Earliest SimCity Series Memory...

[cinzbenz 3]

I have very fond memories of playing SimCity on a gaming console (probably Nintendo) sometime in the early-to-mid nineties. My husband and I would leave it running overnight to increase the available funds in the budget. At the time, I thought it was the most amazing game I had ever played. Now, so many years later, I still think it's amazing, and I love the whole Sims fan community for keeping it alive.

[Yonk 2]

The first time I ever played SimCity was sometime around 1998, when I was 11. I'd just recieved a playstation (the first edition, really boxy one) for Christmas, and a couple rather boring games, because my mom had no idea what I liked. I can't remember how or why I ended up buying SimCity 2000, but I did, probably because it looked really complicated (double wide case, rather long instruction manual) and I liked complicated things. All of the first cities I built were horrble sprawling messes because I wanted to cover every square-inch of the map with stuff, so I truncated mountains, destroyed forests, raised big square islands in rivers and seas. The cities prospered well, but looked godawful; I didn't even bother separating anything, so it was like random blocks of commercial and residential in a checkerboard pattern! I'm sure I must have used the money cheat a lot, too.

I got SimCity 3KU when I was about 15, and started actually trying to make my cities look good. My last city in that was an attempted recreation of my hometown, but now that I have SC4, I'm working on recreating the entire area.

- Yonk

[SimCity4IE 202]

I had never played SimCity until my sister got SC4 for her birthday. I remember the first time I played it, I had no idea what to do xD

I was only 9

[Oktoberfest 0]

Ive been playin good ol' SC4 since the 5th grade (a little over 4 years), and i still play it on the exact same computer. Then i discovered the SC4D Lex a couple of months ago, and fell in love with custom content, and i craved more, which brought me here! Anyway i remember my 1st city was in the Timbuktu map (i forget wut it was called) but i remember it was a piece of fecal matter. Then i got into sprawl on the same map. After that i got bored with SC for awhile, coming back a few months ago with a map in Fairview, my most realistic map! Then i wound up here!

[GoodOak 1]

I played SimCity (the first one) on Windows 3.1 at my friend's house when I was a kid. We'd stay up until all hours of the night playing Dune II and SimCity. Fine memories!

[ROFLyoshi 1,760]

For me, I never really started playing SimCity until last year. I went to the GAME ON video gaming exibition at Federation Square in Melbourne, & played Sim City on the SNES. Part of the exibition was that everyone got a free copy of SimCity. I then later got SC4 Deluxe Edition.

[Johnny_boy 1]

SC2000, back in 1996, but serious gaming was SC3000, including buildings i edited, or created

[cor2fst 0]

I played the original Sim City as a child way back on my Commodore 64. Yes a C=64. I didn't have a tape drive though so I couldn't save anything and I would always leave the computer on through the night so the city would accumulate money, and pray that no disaster leveled everything the next day. Unfortunately sometimes they did, one of them being me mum shutting off the computer at night after I had fallen asleep claiming it was running-up the electric bill.

[Cyclone1001 10]

I remember when I got SC3K, I loved it, building cities and then having my friends blow them up and make UFO's abduct people while I was eating. Good times, good times....

[SounderBruce 173]

CG's SimCity History

by ComputerGuy890100

A long, long time ago...[in a galaxy far away...not!] I was a 2nd grader and recieved a book order form from Scholastic. I flipped through the 34-page monster 'till I found an interesting offer: 3 classic and 1 new Maxis games for $20. I immediately broke my piggy bank and sent the money to Scholastic and 6-8 weeks later...I recieved a pack of 4: SimEarth, SimAnt, SimCoaster and best of all, SimCity 2000! I had a very old Packard-Bell computer back then and only SimCity 2000 worked, so I played and played and played and played hours on end, for about 2 months. I got bored of the game and basically abandoned SimCity...temporarily.

While browsing through some PC games 2 years later, I found another SimCity game: SimCity 4 Deluxe. I realized that this was an improvement of my old game...so I bought it for the cheap price of $14.99 and played even more! Two summers later, I found Simtropolis and joined on the rainy day of August 12, 2008 and started my first CJ....six CJs and a hiatus later, I play SimCity 4 Deluxe on a tiny Acer netbook.

The End.

[Aspirin4o 1]

Hmm. earliest SimCity memory.....

Oh, I don't know, I think it was around 1998 or 1999, when I first get my hands on SC2000. I was very fascinated by the comncept of city-building at that time, even though all my SC2000 cities failed miserably

[tarrina 2]

Wow... it's great to hear everyone's stories about their first SC experience. I played for the first time in 2005--a friend had SC3000, which had me immediately hooked--and spent all night playing. Shortly after I realized there was an SC4! I paid a lot of money to sit in the Internet cafe near my house in Paris to play since my computer at the time was a refurbished IBM laptop from 1999; weighed about 10 pounds and had a 4 gig hard drive. Those were the days...

[Nuclear550 3]

My memory is when my cousin shows mew sc3000 and i go hyper looking for it.Since i was young then, i was pretty stupid, i kept on building blocks of zones with roads runing right through tem and not putting any power.

[Deathcat001 8]

I remeber playing SC2K on an HP pavillion in 2000, Then playing 3k for a bit. I really only started SC4 when i got it thinking it was a different game, I hated it and i was bored one afternoon two years ago and started to look up vid's and was drwan here. Now i play it on and off. 

[Larks2242 251]

I found Sim City 3,000 on sale in a store thought it would be intresting, never thought i would spend countless hours playing it

[DCMetro34 576]

@CG; I bought Sim City 4 Deluxe in a Scholastic catalog a while back.....just like you did!

[Drazja 0]

My big brother introduced me Simcity 2000... aww i remember how jealous and upset i was that he could get arco's and i couldnt. I also miss the crazzy number of power plants hydro microwave .. those were the days no bills no work just living life day by day without a care

[This is my name 13]

Great stories, everyone!

A few years ago, while I was surfing in download.com games section in my grandfather's house, I saw Simcity 2000 (demo version) among the most popular (if I'm not mistaken). At the beginning, I didn't care too much about it, but once I'm bored surfing the website, I give it a go. I was addicted. I even download it at home and played it to death! Unfortunately, the 30 minute limit didn't satisfy me.

Eventually, I get a DVD that contains SC4 (yes it's pirated, we don't have legitimate software stores there) SC4RH, The Sims 2 and some junk (SimFarm included) with my dad's permission at a local shopping complex. In the beginning, none of my cities reached 20,000. My first real city is around 60,000 in population. When I'm bored with SC4, I then resorted to playing The Sims 2. It's highly addictive that when I lost my disc, me and my ststers (who also play the game) felt 'hopeless'. After my sister found my disc, it was badly scratched but it can still read. Later, I started playing a number of games (Transport Tycoon, various DOS games and SC3000 included). It was then when I found out the way to 'repair' SC4RH's Graphic Rules.sgr I'm addicted to SC4 again. I founded out my account and here I am.

Good times

[Mithrik 562]

I earliest memory of playing SC comes from SimCity 2000, I was about 4-5 year-old. I where building a tunnel in some small town (which I think it was a custom city).

[marsrpg 0]

My first time was when I was 13. I was in the local Kroger one time and I saw the SNES version of the game for rental. I gave it a try since it looked interesting. Ever since then I've been a Sim City fan.

[Eggy 8]

Oh I played Simcity 3000 and was surprised to know that its graphics improved VERY MUCH than simcity 2000. And I realized that Simcity 4 is a MASTERPIECE!! Wow!!

[johndoh4 13]

My first experience with Sim City was Sim City 2000 on the Mac when I was visiting my Uncle in Chicago (a couple years before Sim City 3000 came out). I had already been somewhat interested in city planning, but when I found out about Sim City it was like one of those moments in the movies where you see the pearly gates and a choir is singing in the background, only it was the monitor that was glowing and I imagined the choir. I bought Sim City 2000 for the PS1 when I got back home.

[ion496 1]

The first time i touched sim city was when i got simcity 2000 for first prize at something in school.

[City Planner 121]

I could be wrong it's been so long but I seem to remember seeing an advertisement on the television one night while I was sitting on the sofa opening up bills, and saw the "waves" of the water in SC4 splashing on the shoreline and started cursing that I didn't own a computer that would be capable of playing SC4 when I opened up my Mobil Gasoline Bill and one of the phamphlets inside was offering me a new "486 DX25 or DX40" and I could pay for this new computer with printer monitor and mouse every month on my Mobil gasoline credit card.

I can tell you it didn't take me but a couple minutes to call up the company and place the order for the computer so that it would be there about the same time that I could go down and pick up SC4. So, really I guess you could say that Simcity 4 cost me about $1500.00 since that was all that I used that computer for was to play SC4. My old 286 was fine for my daily work horse.

[Benshannaboy 23]

Back in 2004 my family recently purchased a brand new desktop computer 10 days before Christmas. I was about 10 years old and of course at the time I had absolutely no games for it. Christmas came along and my parents bought me SimCity 4 Deluxe Edition. I installed it, and played that game for hours everyday and had no idea how to build citys. They'd go bankrupt very easily. I played that game until I had a new game come along. Then I'd hop back on SimCity for the nostalgia and then one day I was searching the internet and found Simtropolis. That indeed changed everything. 10 years later and I'm still playing that game (of course on a newer laptop) and crazy enough we still have that same desktop sitting in my room. Crashed a couple times, but hey it still works.

[Shark7 118]

Going to date myself here...but oh well...

 

I first played SimCity on the SNES console.  Then of course SimCity 2000 (again on SNES) before going to the PC versions for SimCity 3000 and SimCity 4.

 

I still have not even tried SimCity 2013, and have no intention to.  I see no point in being forced online to play a SP game. 

[Trentreznorspig 4]

I am only 13. I tried the Simcity series a little while ago. About 1 year and a half. I played the SNES version of Simcity. I Enjoyed the freak out of it for half of a year. Then I played SImcity 2000 for DOS. Then after 2 months I played Simcity 3000. And I got quickly bored of that and started playing Simcity 4 to this very day.

[Indiana Joe 1,750]

What a great thread to revive.  

 

5 or 6 years ago my friend showed me SimCity 4.  We started a new city, on a small tile I remember, because the medium tiles looked huge.  We called it New Chicago.  And it was terrible.  xD

 

There's something very nostalgic about first discovering a game.  I remember being overwhelmed when I finally figured out there was more than one region.  I had all these old rules I came up with, about properly growing a city.  Water at 5000-10000.  Medium density at 10-15 thousand.  Hardly a diagonal road anywhere.  Well, before discovering mods there wasn't much to do diagonally at all.

 

I can understand why the older crowd would play this series from the start for 20 years.  Hats off to you.

[Trentreznorspig 4]

Yep. A couple of years ago. I was going to start off with SC4. But the disks didn't work. So the year I got a working version felt like a success.

[Thin White Duke 4,072]

My oldest memory of SimCity was when I started a city off in SimCity 4 with an Avenue that I lined with an Elementary school, a high school, a College, a Hospital, a Large police station, a large fire station and the mandatory Empire State Building before I zoned for residential. I went bancrupt in less than five minutes and swore to myself never to play that stupid game again, which only goes to show how responsible I am for my own desicions.