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!
Portable Xbox Device Coming?
The break points for me tend to be
40.00 or under new. I has to be on a console I own already or for PC. It has to have a rating among gamers of 8 or better. By gamers I mean people who really play the game and wrote about it on their blog or tell me about it somehow. People who got it because it interested them not people who write for Game Marketing sites and get free copies or one that is passed around the office.
I’ve been a PC gamer all my life – when I bought the Xbox, it was a $600 bundle – and the reason I bought it was twofold:
1. it had a hard drive
2. Halo
I bought the 360 because of my Live account.
Now, I first got back into console gaming with the Dreamcast, when it was being sold for $60. The funny thing is, software was still being made for it, so I was buying stuff like NBA 2K1 and NBA 2K2, and playing it even though I had an Xbox.
Hey I’m from Cooktown, australia and love listening to ur podcast, when i’m working in excel. I used to be a real PS2 fan boy and i used to always say i’ll neva go to microsoft… But then PS3 and the 360 came out and i didnt know what to do, so i kept my ps2 4 a while pretending that the epic age of ps2 wasnt over. But after getting caught onto halo at my friends and seeing such a community on xbox live … i got converted =/ (final fantasy going to 360 played a big role) but i still wanted the ps3, but when i saved enuf dough 4 the ps3 what did i do….. i got a 81cm samsung LCD. Sony disappoints me with there system i just dont think its worth the price
=[. P.S say hi to me in ya next podcast =p
Depends on what desire lvl of the game is at. if its on the “LIST” i just buy it even if its $120 but if its a game i’m interested in, but dont wanna spend $99+ on i’d say $50 (making me a sucker for 49.95 deals =p)
The market for gaming is sick! But if you compare to my generation the NES days, prices are pretty comparable if not even better for what your getting. Anyone remember the turbo graphics 16…lol