Earliest SimCity Series Memory...

[A Nonny Moose 8,261]

After I retired I took an interest in computer gaming.  I was looking for something non-trivial, and I purchased a copy of the original SimCity 4 in one of the computer stores I used regularly.  After getting it registered and applying the published fix, I was hooked. 

 

Waited anxiously for Rush Hour and purchased it as soon as it was available.  Needless to say, the fixes (EP1) came out almost immediately and I applied it.  I was playing one day and was in a bit of a fix, so I got off the game and on to the EA website's forum looking for a solution.  There was a reference to Simtropolis which I followed.  I've never really looked back except to pick up the BAT, the Lot Editor and the nightlights fix from that now discontinued site.

 

Being an old computer sweat, I naturally kept copies of all the stuff I downloaded from the site, and I still have them all.  Sometime in the recent past my CDs died of old age and careless handling, so I purchased a digital copy from GamersGate.  It is nice not to have to have a disk in the optical drive any more, nor worry about reinstallation with the patches.

 

Since I am a Linux user, installing SC4 Deluxe on a wine prefix is now about a five minute operation.  While doing some debugging with wine's ability to run this game, I've probably reinstalled it several dozen times.  wine has pretty much settled down, so I am looking forward to one more installation on a cleaned up wine prefix, and don't expect to have to do this again.  My current one is fine but cluttered up with stuff that need not be there.

 

I think my fondest memory of the early game without Rush Hour was a city called Owhatawettness that was about 2/3 water.  I got the population up over a million Sims on a large tile using about 1/3 of the land.  Since then, my playing style has changed several times and now I work on mostly rural areas with lots of green space.  I have only one city in 10 regions that has a million Sims.

[JP Schriefer 5,590]

Nice topic!!

 

My story with SimCity is the kind hate/love.

First months 2006 I was only 11 and in a really boring vacation, when my sister bought The Sims and SimCity 4, and told me SimCity 4 was nice too, was a game to construct and control cities. The first words I said about was something like "You kidding me? I will never play these girl games you like to buy!". So my boring vacation continued till I get to my limit of 'nothing to do', looked to that girl games and started to play The Sims, was nice, I already played that before.

Later, I tried the other one, the not so famous SimCity (not so famous to me at least, for instance, Mr. Moose and Ben was already in ST having fun). Anyway, I remember the first city I did was in the main tutorial, and just as Borg I banrupted in less than 5 minutes, but I really loved that game. When the first "big" building grow up in my city I was the happier kid in the world, and it was only 10 floors (yeah, I did check ). 

Then, some weeks later we had a travel to the US. That time SimCity was something like U$ 70, R$150 here (games in Brazil have a lot of taxes, it's absurd, but that's not the affair now), and my brother knew I was loving SimCity and mine was not with expansion, then he bought a 'SimCity Pack', which has SimCity 4 Deluxe Edition and another 'little games'. As far as I remember he bought it for U$ 35.

I looked for forums and found SimCity Brasil, the website created by Suico (aka Marcello Brandão), who almost 5 years ago died by cancer . Only 1 and a half years later I decided to enter the BAT world and registered here.

That's my earliest memories with SimCity

[CahosRahneVeloza 385]

Mine was with the SNES Remake of the original SIMCity. I was definitely hooked on the series ever since.

[ZeusAV 20]

My first Sim City experience was Sim City 2000 on the PS1.  I think it was around 1999-2000 when I played it.  I still remember the song "Serious Sims" was stuck in my head.

[T Wrecks 10,209]

The earliest I remember is the first SimCity on an 80286 PC/XT with a Hercules GFX adapter (720x348 monochrome) and an amber monochrome monitor - pretty much like the second image here, only in amber.

 

This was followed by SimCity on the Amiga 500 with a colour monitor (yay!). The look was more or less like this.

[Whte_rbt 1,431]

Mine was at my mate Iain's house, late '88 or early '89. Original Sim City on BBC Master System (Tape Version). I went home that day with a 5 1/4" floppy disc copy for my BBC.

 

Just realised how early I started violating copyright law...

 

Oops.

 

Bought every version since (well up to 4 anyway, SC:S and 2013 will never have my business)

[Compdude787 916]

Well, my first memory of SimCity was from 2005, when a student teacher I had in fourth grade suggested I should get SimCity because she'd seen me draw maps, so she thought I'd like it. So I got it for Christmas, I think, but it wasn't totally what I expected it to be. Of course, I'd never ventured into the wide wide world of custom content. I could never make money and that caused me to stop playing the game in late 2011 because my inability to balance the budget took all the fun out it. I reinstalled it on my laptop this past February. Determined to NEVER lose $$ again, I looked up a video on YouTube about how to make money. I noticed that the guy (Dwyrin) was using a mod to add turning lanes, which I'd later find out was the NAM. So I googled SC4 mods and the rest is history... My only regret is that I didn't find out about this stuff sooner, considering I've owned this game for nine years.

[Turjan 1,048]

The earliest I remember is the first SimCity on an 80286 PC/XT with a Hercules GFX adapter (720x348 monochrome) and an amber monochrome monitor - pretty much like the second image here, only in amber.

 

This was followed by SimCity on the Amiga 500 with a colour monitor (yay!). The look was more or less like this.

 

Pretty much the same as my experience. Although I think my monitor was green, and my "Amiga" was an Atari 1040ST.

[jaredh 195]

I had it very close to PC release.  It was glorious.  It was compatible with Tandy graphics, so it had all the color depth.  The first memory I have of it, other than unboxing and installing it, was how much the people complained about the dirty industry literally right next to the homes.  Who knew?

 

 

my favorite memory of those early days is of printing my city out on my pc xt/8600 with 512mb memory.

 

Yes, you could print it out on dot matrix.

[thenext88 102]

SimCity 2000 was also my first, on a WIndows 95 machine. My friend and I always had these competitions to see who could build better cities. Both of us would always reach populations of around 40,000 and then go totally bankrupt from all the loans we kept taking out. Then one day I figured out if you just zoned things, ran it on Cheetah speed, and then zoned again, and so on, you'd end with positive income! And so we started filling cities over the entire map.

 

I really wish I still had my old PC so I load up and see the stuff I made 15+ years ago.

[Benshannaboy 23]

I posted a comment about 3 years ago, but I'd like to redo it and add onto it.

 

Back in 2005 I was about 11 years old. My family recently bought the new high end Dell Dimension 3000. $1000 computer at the time. Serious power. We picked up the computer from the local UPS shipping office 10 days before Christmas. My brother being the tech guy that he was set it up and we all created accounts. Christmas approaches and my mom gifts me SimCity 4 Deluxe Edition for Christmas. I remember installing that game, playing it for 12-14 hours that day until my parents kicked me off it and told me to go to bed.

Although my cities never prospered and always went bankrupt I knew that I could somehow complete a city and make it last. I went through the tutorial at least 7-8 times. Still couldn't figure it out. So I start browsing the web for cheat codes. I just so happen to find Simtropolis in 2008ish and start downloading all these mods and installing the "Radical RCI" mod. That made my gaming experience 10x easier!

I played SimCity 4 all the way up until they started hyping up SimCity 2013. At that moment I knew I had to buy that game. I waited the night of the release and waited, and waited, and waited...you get the point. I was very disappointed with that release and eventually that game, but thankfully I still had SimCity 4 to hop back on!

Almost 13 years later. I still have the original disks and gaming manual. Although that old beautiful desktop is sitting downstairs collecting dust. Wait, I guess not. We just got rid of it about a year ago after sitting downstairs for 3 years. Now that I have built my own high end desktop that beautiful SimCity 4 Deluxe Edition icon sits there waiting for me to play.

Thank you Maxis (and I guess EA) for making such a great game that lasted over a decade that I still love to play and enjoy.

 

 

[Fantozzi 4,067]

[Deleted] Off topic.

 

 

[cifer00 12]

my earliest memory was in 2010. i was 10 years old and i found a cheap copy at a store, begged my mom to buy it and we did. i was never any good at gaming but i always loved tycoon games and that sort of game because it didnt matter what ur skill level was, it was still fun to sit there and create things. i loved it and played it for several hours a day, barring school and homework. fast forward 7 years later when im googling the game (i dont remember why) and i see this site called simtropolis. i click on it and start browsing, learning how to install things and make a more customized game. i didnt join until just now because im very shy and wasnt sure about joining because i woried about what people thought.

thanks for the game though, EA!

[RobertLM78 1,597]

I saw this thread title earlier today, but then just now it dawned on me - it was 20 years ago about this time (i.e. autumn) that I first played SimCity in the form of SC2000.   Two games later and I'm still digging it.  Between making my own terrain a little while back and some key finds like the Peg CDK stuff I'm enjoying the game like never before. 

(And having played SC2000 and SC3000 when I saw all the abilities of SC4 I nearly freaked (like all the types of roads, diagonal crossings, retaining walls, etc)   - still the best one in my book.  Anyone who has played the earlier ones knows of their irritating limitations, especially when it came to terrain  )

[Benshannaboy 23]

4 years after my last comment I still continue to play SimCity 4 every now and then. With mods being plentiful and the community still continuing to provide great content, help, and mods!!

[brianc1327 161]

I thought I might just jump in on this thread.  I don't have any cool stories about SimCity, but a while back I had a computer that had DOS 5.0 or so, and it had a program in the autoexec.bat that gave a choice of 4 options, though I am pretty sure that other things could be added. 

The first was to start an office suite that was probably about the equivalent of whatever version of MS works that was out at the time. The second was to start SC2000, though if I recall correctly, the SC2000 disc had to be inserted. The third was to start windows 3.0.  The last was to go to the DOS command line, though I am pretty sure that other options, such as perhaps starting Lotus 1-2-3 or any other game or productivity software that I installed could be added.  

More recently, I had a computer with SC3000 on it, but I lost the disc in a move, so I cannot put it on the computer I currently have, and unless I perhaps see it at the dollar store, I won't be installing it.  I just took a look on ebay, and it appears the best price (CD+shipping) is about $10, and I took a quick look at GOG, and the price there is $10, both of which are $9 more than I would spend to replace that game.

One time when I was bumbling around on the Ubuntu softare center, I came across a game called "Micropolis," which is apparently a port of the original SimCity for Linux.  I think I played it once.

I know there is a native Linux game called "Lincity" that is a city-building game that is at least similar to the SimCity series.  I am not certain if I played that one.

Brian Christiansen

[gviper 922]

oh yes, booting up the old SNES to play the first SimCity, then anticipating the time in class when I'd finally reach in rotation the workstation that allowed students to play SimCity 2000 on computers for a week or two before moving on to the next station. 

[Benshannaboy 23]

Let's rekindle this thread! What were your favorite memories?

[Lucario Boricua 7,028]

I actually have my very first SimCity 4 screenshot saved, dating to November 15, 2009. Turns out this screenshot is about me trying out the God Mode terraforming tools, which, lo-and-behold, foretold my deep dive into precision terraforming as my signature specialization in the game!

 

[TheMurderousCricket 5,056]

My earliest memory is playing SimCity 1989 with my father when I was a 10 y.o. rascal. We have been setting up numerous cities together, running them jointly and trying out different city layouts. Unfortunately, we often managed our budget quite poorly getting only a 20$ income per fiscal year. 

The first SimCity was unique due to how little possibilities it offered!  No map editor, only 12 development types, 1 type of park (with a random fountain once in a while) and no possibility to decide what terrain you'd like to build your city on! I remember that I was super happy when the game generated an island terrain, which was, like, a 1:15 possibility.  Still, it had a considerable retro-charm to me.

Then, I got to know SC3K at my good friend's home. We had a lot of fun with that, enjoying the city building, the disasters and even the Polish translation of news ticker and petitioner - related materials. Regarding the language, this was a really good, clever and culturally-adjusted translation by which I am still impressed to this day. A masterpiece compared to today's half-assed scripts in other games.

[SIM-ple Jack 17,444]

T'was Railroad Tycoon that drove me into the waiting arms of the SimCity series!!! While being an empire-builder strategy game, it didn't really allow you to build much, except bank. The pursuit of money can get boring after a while.

[DominosJR 5]

My first encounter with SimCity was in 1990 on SNES I purchased for my kids.  I bought the game for myself (a real luxury at the time).  Everything else was for the kids.  I was quickly enthralled with the game.  It was super simple by the standards of SC4, but it had a draw to it that was unique at the time.

Since then, I've played every version of SimCity that has become available pretty much on the day of release.  SC4D is undoubtedly the best of the series.

The game has the ability to draw one in for several months of good play time and then sit dormant for months or years and still be fun to revisit.  I'm back on one of those "revisits" now.  Thanks to Steam, I can quickly get the program up and running again on a new laptop.  Getting the mods that I like is easy also with the continuity provided by Simtropolis.

So, life is good and city-building is still great fun.

[Terring 6,473]

My very first SimCity memory was me messing around in SimCity 3000 back in 1999. I was building landmarks and other civil buildings, until I made the earthshaking discovery that you can have homes and shops by laying something called  "zones". I also build roads and powerlines tile by tile instead of dragging them, so I couldn't figure out how to make powerlines crossing a road, and I really thought that the no power indicators were fancy statues

[marx.renan 9]

Christmas of 2000, SC3000 was my brother's gift. He was a succesful player, he created a lot of beautiful cities. I never had that much success but enjoyed playing the game so much.

In 2005 we bought a copy of SC4, but I never played that much, soon afterwards I stopped playing both games, it wasn't until 2014 that I found the SC3000 CD and manual in a old box and started playing again.

[synapse 2]

I received Classic for my 11th birthday the same year it was released. I still have the box and disks somewhere. I also have every version since and played each one regularly until the next one came out. from 2008 through 2013 I played less and less and then when I had to replace my computer it was some years before restoring the backup of the SC4 folder. I did get the latest iteration but have not spent much time with it. I've spent the most time with SC2k and SC4. When SC3k came out I was traveling a lot for work and didn't have much time for it so I think I missed out on enjoying it more.

[Jedimarine 119]

I was about 10 or 11, and I was hanging out with a kid from scouts.  We went to his Grandma/Uncle's house, and his uncle had the first in-home PC office I had ever seen.

He had a number of PC games, but when he booted up the original SimCity...I was immediately hooked.  Hospitals and trees and those bridges that lifted for the boats, and all the powerlines between blocks.

About a year later, the junior high got a computer lab and SimCity was on all the computers as an educational software.  Every excuse to get in there, I used.

SimCity 2000 was the first I actually owned.  Arcologies for miles.

SimCity 3000 was my College years addiction.  Also the first time I was able to download buildings.  Skyscrappers for days.

SimCity 4 just would not run well on my PC when it first came out, so I had to wait until about 2008-9 to get a new tower and really start rocking and rolling.

Societies made me sad, SimCity 2013 made me mad, Cities XL was sleek and stylish, but just didn't have the sandbox potential I have grown accustom to.

I love this game.

The best entertainment property ever.

[mosonče 75]

It was SimCity 2000 under DOS in 90s, it had taken a while to get grip of game ( language barrier ) but was a nice experiment afterwards.

Even though we had Commodore 64, discovered SimCity Classic later than 2K , after then had checked many Sim titles ( SimTower and SimFarm was great but never liked SimAnt / SimEarth / SimHealth etc tbh )  I think SimCity had an important role in shaping my preferences in genre.

 

[JayRam 12]

First time poster here. I've been playing some version of SimCity off and on for three decades. Earliest memory is around 12 years old. My mom had returned to college to finish her degree awesome and of her profs had assigned SimCity to the class. You needed to reach a certain population (think it was 100,000) to pass the assignment. Soo... mom drove my sister and I to campus one weekend so that all three of us played SimCity til someone got to 100,000! 

It took nearly the whole day. This was the Classic version in 2D. 

I still vaguely remember what the city looked like. It had like 20 coal plants in one area (my mom commented about building so many, but I had the money and needed the power). After hitting 100,000, I saved the game, got up, and learned that staring at a monitor all day will wreck your eyeballs. 

Tropico has scratched my city building itch in the recent past. Have not experimented with SC4 mods before, so looking forward to that and some planning experimentation. 

[kkffoo 259]

SimCity 3000, just vague memories of farms, watching traffic and shipping, wanting the streets to look as organic and real as possible. It was my favourite game at the time.

[Benshannaboy 23]

20 years ago this game was released! What are some great memories from launch to when you may have gotten this game that you cherish most?