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!
Hey guys,
Just to finish off our little Vita debate. I finally understand why Jordan claims what he claims. See, I come to Vita not primarily for AAA, exclusive titles. I can play big titles on my PS3 and I have more than enough of them to last me a very long time. That’s why I don’t want to spend too much time playing PSN titles there if I can play them on the Vita, especially if they are cross-buy. That’s why I play games such as Soundshapes, Zen Pinball, Velocity Ultra or Quell Memento. This doesn’t mean that I didn’t enjoy Gravity Rush or Uncharted. I’m trying to Platinum NFS: Most Wanted and I’m also playing Rayman: Origins.
I travel a lot so I use my Vita often when I don’t have access to my PS3 and I’m really rarely bored with it. I agree, however, that if you only want to play big, exclusive titles, you might be disappointed.
P.S. I played the demo for Soul Sacrifice and it seemed neat. What was wrong with the rest of it?
@Android consoles
Meh… I really don’t know who the target for those devices is. If you’re a casual gamer than a 4-5″ smartphone screen is enough to play Fruit Ninja or Angry Birds or some other game. If you want a better experience, get a tablet – at least you will be able to use it for other things as well. I understand that it’s easier to release a game on those platforms than on PS3, Vita or XBox but I don’t think it’s worth it. The install base of the Android boxes won’t be big, people complain about the hardware… I think they’re trying to find a niche where there isn’t any.
@The Walking Dead. Way to spoil the game, guys 😉 I still haven’t played 400 days. I’ll probably get it right before season 2. Anyway, Clementine… I never had any doubt she will be in the second season. I only hope you’re not controlling here and she’s only a supporting character. !!SPOILERS!! It would be nice to come across her and the mysterious figures she saw at the end of the first season. Maybe she reacts according to what Lee taught her int he first season. Maybe she has her hair short, or she tries to shoot you. It’s not a bad idea to bring her back.
@BSG – It was my birthday last weekend and I got the BSG boardgame from my friends. We played it for the first time yesterday and it was a disappointing experience… I’ve heard so much good things about the game so my hopes were really high. I guess we shouldn’t have started playing it at 9pm (the game lasted until after midnight) after a hard day at work with people who have no idea what the game was about. It also probably didn’t help that I was a Cylon and was forced to reveal myself very early in the game. The tension went down rapidly. We’ll give it another go when the circumstances are better.
I never watched the show but I hear it has a significant following so the writer of the series must have done something write. An epic TPP (third-person perspective 😉 ) action-puzzle-RPG game, mixing Uncharted with Mass Effect would be nice.
@QOTW I mentioned FPP last week – I meant first person perspective. I have to stick to the olden goldies. To me, Blood was amazing. The gore, the enemies, the atmosphere. With all those pixels flying around I was able to see past them and immerse myself in the experience. And it was really scary. On top of that, there were tons of easter eggs. I remember one vividly – I was able to get to a room using some ventilation shafts. In the room was a bed stained with blood with air fresheners hanging from the ceiling. On the wall was written the word ‘Sloth’, referencing the movie Se7en. There were many, many more. Based on the immersion and atmosphere of the game, this has to be my favorite.
@First high profile Kickstarter suckage
As nice as budget consoles may sound, I agree with Pavel. No one needs them. It’s better to buy an android phone that plays android
games amongst other things rather than a console that just plays android games. Not to mention that most gamers (i.e. me) believe that
android games are not proper games and are aimed at people who enjoy touching things. Granted that a few android games may be good; most gamers would rather stick to mainstream consoles with their AAA titles.
@To infinity and straight into HD
Never played Star Control. But it sounds pretty good. I would love to play an HD remake. Although I am highly skeptical of HD remakes. The ones I played were pretty crap (God of War HD, Monster Hunter WiiU to name
a few horrible looking HD games). Furthermore, I am not sure how it would go down with modern gamers. An interesting topic to discuss is how games have been simplified over the years. Just compare Elder Scrolls: Morrowind to Skyrim. Or GTA III to GTA 4. I am concerned that a complicated (sounding) game like Star control can’t be released simply as an HD remake without being redone from ground up. On another note, Sega MegaDrive had
an epic Star Trek: Next Generation game which was effectively an Enterprise simulator. Tons of galaxies to explore; you could land on
and explore planets, participate in space battles and tweak every available setting of your ship. A very engrossing game as far as I remember.
@QOTW
I will split this question into two parts. Simply because it is very rare that an FPS has a good single player campaign and multiplayer
component simultaneously. My favourite multiplayer game was Battlefield: Bad Company 2. I have such fond memories of that game. Sunk hours into on-line battles. It’s revolutionary score system could force a group of unrelated people to work together as a team for a common goal. So far it is the only game that I have seen accomplish this. In terms of singleplayer campaign, I will have to go for Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2. And before I am stoned by angry mums and dads, I would
like to remind everyone that I grew up in the post-soviet Perestroika times and had no access to FPS games until 2005. Modern Warfare 2 was
one of the first games I played on a proper HD TV. The graphics was remarkable beyond words and the story was interesting. I thoroughly enjoyed the experience. It was the first contemporary war shooter I ever played, so the genre was still fresh for me. Multiplayer was crap thou. Never really got into it.