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.”Β Turned down by Broderbund, Wright eventually pitched the idea to Jeff Braun of Maxis.Β 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.Β Broderbund executives Gary Carlston and Don Daglow saw how addicting the game could be and signed Maxis to a distribution deal.Β Four years after initial development, SimCity was released for the Amiga and Macintosh platforms, followed soon after by the IBM PC and Commodore 64.Β 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.Β Though the player could focus on building a highly efficient city with an ever growing populace, it was by no means required.Β 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.Β 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!
Hi guys.
Sorry for not leaving a comment on the last episodes (the one you read in this episode was months ago ^^), i was very busy the last weeks with business stuff and some personal issues. Anyway, thanks as always for the episodes and your effort you are putting in to each episode. I respect that very much!
Regarding the topics in this episode: I did not play Civ since …. i think Civ 3? The game is good, but its taking so much time …. sadly i dont have that much time π
I played Life is strange 2, God of War (the old ones because i want to play though all of them before i play the actual one), Overwatch, Borderlands 1 (never played any Borderlands before) Hearthstone and a lot of Magic The Gathering Arena. If my friends are online, we like to play some Apex and/or Division 2 as well. I want to start Blood Bowl in the upcoming days, because i played the Board Game .. 20 years ago π I also pledged for “Ant Stream”, the retro streaming platform (will be live for early access on may 28th) … i hope this will be good π Did you heard of it ? What do you think of pledging video games / pc Games in general ?
Regarding the Apex update: the Havoc is ONLY playable with the turbo Charger .. without that it is absolute unplayable π
Did you heard of Splitgate- Arena Warfare? This seems to be a new Arena Shooter which combines Halo and Portal (i think Jonah mentioned it in a youtube review of upcoming games from E3?) Its for free at the moment on steam π
Regarding the backwards compability on PS5: this would be awesome! i would pay very much money for a ps5 which plays ps1,2,3 and 4 (and 5 of course) games. The only problem will be the chip for PS3 afaik.
Red Dead Online? I only see the promotions / advertisments all the time on twitch, but have no intention to play it π
WoW: i really love this game, loved it in the beginning and still love it … problem is, that my friends are not playing it anymore …. and playing a MMORPG on your own is not that fun π I played the last expansion (as far as possible without a raid / group) and it was great gain. I listen to the music very often and like to see the cut scenes and updates. For sure the vanilla version was harder (in my opinion) but that was great … 40 people in a raid .. defeating Raganros for the first time … what an amazing feeling, so much emotions, better then the first time s** π
First question of the week: The last game which has been released and i did not noticed it was Hollow Knight. I noticed it 1 year (or 2?) later and it so awesome, that i was wondering, i did not notice when it came out π
Second question of the week: I think the game i will still play in 20 years or will not age is Magic The Gathering. But its a card game, so i dont know if this is a “real” game regarding to your question π If i had to pick a second game, it would be sth like WoW .. i started playing it in 2004 .. thats already 15 years ago π or one of the so called retro games, like Musha Aleste, Mushihemasama or any of this bullet hell shooters for the 16 and 32 Bit consoles. I still love to play them today π
Thats all for this one. Sorry for this big and long one, i hope thatΒ΄s ok π
When i will be in the U.S. the next time, i will invite you guys for dinner to thank you for all your work you put into this podcast. Thanks for that!
Greetings,
Ralf