Inspired by the short story “The Seventh Sally” about an engineer who encounters a deposed tyrant and then builds a miniature city with artificial citizens for the tyrant to oppress (true story), the original SimCity was designed by Will Wright in 1985 for the Commodore 64, but wasn’t released until 1989. Apparently, Broderbund, the company originally meant to release SimCity, thought the game would never work because it was open-ended. Broderbund did know a thing or two about video games, having developed Prince of Persia and Carmen Sandiego, among others, and they eventually came around after seeing SimCity in action, signing a distribution deal with Maxis to publish the game.
If you grew up with Macintosh computers in elementary school, many of them had SimCity already loaded onto them. Whether it was the black and white or the color version (both versions released simultaneously), SimCity was a game every kid looked forward to playing during free time in the computer lab. Would you try to build your city up, or would you just build it a little bit and then start destroying it with disasters? Or maybe you wanted to try one of the scenarios and see if you could beat it. The choice was yours as the mayor of your own SimCity.
But, if you wanted to keep your city going on those school computers, you had to make sure you brought along a personal floppy disk to save your progress. Even then, you might have had a moment where the disk didn’t save properly and your entire city was lost. Am I speaking from personal experience? Ask the little nine-year-old on the verge of tears in third grade. I worked hard on that city, man. Stupid floppy disk.
A few years later, in 1993, SimCity got a major upgrade with SimCity 2000, an ambitious name given it came out a whole seven years prior to the year 2000. Nonetheless, the game was a pretty big enhancement from the previous version. Whereas before the graphics were purely from an overhead view, SimCity 2000 changed to more of a three-dimensional look. Plus, you had multiple levels to your city, with underground pipes and electrical grids, as well as additional types of buildings you could add, such as libraries, schools, museums, hospitals, and more. The scenarios were also still available, like helping the city recover from a large fire, a hurricane, a flood, an economic disaster, or even a giant robot monster destroying the city.
Being an open-ended game, most kids grew bored of their cities and drifted off to other games. Still, though, SimCity endures even today, with versions available for the PC and Mac, as well as a spinoff for mobile phones/tablets called SimCity BuildIt, a free to play version with ads and in-app purchases. I tried the BuildIt version on an iPad for a while, but eventually got bored, just like back in the day. Some things never change.
Check out the below promo for SimCity 2000 to really give yourself a nostalgia boost:
What are your favorite memories of playing SimCity? Let us know in the comments!
- SimCity spun off many other “Sim” titles including the even more popular The Sims, as well as some lesser known ones such as SimFarm, SimAnt, and SimTown.
- Game designer Will Wright co-founded Maxis, which was the original distributor of SimCity, and has since been bought by Electronic Arts.
- The primary source of income in the original games was taxation, which could be increased by one percent increments each year that passed in the game.
- The original SimCity was also released on the Super Nintendo in 1991, which increased its sales dramatically — 300,000 units were sold for computers versus 2 million for the SNES.
- The game was originally called Micropolis, and in January 2008 the original source code was released under that name, and you can play it online now via JavaScript and HTML5.
- SimCity spun off many other “Sim” titles including the even more popular The Sims, as well as some lesser known ones such as SimFarm, SimAnt, and SimTown.
- Game designer Will Wright co-founded Maxis, which was the original distributor of SimCity, and has since been bought by Electronic Arts.
- The primary source of income in the original games was taxation, which could be increased by one percent increments each year that passed in the game.
- The original SimCity was also released on the Super Nintendo in 1991, which increased its sales dramatically — 300,000 units were sold for computers versus 2 million for the SNES.
- The game was originally called Micropolis, and in January 2008 the original source code was released under that name, and you can play it online now via JavaScript and HTML5.
