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Which Sim City is the best?
MarkyX
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For some reason I feel like running a city. Don't know why, don't care, or maybe I'm just bored as hell and I'm trapped inside my own house thanks to good ol' Canadian weather. Although I do feel sorry for the bastards who camped out for Brawl in this weather only to be told there is a shortage 
Anyways, I know Sim City Societies bites the big one, so it's time for some classic gaming. A friend of mine is going to sell some of his old Sim City games on ebay but he is willing to give me one for a price. He pretty much has everything from the original Sim City to Sim City 4. Like everyone else, he was pissed with societies.
So, any suggestions?
Anyways, I know Sim City Societies bites the big one, so it's time for some classic gaming. A friend of mine is going to sell some of his old Sim City games on ebay but he is willing to give me one for a price. He pretty much has everything from the original Sim City to Sim City 4. Like everyone else, he was pissed with societies.
So, any suggestions?
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Sim City Societies is indeed stupidly rubbish compared to all of them.
4 is kind of horrible rape for computers when it gets hectic, though
and rush hour is pretty much mandatory for the game to not suck
2000 is pretty much in a league of its own.
However, whatever you do, stay the fuck away out of the SNES version of SC2K, it's just so horrible. Gotta be my biggest dissapointement on the SNES.
As for post SC1, SC2000 would be my suggestion. SimCity 4 is also very great if you want some more flexibility in personalizing your city and landscape, like others said, so long as you have Rush Hour and then maybe install the transportation community mod.
This is from someone who has invested unknown amounts of time into each game.
Also while I'm here: http://youtube.com/watch?v=w0yknDAki4M
I learnt how to break the game, get infinite money supply, and grow an epic city with high tax rates.
All at the tender age of ten.
Theres a fan mod that fixes this, it does take some decent cpu power to run it though.
SC3000 is better only if you just want to run it without fucking around with that stuff.
Your call.
The RCI demand is ridiculously broken, with your city basically demanding nothing but Residential. I played 3 different cities and it was something like 90% demand for R constantly no matter how much I built.
It lags when you're not in "pause" mode and the advisors have to be 100% completely ignored since there is no way to turn them off. All they do is constantly ask you to build Fire Stations and Stadiums. You could have 10 stadiums and someone would be bugging you to build one.
Not having to micro-manage budgets and worry about money quickly took a lot of the fun and challenge that makes SimCity so fun.
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My favorites would have to be the SNES version followed closely by SC3000.
Sim Tropolis has a whole bunch of mods and user-made buildings and such.
NAM improves pathfinding and realism about a gazillion percent, plus it comes with additional tools for diagonal roads, bridges, on- and offramps, tunnels, roundabouts etc etc
The original SimCity is fairly simplistic and probably wont hold your attention long. I got it around the same time as SimCity 2000 and almost never touched it aside from loading it up and having tornadoes decimate the landscape (...which was more fun with floods, robot monsters, fires and tornaodes simultaneously in SC2000). If you're going this far back for retro gaming and a 'sim' experience, you might as well go with SimAnt or SimTower instead.
SimCity 2000 is very fun. I remember long nights infront of our computer resulting in red-eye. We needed a boot disk to run it on our computer. The city building options are pretty broad, it's the only SimCity with hydroelectric plants and it's the only one with arcologies. The big problem here is that there are realtively few options for building your city, terrain is the only big deciding factor, because then you just start laying things out in grids...and the terrain only has one height increment, so there's not much there, anyway. After you've built it you can just burn it down and you'll still be making money when people move back.
On to the brunt of this post: why SimCity 3000 is the best SimCity so far:
SimCity 2000 only had a 256 color palette, while 3000 has 16bit color. 3000 also allows for much higher screen resolutions and has better ambient sound (CD quality background music, as well). SC3k also allows for much more varied terrain, road building and zoning compared to 2000. There's the possiblity for small slopes and Heavy/Medium/Light zoning (instead of just Heavy/Light). SC2k maps can be imported into SC3k, but SC3k also has the option to create larger cities, up to 4x as big as the 2000 map size.
The big, important changes are in the simulation. 3000 added garbage, water pollution and a more realistic and forgiving (usually) system of finances. Loans were usable, it was harder (more realistic in this case) to manipulate your Sims into paying higher taxes, along with the addition of more ordinances. 3k has more rewards (city halls, stadiums, universities, the addition of landmarks. There are also neighboring cities and neighbor/business deals. I think garbage was one of the bigger oversights in SC2k, so this is important to adding realism and added strategy to your city building.
Basically it's SimCity 2000 with better graphics, more play options, larger cities, better sound and a more realistic simulation with almost no added difficulty (in some cases it's easier since you can't cripple yourself with loans and business deals pop up to pump that extra bit of money in to bring you into the black). The big losses were arcologies, myriad disaster types, hydroelectric plants, and the newspaper.
[edit: I started it up again and SC3k does in fact still have the saltwater mechanic in place. Desal plants are still around; I'm not sure why I thought they were gone - not playing enough SC3000, probably.[/edit]
SimCity 4:
The game is basically an exercise in micromanagement and - as noted - the transportation pathing is bad without the expansion and subsequent fan patching. The city overlays and graphs are less informative (I miss my SC3k pie charts...). There's a huge focus on inter-city relationships, so you can basically build small corners of your map with high-density industrial and garbage dumps, and - since pollution doesn't cross city boundaries - you can just have all sorts of little paradises. The biggest burden is the micromanaging, lack of power plant options, and simplification of the water system (even more simplified than SC3ks, compared to 2k's relatively in-depth one). The garbage options were also toned down quite a bit. Also, they didn't bring back arcologies, and arcologies are sweet.
On the plus side, it's much easier to build farms.The terrain is far more varied and the 'god-mode' editor used before you found your cities is pretty versatile. The subway and pipe-laying maps are no longer the same (very helpful). There are far more options for roads and transportation, but unless you've got the player-made mod set to the highest simulation level, people still end up overloading public transit - or not using it at all. There's nothing quite like seeing all of your cities interconnected on the main menu's satellite/transportation maps, with highways and roads and seaports and airports all over.
I heartily recommend SimCity 3000, since it's basically an improved SimCity 2000 (if you can find the Urban Renewal kit, that can add fun to SC2k as well - the SC3k building editor was kind of 'meh'), whereas SimCity 4 is partially a different game with a separate play style. SimCity's not really a contender any more, since if you're going that route you might as well get 2000, and if you're going to get 2000, you might as well get 3000. The only real debate I see is between SC3000 and SC4, and I prefer 3000.
On a more serious note, I rediscovered SC4 a while back and played the hell out of it. Good times, fwiw.
I rebought it on the VC and really really regretted it. I'm actually kinda amazed at how far the series has come since those days.
My vote is Sim City 3000 or 4. 2000 usually just ends up with loads of Arcologies across the map.
2000 was involved but much more simple and elegant. My fav by far
1- Perhaps it could fully tie into the Sims - and a Mayor/Council could be elected to run & build the city?
2 - A whole world where player built cities could form into leagues or nations?
3 - Multiple Player run cities (see one but without Sims tie-in)
4 - Maybe go total sandbox style and create a huge amount of customisation and in game design?
3 wasn't that bad but I didn't like 4. Good to know that might have been due to a patch, but it ran like crap on my old box and that had some impact.
Sim City 2000 was especially great since I could only game on a Mac when I was twelve (this was ~1995), and one could imagine the options with that.
2000 would be my second choice
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I have been trying for years to find a working copy of that game, I played it at school when I was younger and have wanted to play it again ever since.
Maybe Japan only...?