this game (i’m 21 btw)
jordan, watch out for that C6H12O6!!! they are evil! deliciously evil!
paul, bronkitis sucks, i have it too.
jonah, go get a check up ASAP!
i hope you know that i am very glad all 3 of you are fine =]
@xbla no more eventually
it is a money maker, they will not give that away, its a name change for sure.
@sim city 5 comming 2013
meh… never liked the sims series very much (all sims, not only THE sims). i like destruction games more.
@ps4 changes processor
as long as it works with quality, I mean, as long as sony doesn’t screw up more stuff ¬¬
get well guys (be careful jonah, u might be next)
mwa hahahahaha (evil laugh if u dont get it)
take care
Can you guys make it a bit shorter? Some guys like me don’t have internet at home so we download it thru a phone. I can’t download it when its over 50M. I hope you take it to your attention, Cheers!
My god, that was the best intro ever! I’m pretty busy right now with my pre-GCSE exams, so don’t expect any long comments for now. You should be honored that you’re one of the things I will still be doing between studying.
Oh and Paul, I never got to hear your thoughts on Skyward Sword. Have you finished it, and if so, what did you think?
Hey guys, first time listener. I enjoyed the show, but I cringed at the narration of the news headlines. I’m by no means a good public reader, so I know how hard it is to vocally string together a poorly written sentence. Slow it down a little and you should be just fine.
Keep up the good work, and thanks for the listen!