When SimCity 4 came out

[ayryq 9]

The day SimCity 4 came out, I was sitting in the parking lot at Northwoods Mall in Peoria, IL, waiting for the Gamestop to open. I got the bonus Transportation CD--the staff had to go hunting for it. And I cut classes that whole day to play the game.

 

This is the first time since then I have preordered a game of any kind. Except I don't have to wait until 10:00 tomorrow morning for the mall to open

 

Anyone else remember waiting for the SC4 release?

[lucidus 69]

If I remember right, I just picked it up on my lunch break from Best Buy. I was much more into the Civ series then so Simcity wasn't a big deal to me. Now I feel the opposite, I hardly play Civ any more and generally don't keep up with new versions but I am following city building games closely.

[Xenocity 343]

I remember when it came out.

I remember reading and hear about how awful Simcity 4 ran on PCs and people demanding Maxis to patch the performance.

I also remember how bad the traffic pathways were and how lazy the sims were, causing your city adviser telling you to zone more jobs though you have plenty of jobs the sims wouldn't drive too.

 

The pre-NAM... how did we make successful cities back then?

 

Then I remember all the people who were unhappy when you could buy Simcity 4 Deluxe for $30 on Sept. 22nd 2003 for the same price as standalone Rush Hour (they released on the same day), it was literally 8 months after Simcity 4 launched.

 

Thankfully I waited to buy the deluxe version, though I did play the game before I owned it.

[Ocram's Razr 963]

I was really hyped for SimCity 4 when I first started reading the reviews (and possibly the previews). I ended up buying the Deluxe Edition in 2004 and I joined Simtropolis in 2005 in order to download mods. Back then, mods could only be downloaded by members, there was no Adf.ly. I didn't start posting in the forums until around 2008.

 

When I first played SimCity 4, I played it on my computer as well as on my mother's computer (which was hooked up to a giant plasma TV). I remember the frequent CTD's and abandonment due to bad pathfinding.

 

With Cities: Skylines, I preordered this game off GreenManGaming and I might start playing it after I get back home from class tomorrow (but I have a huge 1.5 hour exam tomorrow).

 

--Ocram

[SimEMS38 246]

I remember following the development of SC4 for months before it was released, and back then the internets was nothing compared to today! Heck I didn't even own a cell phone yet (that came a year later)! I do remember going to the mall, Park City Center here in Lancaster, Pa the day it was released. The store was in the center of the mall and the name of it is slipping my mind.....this was before GameStops started popping up. I've played the ever loving snot out of that game and it's running now as I type this! My computer at the time barely made minimum specs for it yet I was hooked and good to go as long as I stayed with small and medium maps. I played it as a way to escape reality when I was deployed to Iraq in 2004 and 2005. What little downtime I had was spent downloading stuff from here and playing the game (that was after writing letters home, calling home, and hanging out with my crew!). 12 years later and it's pretty much the only game I play but I have a sneaky suspicion that that's gonna change with C:SL. I'll never walk away from SC4 but once I get a new laptop (which just got bumped up in my priority list) it'll probably not be ran as much.

 

You know I feel really ashamed as it's been 12 years since I've joined the Simtrop family and I've lurked for the vast majority of it....all I have is 80 some measly posts to show for it.   Well that's gonna change and here's to another 12 wonderful years at Simtropolis!!!

[Huston 5,796]

I never really waited for the game. My dad introduced me to SC3KU and I played it for a while. Pretty enjoyable but being my feeble 6 year old self, I never really understood the game

 

Then years later, I got SC4 Double Deluxe. It'd already been out several years, and you could barely find copies of the game on retail shelves (at least here in NZ). I played for a while as well, and I still hadn't fully understood the game's concept. Kept maxing on loans and building landmarks (I'd occasionally be kicked from being mayor as well lol, and when I first got a tower, I landmarked it and looked at for ages; keeping in mind that this was a R$ tenement ). So I never really waited for release (never knew until a while later, and suddenly, I jumped for it when I saw), but I got a decent amount of fun out of it regardless. And here I am, over 10 years after the games release, still enjoying it, and not even using it for what it was meant for in the first place

[Duke87 1,070]

I don't remember where I got SC4 from since it would have been my mother that actually placed the order (I was 15 and not permitted to buy things online myself). I remember waiting a week for it to be delivered, though, and that I played a lot of SC3K that week. I remember when SC4 finally came I was so excited and launched it up but then became immediately frustrated and wanted to smash things in rage because I quickly discovered that in SC4 one cannot provide a small new city with adequate public services and keep it out of the red.

 

After I calmed down I went and scoured the internet for cheat codes, and I must have typed "weaknesspays" thousands of times over the next few months. But that was still really tedious and annoying (only §1,000 at a time? Come on...). Then the lot editor came out. Then people started to figure out how to modd things and someone had a custom lot that gave you some ridiculous amount of money in monthly income. Plop one of those in city, run simulation for a month, demolish, and never worry about finances again. Man, I loved that! That was actually what prodded me to join Simtropolis since it was on the LEX here and then as now you needed to register in order to download. About a month later, the official site went down for a couple days and I came here to get my forum fix in the meantime. I then realized this place was awesome and the official site was lame so I stayed.

 

What I do remember much more vividly was the anticipation of Rush Hour, which besides goodies fixed some key glaring gaps in the original vanilla game (how do I properly end highway? Oh, I don't). I was following the development of that quite closely and I did pre-order it expecting that it would come in the mail the day it was released (which was a Tuesday). It didn't. I was pissed. On Thursday my mother noted the game was on the shelf in a local store. I was really impatient so I actually spent another $20 to buy it on Friday so I could play it NOW. My pre-ordered copy then came in the mail on Saturday (thanks for nothing guys!), and subsequently ended up being given to my cousin.

 

Something else that most people probably don't remember: if you clipped the proof of purchase off the Rush Hour box and mailed it in within the first month or so after the release date, you were supposed to be able to get a $10 rebate from Maxis. Apparently a few people did actually get their rebate eventually but most people never did. I never did. 11+ years later, Maxis still owes me $10 for that.

[JaWood 194]

I did not follow the pre-release news or hype because I was out of the county on a Mormon mission for all of 2002 and half of 2003. When I came home, by brother told me that a new version of Sim City was just released and he had heard good things about it. I was stoked and ran down to the store to get it. I was so overwhelmed by it, it was so hard. Getting the RCI to balance and sims to use commuting paths was so hard. I could barely get a city above a few thousand people. Them rush hour came out. Once I installed that, things seemed to get much better. It was like half the game was held back and was finally reunited with the software. Then I found simtropolis and instantly became interested in the BAT. I was already familiar with the sc3urk and had made pretty ambitious buildings for Sc3k including a rendition of the Space Needle using all prop pieces.  The rest was history.

[MINIggy03 227]

I won a wallpaper contest here before the release and they sent me a strategy guide.  I poured over the pages obsessively prior to getting the game. 

 

The day SimCity 4 came out, I was sitting in the parking lot at Northwoods Mall in Peoria, IL, waiting for the Gamestop to open. I got the bonus Transportation CD--the staff had to go hunting for it. And I cut classes that whole day to play the game.

 

This is the first time since then I have preordered a game of any kind. Except I don't have to wait until 10:00 tomorrow morning for the mall to open

 

Anyone else remember waiting for the SC4 release?

 

The same thing happened to me!  They didn't have it and I was pretty disapointed. 

[AdoxxBE 289]

I only picked it up in 2005, fell in love immediately after!

[BurroDiablo 222]

I remember when I first heard SC4 was in development, I would have been 15, my family was on the way back from a day trip out up north so we stopped off at a supermarket to get some food. I remember seeing PC gamer with Sim City 4 on the front and instantly buying the thing, along with a copy of Medal of Honor Underground which was on sale. I'd only had a PC at that point for 6 months and I had to split it's use with my brother who's 2 years younger than me, so one of us would use the PC while the other played on the PS2, I remember thinking I could get two copies of SC4 when it came out so I could play it without interruption no matter what I was using, but of course it never come out on consoles. I followed SC4's development as closely as I could, probably the first PC game I did so, I had expensive 56k internet back home which I was only allowed to use for short periods so I mostly caught up during lunch period on rainy days at school where me and a mate would usually go to the Techie room and use the computers instead of braving the weather.

 

Somehow despite all this, I for the life of me... can't remember buying SC4 or how I even got my hands on it But I still have the original boxed copy, although one of the CD's is scratched to hell because the DVD drive in my first PC was garbage (and I played it ALOT). It's possible I don't remember because I never actually bought it myself, which is likely the case, I was 15 and at school so I would have had to have asked my mother to buy it for me. I do remember buying Rush Hour at PC World when it come out though, so there's hope yet that I'm not actually just totally brain-dead 

[mrsmartman 200]

I don't remember where I got SC4 from since it would have been my mother that actually placed the order (I was 15 and not permitted to buy things online myself). I remember waiting a week for it to be delivered, though, and that I played a lot of SC3K that week. I remember when SC4 finally came I was so excited and launched it up but then became immediately frustrated and wanted to smash things in rage because I quickly discovered that in SC4 one cannot provide a small new city with adequate public services and keep it out of the red.

 

After I calmed down I went and scoured the internet for cheat codes, and I must have typed "weaknesspays" thousands of times over the next few months. But that was still really tedious and annoying (only §1,000 at a time? Come on...). Then the lot editor came out. Then people started to figure out how to modd things and someone had a custom lot that gave you some ridiculous amount of money in monthly income. Plop one of those in city, run simulation for a month, demolish, and never worry about finances again. Man, I loved that! That was actually what prodded me to join Simtropolis since it was on the LEX here and then as now you needed to register in order to download. About a month later, the official site went down for a couple days and I came here to get my forum fix in the meantime. I then realized this place was awesome and the official site was lame so I stayed.

 

What I do remember much more vividly was the anticipation of Rush Hour, which besides goodies fixed some key glaring gaps in the original vanilla game (how do I properly end highway? Oh, I don't). I was following the development of that quite closely and I did pre-order it expecting that it would come in the mail the day it was released (which was a Tuesday). It didn't. I was pissed. On Thursday my mother noted the game was on the shelf in a local store. I was really impatient so I actually spent another $20 to buy it on Friday so I could play it NOW. My pre-ordered copy then came in the mail on Saturday (thanks for nothing guys!), and subsequently ended up being given to my cousin.

 

Something else that most people probably don't remember: if you clipped the proof of purchase off the Rush Hour box and mailed it in within the first month or so after the release date, you were supposed to be able to get a $10 rebate from Maxis. Apparently a few people did actually get their rebate eventually but most people never did. I never did. 11+ years later, Maxis still owes me $10 for that.

Cash rebate is an effective marketing tactic as hurdle to get discount. 

[Danny50205 71]

I remember when it came out.

I remember reading and hear about how awful Simcity 4 ran on PCs and people demanding Maxis to patch the performance.

I also remember how bad the traffic pathways were and how lazy the sims were, causing your city adviser telling you to zone more jobs though you have plenty of jobs the sims wouldn't drive too.

 

The pre-NAM... how did we make successful cities back then?

 

Then I remember all the people who were unhappy when you could buy Simcity 4 Deluxe for $30 on Sept. 22nd 2003 for the same price as standalone Rush Hour (they released on the same day), it was literally 8 months after Simcity 4 launched.

 

Thankfully I waited to buy the deluxe version, though I did play the game before I owned it.

 YET everyone is saying how much simcity5 is soooo buggy and how much simcity 4 has better EVERYTHING 

 meanwhile SC4 was the same as SC5

 

I wonder what this means for cities skylines with bugs that are not shown or seen that will be found hmmm 

 

But anyways 

i remember playing SC2000 from a pirated copy from some discs that a company did in the 90's to just before 2000's 

then i remember getting the sims 1 back in 2003 this was due to the computer at the time was old(Windows ME) and i remembered playing SC4 as my friends mothers house and wanting it. years later i got the simcity box 

[USA_Pride 49]

I remember.  I worked at Walmart at the time in the photo lab.  Before my shift even began I walked over to the Electronics department and got my copy of SC4.

 

I'm waiting Skylines out to see all the review.  I've been burned too many times with buying games at top-price the day they come out.

[JP Schriefer 5,590]

No idea what I was doing when SC4 came out, but probably I was watching cartoons and don't even know what SimCity was, only knew it 2 years later.

But today when Cities Skylines came out I'll be here in the university campus.

[Thin White Duke 4,072]

2003 was the year that I discovered Spongebob and the Worms games. I was five years old when SC4 was released. Didn't pick it up 'til late 2010, when I was twelve and the game was seven. At first I couldn't make anything out of it apart from the frustration of losing all my money. Then I read about a little thing called Network Addon Mod and the rest, well... You know.

[ibegurpard 3]

Kept crashing on me until it was patched.  Once I could play it I was hooked.

[Sabretooth78 808]

I was on a SC3k kick at the time I had learned of it (wasn't too long before release) and in seeing what the new features were [supposed to be] I dropped SC3k like a hot potato.  I don't know what I played instead; probably Civ III or RCT.  Preordered, got it, loved it but quickly grew tired of the bugs.  Discovered Simtropolis and learned of Rush Hour around the same time and decided it wasn't worth playing any more until Rush Hour came out (which I didn't preorder but rather bought at EB Games (I can't remember now but they must have had it cheaper than Best Buy or something like that) since I could get my hands on it faster.  It finally made it the game it was supposed to be and without it the game would probably be long since dead and the members of this community occupied by other titles.

[Edman_123 11]

I think I got SimCity 4 as a holiday gift from my parents, but I'm not sure which one.

 

I still use my SC4 and RH CDs to play it when I play it today.