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!
@Rushed next-gen consoles
You’re absolutely right that the media streaming functionality is painfully missing from the new consoles. I can only speak about the PS4, which is the one I got, but the fact that I can’t stream stuff from my PC to the PS4 is horrible. #FirstWorldProblems However, the backlog of PS3 games is deep enough that I don’t feel the need to box the console up anytime soon.
No CD playback was also something I couldn’t get my head around. It can’t be that expensive to implement… Is it a hardware or a firmware issue? Anyway, I rarely used my PS3 to play CDs – my stereo has a CD player so I use it instead.
Poland has never had much extra multimedia support. There’s no Hulu, no Netflix, no Amazon Prime… Even the YT app has been added just recently to PS3 in Europe (still missing on PS4). That’s why it’s not as bad here. I’m happy that the NHL Gamecenter App was available almost day 1 and I can watch the games on the PS4, even though it seems to be more glitchy than the PS3 version.
@Vita multiplayer
I played some LBP on the Vita and had some connectivity problems but not to the extent Jordan talked about. I played a lot of Killzone Mercenary, though, (Platinum, yo!) and it worked very well. Not laggy at all, usually full or almost full games. I played 100+ matches needed for the trophy and I got disconnected only a few times.
@Sony Santa Monica
I believe I heard in another podcast, but was to lazy to verify it myself, the studio is still hiring new people. One opinion I heard is that they’re not only trying to cut back on costs but also mix things up a little bit after the recent failures, i.e. GoW: Ascension. That’s why they laid off some people but will bring some new faces, although in limited numbers.
@QOTW
The arcades were not very popular in Poland in the 80’s and 90’s. I remember a wagon, similar to a cricus wagon, with some arcade games inside that we used to go to with my friends back in the day. I don’t remember many games, though but one of them was Cadillacs and Dinosaurs. There were also some Metal Slug machines. All the PacMans, Tempests and Defenders were slightly before my time, I guess, or this era of arcade games simply skipped the communist Poland in the 80’s. However, I remember playing tons of Terminator 2 pinball but that’s a different QOTW.
@Rushed next gen consoles: The more I hear about the lack of features and functionality of both the Xbox one and PS4. The more I am glad I choose to stick to PC gaming.
I think the aspect also that you talked about with people in charge not knowing or not liking their product is very telling of the state that these consoles have come to. They are out of touch with their customer base.
@Thief: This game is looking great from the LP video’s I have seen of it so far. I find it amazing anyone was under the impression Garret was some sort of assassin or warrior. That was an aspect I didn’t mind in the original series, you shouldn’t be fighting so getting caught and subsequently killed is the punishment.
Maybe those that think like that are those who are stuck in only playing action FPS games.
@Half-life: This is a series I haven’t been able to get into yet. but I could never figure out which was first Half Life 1 or Half Life 1 episode 1?
Freeman’s mind is awesome to watch as well. A fun way to do a LP I think.
QOTW: I love this question I used to spend many hours in various arcade games. I tried to avoid coin gobblers like Gauntlet, I would play those that had a end goal. Like Willow, Simpsons, TMNT, Xmen vs Avengers, Indiana Jones and Temple of Doom, and Dungeons and Dragons. I loved playing pinball machine games as well, and the air hockey games. Arcades just aren’t doing as well as they used to do though. We had one in my local mall called the Nexus that even had lan PC games but it shut down unfortunately.