mayormommy

Glad to hear traffic may at least be a small factor! Perhaps I should solved my problem by building more shops, lol, as that neighborhood wasn't exactly a shopping paradise. But that brings up an interesting point about commercial buildings in both C4 and COTN - they actually provide services rather than just jobs. I remember first noticing the dearth of gas stations in SC4 and wondering how anyone ever filled up their tanks. Another undeveloped aspect of SC4 is that all that industry, frantically shipping stuff, but what and where? And why doesn't your city starve when there's no farms? These are all things you actually have to worry about in these TM games. This cradle to grave socialism may rub some people the wrong way but there's no doubt that these things go on even in a capitalist society, as I see run-down neighborhoods in Washington, DC beg for stores like Target or Whole Foods to move into their areas. I'm not saying that I'm really into deciding whether a basket or mat maker gets placed on a particular block (why can't there be Bed, Basket, and Beyond to supply all their wicker needs?), but it is very cool that the sims actually go shopping.

Well, I debated back and forth with myself about whether to turn this city into a CJ. It has nothing special to recommend it, not even a story. It’s just a region my 12-year-old son and I have been working for the past year. But in light of the recent angst over custom content and calls for people to just get back to playing the game, I thought, hey, we’ve been doing that for quite awhile. I don’t mean to offend anyone - custom content is great and makes the game more interesting and beautiful. But you can’t let it rule your life, or how you like to spend your time, or even how you like to have fun. This is just the basic Maxis New York region. My son liked it because it’s fairly large and flat, and has plenty of water. He laid out most of the cities, and then asked me to step in and “fix” some of his transportation problems. As time went on, I began to add connecting cities, dress up parts with more trees and parks, and finally filling in blank spots with some suburbs. When I say “vanilla,” I should add “with sprinkles on top.” There are a few custom lots in play, most notably an outdated version of the NAM, Brenda Xne’s monorail stations, Goldiva’s water taxis, Peg’s random woods, Fredval’s Mediterranean row homes, and Simgoober’s Hooters and Toy R Us bats (only natural when a city is started by a 12-year-old boy). There may be a few more escapees from my bloated plug ins folder that somehow stowed away in my son’s rather Spartan version of the game. Financial stability is provided by “Click for Cash trainer parks,” but no transit or demand cheats have been used. So what’s the point? The point is that I turned to this Plain Jane region because I could no longer deal with waiting forever for my all-custom region to load, plus I no longer had time to keep up with the latest content on the STEX, much less on other sites. After a stressful day, I’d often sneak off to tinker around with Vanilla Town, when the thought of doing work on my “serious” CJ was just too much to be bear. This became a region I just played with for the fun of it. Imagine that! So, if you are willing suspend disbelief at landmarks in the middle of cornfields, ignore lumpy roads, and pretend that you didn’t just see that same building twenty times in one picture, come along and let’s play! Here’s the region view. As you can see, we have a long way to go getting the city edges to blend together. If the transportation system seems nutty, don’t blame me--it was primarily laid out for U-Drive-It purposes (please excuse the occasional UDI icons). We use a lot of monorails because monorails are cool. Same for airports. Let’s start at the beginning with the oldest city, Animal City. It has 27,000 souls, and a whopping 25,000 industrial jobs, but pathetically, only 8,000 commercial jobs. Here’s the downtown, and you can see it has an abundance of high density residential, but little commercial. To the north is an area dominated by military bases. I’m having trouble getting sims to move into the residential areas located at the ends of the runways. Sims aren't that dumb, I guess. To the east is the massive industrial area and airports (did I mention we like lots of airports?). Okay, today we’re going to focus on my new obsession: getting rid of grade crossings. But only when it’s fairly easy though, remember we’re just playing, not working. Here’s a rail line cutting through a small neighborhood. A quick application of some tunnel digging lots... and voila, no more dangerous grade crossing! This neighborhood has a little more realistic treatment of the rail line, obviously having been built around it, more like what you see in real life. We can still fix that grade crossing though. Yes, I know there’s another grade crossing up in the corner, but that one is too tricky to fix so we’ll leave it alone for now. Another issue I’d like to address is this unused loop on the el line. It has exactly 0 passengers at present. I’m going to add a couple more stations, and extend the avenue while I’m at it. Eventually, I’ll probably have to carve this avenue even deeper into Animal City. There, that’s better. Looks we’re getting a whopping 20 passengers now, whoot! At least we get to watch the little trains making the cute little loop though. The guy in that building with the no job zot must have some kind of seasonal employment, because it seems like he is laid off every winter. Phew, okay, that’s enough work for one day. After all, this is a hobby, not a job. Next time we’ll look at Animal City’s neighbor to the south, Monster City. Cya!

John-SJ: Glad to hear I get to do planting and decorating. It's been torture seeing all these lovely palm trees when I can't plant more of them! I noticed that even in C4 I could continue to putz around with my cities after I completed the tutorial requirements, though there wasn't really enough room to do much else with them. In COTN, the maps are so much bigger. I want to continue working in a vacuum for a few more sessions, then I do plan on visiting the TM forums to see what the long-term potential might be for this game. Robstersfive: It's true that when you've played SC4 for years that you can basically build a city with your eyes closed. New challenges are good, but I think in an ideal world they should be combined with some old challenges too. For example, it doesn't appear to me that traffic is going to be an issue in this game. And maybe to be historically accurate, it really wasn't a problem for the Egyptians. But solving little bottlenecks and getting traffic flowing is one of the things I love doing in SC4. Heck, even the first Zoo Tycoon had traffic. These quirky Egyptian sims seem "aware" of distances and balk at having to haul bricks very far, so I'd love to see that independence combined with commuting issues in SCS. Jeff: Welcome to our SC community! I'm enjoying the game so far, just looking forward to starting my own city from scratch since the tutorials give you a lot of infrastructure to start off with. One thing I'm puzzled about -- the game warns you that bricklayers tend to choose what order to start on their projects, which may or may not agree with your own priorities. But I waited and waited for them to start on an overseer's house and absolutely nothing was happening even though no other construction was underway and a plentiful supply of bricks was available. Finally I bulldozed the construction site and started over, and the bricklayers started in a little more promptly. Should I have waited longer or is this a bug? I tried adding more bricklayers' homes near the site but that didn't seem to help.

Thanks, MrC, very interesting. I look forward to hearing if you figure out the terrain editor, since that doesn't seem to be an option in the TM games. Also, what about traffic? One of my favorite SC4 pasttimes is fixing bottlenecks.

Ha, natto! In April we were at a kaiten (conveyer belt) sushi place with a graduate student on her first trip to Tokyo. She grabbed a plate of natto sushi before we could stop her and of course it's bad etiquette to put the plate back on the conveyer belt once you have picked it up. She ate one piece and left all the rest. It looks so innocent too, but it smells like BO and tastes like rubber. Tokyo's parks are beautiful but tree lined streets? Not many. Tokyo and Athens are having a race to see which can consume the most concrete I think.

Actually looking back, those rudimentary buildings are the farmers' houses, not the villager hovels. There is worse housing than that still, and I'm not kidding about people sleeping in the bushes. One thing I do like better about this game is there is some chance for people to move up (or down) in class, particularly the shop owners who can afford to send their children to school. I didn't see anything like that in C4. The sims speak English rather than Simlish and have a pretty charming sense of humor sometimes. I'm still not sure what is going on between the priest and the furniture maker, but that priest never misses an opportunity to tell him to put some sandals on. I'm about half-finished with the third and final tutorial city, so I'm still getting pretty specific instructions ("Build two overseers' houses and eighteen laborers' huts in order to construct a small pyramid"). After this, I expect the goals to be more general, with my prestige (mayor rating) possibly to be the main focus. We'll see.

Poetic: This game seems a little easier to get into than C4, and much more forgiving, but of course I'm still in the tutorials. There's no water systems to install or fire departments to place. Farmers just go plant whatever they want wherever they want, though usually it's by the river. The Romans seem much more inept at feeding themselves than the Egyptians. On the other hand, if you really want to micromanage things there's opportunties for that too. Regarding the diagonal roads, the interesting thing is that you can spin the buildings to place them diagonally, so why no diagonal roads? Another thing I miss is beautification with trees and plants, though some of my nobles are starting to upgrade their lots. Ntq$310: I think I'll wait until I try more of the actual gameplay to rate either this game or C4. I'll probably finish the tutorials for this game first. I've never played 1701 but have heard good things about it. The only bug I've noticed so far is that sometimes I get the wrong building info when I click on one. jacqulina: I was wondering how long these CJs would elude you hiding out here in the SCS forum. I suspect the lack of terraforming in this game might be a dealbreaker for you, though.

The New Reader's Guide to Simtropolis City Journals I hope you enjoy this handy little guide to some of the great city journals of the past few years. Most of the 2004 journals listed had at least 5 pages (at 30 replies/page) or had some unusual or significant features. I had hoped to extend the list farther back into 2003, but unfortunately most of those CJs are now missing their pictures. For the list of 2005-2006 CJs, I raised the reply limit to 300 replies (10 pages), since we've had so many impressive journals come out recently and there's only so many hours in the day to read them all. I will add more journals occasionally as they approach the 300 reply limit. Note that the list now goes in reverse chronological order. Somewhere along the way I have misplaced the SCJU and MOS logos, so if anyway would like to send them to me along with a list of member CJs, I would be happy to add them. Plus I have some catching up to do on my 2006 CJ summaries! I'd like to thank SimMaster for helping find all the links for the 2004 CJs. I really appreciate it! Last full update: 10/17/06, 2006 Trixie winners added 12/6/06 - 2004 Trixie winner - 2005 Trixie winner - 2006 Trixie winner 2006 City Journals October 10/5/06 - Schulmania by Schulmanator. Winner of the 2006 Trixie for Best Alternate to History CJ, runner-up for Most Entertaining CJ. 300 replies, 2,200 views. Status: ongoing. 10/1/06 - Ensenada, A Tale of Organised Crime, Intrigue, and Manic Depressive Turnips by Shadow_Assassin. Winner of the 2006 Trixie Award for Most Entertaining Journal. 140 replies, 1,700 views. Status: ongoing. September 9/27/06 - Trinity River Valley - TRV's terrain looks too pretty to build on, but crazychickensc12 does it justice with well-planned suburbs, mid-rise commercial areas, and an enormous zoo. Winner of the 2006 Trixie Award for Best City Planner. 300 replies, 2,100 views. Status: ongoing. 9/17/06 - Gold Depra - An Empire of Greed by chocolatemax. 270 replies, 2,500 views. Winner of the 2006 Trixie Awards for Most Aesthetic City and Most Unique Region, runner-up for Most Awe Inspiring City, Best City Planner, and Best Use of Nature in a CJ. Status: ongoing. 9/17/06 - Run for your life! by hamsterTK is a captivating story about a young surveyor who discovers a mysterious tunnel after an earthquake and soon finds himself pursued by the evil ARCO corporation. Expertly Photoshopped pictures complement the story, which reaches 330 replies and 2,100 views. Winner of the 2006 Trixie Award for Best Story in a CJ. Status: ongoing. August 8/24/06 - wouangaine wows Simtropolis with innovative special effects in Viridis Doria Provincia - Animated CJ. Scrolling mosaics (even sideways!), animated traffic scenes, and simulated time lapse sequences provide plenty of fun, though the city is quite appealing in of itself. 300 replies, 2,200 views. Status: ongoing. 8/8/06 - Watch the dusty oil town of Oasis, Arizona - A Desert Metropolis grow into a full-fledged modern city. SpecialEddie provides detailed tours of the oil fields, massive hydroelectric dam and reservoir, air force base, and casino sector, gaining 300 replies and 3,400 views. Status: ongoing. July 7/19/06 - Take a ride down Medicine Hat Avenue and explore the mid-rise city of Lloyd, Ontario, Canada by asturianu. Be warned, however, that the winters are very cold and snowy. 400 replies, 2,000 views. Status: ongoing. June 6/15/06 - Montrose by cityhawk. 300 replies, 2,200 views. Status: ended. 6/14/06 - Rejuvenate your spirit with a restful visit to Paradise Falls by jacqulina, a peaceful wooded valley inhabited by only a few lucky farmers and their horses. 500 replies, 5,300 views. Winner of the 2006 Trixie Award for Best Use of Nature in a CJ, runner-up for Best Rural CJ. Status: ongoing. 6/6/06 - sloppet weaves together Photoshop skills and an eye for building detailed cities, turning Anwakee County into a rich green tapestry of remarkable depth. 1,100 replies, 5,100 views. Runner-up for the 2006 Trixie Award for Best Use of Added Graphics in a CJ. Status: restarted. 6/1/06 - San Lucas by luker91 is a charming patchwork that grows ever more beautiful despite the occasional manmade or natural disaster. 300 replies, 2,400 views. Status: ended. May 5/27/06 - Oasis-The Wild West by SpecialEddie. 2006 runner-up for Best Western Themed CJ. 260 replies, 2,200 views. Status: ended. 5/20/06 - Katies Mountain Retreat by KT3 follows the develop of tiny mountain villages as they grow into small cities. 800 replies, 2,900 views. Status: ended. 5/20/06 - ThePeoplesPerson's superb Photoshop skills fill The Tropics of Haalu with brilliant tropical sunlight and clear, reflective waters, bringing the island paradise to 700 replies and 3,900 views. Winner of the 2006 Trixie Award for Best Use of Added Graphics in a CJ. Status: ongoing. 5/2/06 - Tree lovers will enjoy The Free Democratic Nation of Caledonia by szarkoz, with its many parks and leafy streets. 300 replies, 5,500 views. Status: ongoing. April 4/17/06 - Alicante City - St. Marque Inlet by Fox is a bright, modern, coastal city supported by high tech industry. Colorful newspaper entries keep the reader informed about goings-on in St. Marque, the SCJU, and the world at large. Winner of the 2006 Trixie for Best Newspaper in a CJ, runner-up for Most Aesthetically Pleasing City. 600 replies, 5,300 views. Status: ongoing. 4/15/06 - Mr. Beer's second CJ, Omaha, NE & Council Bluffs, IA Metro, sprawls across a relentlessly flat Midwestern landscape of realistic suburbs, farms, and railyards. 400 replies, 3,700 views. Winner of the 2006 Trixie Award for Dedication to Accurate Scale in a CJ, runner-up for Most Realistic City. Status: ongoing. 4/9/06 - The only Turkish CJ in Simtropolis, the United Republic of Ankara by Yoman3 is a canal-filled city featuring everything from old rowhouses to modern skyscrapers, garnering over 600 replies, 3,800 views. Status: ongoing. 4/6/06 - Pictures That Old People Might Take - A new CJ, oh my! by RadionheadFan. Winner of the 2006 Trixie Award for Funniest Title for a CJ. 100 replies, 900 views. Status: ended. March 3/27/06 – wouanagaine's city of Genesus glows with vitality - even the industrial parks are lush, green, and tree-lined. 300 replies, 2,700 views. Status: ended. 3/17/06 - Wild Wild West by kimcar. Winner of the 2006 Trixie Award for Best Western Themed CJ, runner-up for Most Educational CJ. 130 replies, 1,500 views. Status: on hiatus. 3/12/06 - Three Rivers Region is a chatty, rambling CJ chock full of helpful information ranging from quick tips to detailed tutorials. If you do your homework, dedgren might reward you with a piece of eye candy. Winner of the 2006 Trixie for Most Educational CJ. 1,000 replies, 15,000 views. Status: ongoing. 3/11/06- Crystal Bay by rewright rolls across the landscape like a deep forest green carpet. Watch it grow upwards and outwards with 300 replies and 3,600 views. Status: ? 3/10/06 - In the alternative history CJ The Imperial Kaiser of the Rhineland by Dark_Jedi06, Germany is divided during World War I and the country of Rhineland is born. Follow its struggles with fascists and its neighbors over 300 replies, with 3,100 views. Status: ongoing. 3/5/06 – The first trilingual CJ on Simtropolis, Rasec – em Pt, en Fr, in En by Fabiocb is a little piece of Europe transplanted to the Caribbean, with a surprisingly large and modern downtown. 500 replies, 3,100 views. Status: ongoing. February 2/18/06 - MayorTim is back with another huge but always tidy and well-organized city in Astoria. The former British colony reaches 500 replies and 5,800 views. Status: ongoing. 2/9/06 – Botania, City of Hope & Greens by terrymunweihao is an exuberant and lush city, with a fun street network that sometimes looks like it could have been designed by Dr. Seuss. 400 replies, 4,500 views. Status: restarted. January 1/31/06 - In his second city recreation, E.J.C. patiently fills in the region of Paris, the city of love, including the surrounding suburbs and farmland. The region views are not to be missed. Winner of the 2006 Trixie Award for Most Realistic City. 500 replies, 12,000 views. Status: ongoing. 1/20/06- Only the rich and beautiful sims must be able to afford to live in the glamorous coastal cities in GMT's Greater Columbia River. This long-running CJ has 300 replies and 5,000 views. Status: ongoing. 1/16/06 - The Massopax River Valley by dfnva. Winner of the 2006 Trixie for Best Roadgeek CJ. 140 replies, 2,300 views. Status: ended.

Interesting - I would love to see a wider shot of your canal network.

Wow, I love the film noir turn things have taken! But Dolly Madison as the femme fatale???

An excellent start and a very nice small town. I like it!

Right now it is really hard to get any work done on this CJ because my 13-year-old son has gone and found himself a girlfriend, lol. But in answer to your question, my son did all the zoning, sometimes clicking and dragging huge swaths at one time, sometimes working on a more reasonable scale. Personally, I think the hardest thing about doing a CJ is coming up with presentable pictures of your city, which often involves a lot of time consuming tweaking like planting trees. Then it's always to nice to find the most appropriate time of day for your shots (day, night, rush hour, etc.). Posting the pictures on ImageShack and keeping track of the links takes a little effort but it's not too bad. The actual posting of the CJ is the easiest part.

Not sure what that is but I've seen habu snakes in bottles of awamori (a sake like drink) in Okinawa, Japan. Some of the jars (and the snakes) are quite large. Awamori is pretty undrinkable but the kind from the snake bottles seems a little better, maybe because they use higher end stuff when they're adding the snake.

Many moons ago when I was in college, the item that most people were jealous of that someone thought to bring for their room was a folding beach lounge chair - the kind that sits low to the ground. Much more comfy than watching tv from your bed or desk chair.

Just to be reiterate what the policy is regarding comments about the new game - no one is saying you can't criticize the game itself, as long as you do so in a civil discussion. What is forbidden is threatening, slanderous, or rude comments about the game's developer. Of course you are welcome to talk about the pros and cons of the new game itself - that's what the SCS discussion forum was created for!

Sometimes stylized pictures can be quite nice, as with the PS2 game Okami, where everything looks like Japanese brush work. While the screenshot we have shows a particular style of architecture, I wouldn't go so far as to say the pictures themselves have a style. It is possible interesting game play could make up for this, combined with future customization options.

Regarding Rubix's pic, I think some screenshots from TM with nice skyscrapers would go a long ways toward making me happier. Also, some screenies showing the potential UI and short demo movies would be helpful. We have such things for Spore already and the release date for that is much farther out.

Originally posted by: Cheese89 I thing that really bothers me is that this is considered Simcity 5. As far as I'm concerned, this game does not represent the next logical step in the SimCity series, and thus should not be considered the sequel to Sc4. I'm actually even fine with them using the prefix "SimCity", so long as it isn't considered the next main game in the series. Think of it this way... Bungie made Halo 1, 2, and 3, which were First Person Shooters. Ensemble Studios is making Halo Wars, which is an RTS. Both carry the Halo name, and indeed both are about the same conflict in the same universe, but it is made very clear that Halo Wars is not the next game in the main Halo series. This is how Societies should have been approached.quote> I entirely agree. I think a lot of this angst could have been avoided if the new game was presented as a spin-off rather than as a sequel to the Sim City series. Maybe it should have even been titled "Sim Societies." I assume EA quickly needed to add another 2007 holiday product to fill the void when Spore was postponed to 2008.

First off, thank you to Dirk for the new forum! I was out of the country when the news broke, so my first reaction was pleasant surprise at the early release date and then a touch of consternation at the screenshot. For someone who really likes to watch their cities in motion like an ant farm, the minimal street traffic is ominous. However, I would like to see a moving demo - perhaps better animations might relieve some of my concerns. I've not played any of these "society" type games - perhaps someone could explain how they differ from the Sim City concept?

Let's see, I was about 8 and my mom took me to see Star Wars a couple weeks after it came out - so pretty early, but not the opening weekend or anything. We lived in Chicago near Wrigley Field and my mother always insisted on driving out to this theater way out in the suburbs, maybe because it was cleaner or perhaps it was a good excuse to take out the car. I think we decided to see it again with my uncle and cousin a few weeks later. While I guess I liked 4-6 better, I did appreciate the evolving style of the telling of Annakin's life's journey in 1-3 - the fairy tale like childhood, the romantic idealism of teenage years, then the Greek tragedy in his fall. Although it seemed like a lot of bother to go through to really just answer the question of why Darth Vader would save his son from the emperor. By the way, if you are still puzzled by some of the loose ends in the series, try this explanation that probes some of the practical problems faced by the rebels: A New Sith, or Revenge of the Hope

Isn't the legend about The Matrix that Will Smith was originally offered the Neo role and turned it down? Can you imagine how much different the tone of the movie would have been with Will Smith? I actually liked "Casino Royale" quite a bit, though I've probably read more Bond books than I've seen of the films. Plus it was mostly filmed in the Czech Republic, very scenic. As far as bad movies, I prefer to spend my Saturday afternoons with the Governator. Almost any one will do, though I prefer his traditional action flicks to the lighter comedies.

There is no doubt that "Phantom" is more opera than musical, and perhaps "West Side Story" falls in the same range. It has been a long time since I've seen Les Mis, but the plot advancement seems less driven by the music to me. Same for "Oklahoma," "South Pacfic," "Brigadoon," etc. "Cats" is a strange one because there isn't much plot at all anyway. I have been to lot of live musicals ("The King and I," "Chess," "Phantom," "Dream Girls," "Brigadoon," "Oklahoma," "Cats," "Les Miserables," and "Camelot" among others) and I have tickets for "Spamalot" this weekend, lol. But the only true opera I have been to is Mozart's "The Magic Flute," performed outside at Wolf Trap. The supertitles were really helpful and this light-hearted opera really works well in this venue. If they can stage "Porgy and Bess" at the Lincoln Center, why not "An American in Paris" or "Singing in the Rain?"

Well, I should have known it would be tough to get suggestions when even my husband hasn't given me his picks (though I think he's putting Scat Daddy in some sort of trifecta). He's out of town so it's my job to run up to the OTB Saturday morning (shudder). They claim the Queen isn't going to bet but I find that hard to believe...I wonder what her picks are...

CART MASTER: Bring out your dead! [clang] Bring out your dead! [clang] Bring out your dead! [clang] CUSTOMER: Here's one. DEAD PERSON: I'm not dead! CART MASTER: What? CUSTOMER: Nothing. Here's your ninepence. DEAD PERSON: I'm not dead! CART MASTER: 'Ere. He says he's not dead! CUSTOMER: Yes, he is. DEAD PERSON: I'm not! CART MASTER: He isn't? CUSTOMER: Well, he will be soon. He's very ill. DEAD PERSON: I'm getting better! CUSTOMER: No, you're not. You'll be stone dead in a moment. CART MASTER: Oh, I can't take him like that. It's against regulations. DEAD PERSON: I don't want to go on the cart! CUSTOMER: Oh, don't be such a baby. CART MASTER: I can't take him. DEAD PERSON: I feel fine! CUSTOMER: Well, do us a favour. CART MASTER: I can't. CUSTOMER: Well, can you hang around a couple of minutes? He won't be long. CART MASTER: No, I've got to go to the Robinsons'. They've lost nine today. CUSTOMER: Well, when's your next round? CART MASTER: Thursday. DEAD PERSON: I think I'll go for a walk. CUSTOMER: You're not fooling anyone, you know. Look. Isn't there something you can do? DEAD PERSON: [singing] I feel happy. I feel happy. [whomp!] CUSTOMER: Ah, thanks very much.

Well, thanks for your patience during the long hiatus. I'm finally caught up on RL, except for gardening of course, but since it's raining I might as well attend to other matters... One thing I would like to do with this CJ is have at least one region pic per page. This time I've provided the transportation map. Highlighted you'll see our next stop, Summervill, since Mommy City, Molly Town, and Winnieville are all just connector cities with a few farms thrown in. Summervill looks bigger than it is, since it only has a population of 27,000. Summervill's motto is "A City United by a River," which the inhabitants find rather humorous, since the diiferent sides of the river generally don't want anything to do with each other. Here is the bigger side, the West Side: To the north is the industrial, slowly converting to high tech but still supporting a number of nasty tenements along the river. In the middle is the downtown, plus an old residential neighborhood called "The Diagonals." It has never fully developed, perhaps due to its disorienting effect on sims. "Everything looks kinda crooked," said one Hagar Topeka, while Phyllis Gassup remarked, "I can't seem to walk in a straight line!" Finally on the south side of the West Side is the up and coming community of South Gate. Meanwhile, the smaller and more exclusive East Side just looks down from their fancy seaside villas at those on the West Side. Ah, time for tinkering! First, a little urban renewal downtown, where two abandoned Brink Real Eastate offices have been torn down, but no one is filling the odd size lots. Might as well demolish the entire block! And we can add a new connector road while we're at it. I'd move the railroad too, but you don't want to know what I went through building that tunnel. Ooh, look, something's coming already! Isn't this the best part of Sim City? What do you think it's going to be? Okay, well, that's not that thrilling, but at least there's more parking downtown (though you can always park for free at the casino!). Now to tinker with the East Side...the East Side has always had it's own fire fighting airstrip, despite the fact there's already one on the West Side. However, it's occupying some pretty prime real estate, so maybe the mayor could be persuaded to let it go. It's always good practice with these sorts of major demolitions to leave some room for parks. But what's going to happen with the rest of the site? Here we go again! Nice - an interesting selection of buildings for a change. I hope to persuade the region's creator to post an update soon, since he'll be 13 in a few weeks. Otherwise, I think we might visit Agassi and Tennis Town next time. Thanks for stopping by!