SimCity 2000
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| SimCity 2000 | |
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| Developer(s) | Maxis Full Fat (GBA) |
| Publisher(s) | Maxis, Electronic Arts DSI Games/Zoo Digital (GBA) |
| Designer(s) | Will Wright, Fred Haslam |
| Series | SimCity |
| Platform(s) | Mac OS, MS-DOS, Various, SNES, Sega Saturn, PlayStation, N64, GBA, PSP (PSN), PlayStation 3 (PSN) |
| Release date(s) | 1993(PC) 1995(SNES)(Saturn) 1996(PlayStation) 1998(N64) 2003(GBA) |
| Genre(s) | Simulation City-building game |
| Mode(s) | Single player |
| Rating(s) | ESRB: Everyone PEGI: 3+ |
| Media | 3½-inch floppy disks Cartridge Compact Disc |
| System requirements | CPU 486 33 MHz, 20MB hard disk space |
| Input methods | Keyboard and mouse Gamepad |
SimCity 2000 (SC2K) is a simulation/city building computer game and the second installment in the SimCity series. SimCity 2000 was first released by Maxis in 1993 for computers running the Apple Macintosh and MS-DOS operating systems. It was later re-released on a number of different platforms,[1] including: Amiga (1994), Microsoft Windows (1995), SNES (1995), Sega Saturn (1995), OS/2 (1996), PlayStation (1998), Nintendo 64 (1998), Windows Mobile (1999) Game Boy Advance (2003), PlayStation Portable (PSN) (2008) and PlayStation 3 (PSN) (2008).
In 1995, SimCity 2000 won "Best Military or Strategy Computer Game" Origins Award.
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[edit] Overview
The unexpected and enduring success of the original SimCity, combined with the relative lack of success with other "Sim" titles, finally motivated the development of a sequel. SimCity 2000 was a major extension of the concept; the view was now dimetric instead of overhead, land could have different elevations, and underground layers were introduced for water pipes and subways.
New types of facilities include prisons, schools, libraries, museums, marinas, zoos, stadiums, hospitals (although they appeared randomly on residential blocks in the first SimCity, they could not be built by the player) and arcologies. Players can build highways, roads, bus depots, railway tracks, subways, train depots and zone land for seaports and airports. There are a total of nine varieties of power plants in SimCity 2000, including coal, natural gas, nuclear, wind turbines, hydroelectric dams (which can only be placed on waterfall tiles) and the futuristic fusion power and satellite microwave plant. Most types of power plants have a limited life span and must be rebuilt periodically.
The budget and finance controls are also much more elaborate—tax rates can be set individually for residential, commercial and industrial zones. Enacting city ordinances and connecting to neighboring cities became possible. The budget controls are very important in running your city effectively.
Another new addition in SimCity 2000 is the query tool. Using the query tool on tiles reveals information such as structure name and type, altitude, and land value. Certain tiles also display additional information; power plants, for example, display the percentage of power being consumed when queried, and querying roads displays the amount of traffic on that tile. Querying a library and selecting "Ruminate" displays an essay written by Neil Gaiman.
Graphics were added for buildings under construction in the residential, commercial, and industrial zones, as well as darkened buildings depicting abandoned buildings as a result of urban decay.
News comes in the form of several pre-written newspaper articles with variable names that could either be called up immediately or could be subscribed to on a yearly basis. The newspaper option provided many humorous stories as well as relevant ones, such as new technology, warnings about aging power plant, recent disasters and opinion polls (highlighting city problems). SimCity 2000 is the only game in the entire series to have this feature (besides the discontinued children's version, SimTown), though newer versions have a news ticker. The newspapers had random titles (Times, Post, Herald, etc.), and prices based on the simulated year. Certain newspapers have a special monthly humor advice column by "Miss Sim". Some headlines have no purpose whatsoever in the game, such as "Bald Radio Found" or "Frog Convention".
Though there is no "true" victory sequence in SimCity 2000, the "exodus" is a close parallel. An "exodus" occurs during the year 2051 or later, when 250 or more Launch Arcologies are constructed; the following January each one "takes off" into space so that their inhabitants can form new civilizations on distant worlds (although the visual representation of the scene consists of the Arcologies exploding in a manner similar to bulldozed buildings, one by one).[2] This reduces the city's population to those who are not living in the Launch Arcologies, but it also opens wide areas for redevelopment and returns their construction cost to the city treasury. This is related to the event in SimEarth where all cities are moved into rocket-propelled domes that then leave to "found new worlds" (leaving no sapient life behind).
The game also included several playable "scenarios", in which the player must deal with a disaster (in most, but not all scenarios) and rebuild the city to meet a set of victory conditions. These were based in versions of real-life cities, and some were based on real events such as the 1991 Oakland firestorm, the 1989 Hurricane Hugo in Charleston, South Carolina, or dealing with the 1970s economic recession in Flint, Michigan—but also included more fanciful ones such as a "monster" destroying Hollywood in 2001. More scenarios added with the SCURK included a nuclear meltdown in Manhattan.
SimCity 2000 was the first Sim game to feature the semi-nonsensical phrase "Reticulating Splines", which means to make a network of splines. Will Wright has stated in an interview that the game does not actually reticulate splines when generating terrain, and he just inserted the phrase because it "sounded cool".[citation needed] The phrase has since been featured in SimCopter, SimCity 4, The Sims and The Sims 2, as well as being referenced by a status message in Mozy, an off-site backup solution offered by EMC Corporation. It is also parodied in the game Spore which features the phrase "Reticulating Spines" in some of its loading screens.
[edit] Scenarios
- Charleston: Begins in August, 1989. The city is hit by a hurricane, a recreation of Hurricane Hugo.
- Dullsville: Begins in June, 1910. The citizens are bored and the objective is to make the town into a metropolis.
- Flint: Begins in August, 1974. The city has high unemployment, because of the mass exodus of industries.
- Hollywood: Begins in January, 2001. The city is attacked by a giant robot.
- Oakland Hills: Begins in October, 1991. A recreation of the Oakland Firestorm of 1991.
[edit] Scenarios Vol. I: Great Disasters
In 1994, Maxis released a slew of expansions for the already popular SimCity 2000. One of these was a scenario package which include a number of disaster scenarios ranging from the ficticious (such as a UFO attack in future Atlanta, Georgia) to real world disasters, such as Great Flood of 1993. This pack included:
- Atlanta: A UFO attack devastates Atlanta in December of 2050, causing widespread panic and setting the city ablaze.
- Chicago: Pollution routes the industrial sector of 1999 Chicago into an exodus of sorts, forcing the city to rebuild its corporate sector.
- Davenport: Massive amounts of rainfall instigate the flooding of the Mississippi River in 1993. This scenario recreates the Davenport incident.
- Homestead: Terrible winds and flooding have destroyed a 1992 homestead. Fortunately, FEMA funds have finally arrived.
- Malibu: In the fall of 1993, Southern California was ravaged by terrible forest fires. This scenario recreates the infamous Malibu incident.
- Manhattan: Manhattan's efficient nuclear power station decides to have a meltdown in October of 2007, sweeping the area with chemical fire and radiation.
- Portland: A summer's day in 2001 Oregon is interrupted when a previously unknown wellspring of volcanic activity decides to erupt in downtown Portland.
- San Francisco: In October of 1989, the Loma Prieta earthquake single-handedly demolished many areas of Santa Cruz. Of the areas affected, San Francisco also suffered extensive damaged, including many fires caused by erupting gas mains. This is a recreation of that particular disaster.
- Silicon Valley: The high-tech society of the 2010 Silicon valley is hit hard when its futuristic power source goes awry - microwave beams transferring solar energy from an orbital satellite miss their intended receiver and instead fry many businesses in the area.
- Washington, D.C.: A fictitious day in 1995 is beset with hordes of drunken lawyers causing riots and mayhem.
[edit] SimCity Urban Renewal Kit
Along side the Great Disasters Scenarios package came the introduction of a separate toolset called the SimCity Urban Renewal Kit (SCURK for short). It enabled players to modify the images used in-game to represent various buildings in much the same manner as general image manipulation software. The player was able to create basic bitmap files of a standard size with a standard 256 color palette. The use of limited palette cycling, which permitted animation, was also possible. A number of pre-altered graphics packages were distributed, including some which replaced the "reward" buildings with images of various well known international buildings, such as the Eiffel Tower, but most buildings were made by fan-artists and shared on the Internet. Several SCURK designs influenced the designs of SimCity 3000's original buildings.
The SCURK is divided into three areas.
- Paint the Town – A graphics program fashioned to produce custom buildings for SimCity 2000.
- Pick and Copy – A tileset (building set) modifier, which allows users to produce new tilesets that display specific custom buildings.
- Place and Print – A sandbox-style city builder with fewer restrictions than SimCity 2000, which also enables users to print cities on paper. The SCURK was also bundled along with Streets of SimCity and SimCopter, as the Place and Print aspect of the program was especially useful for non-SimCity 2000 users who intended to build custom cities for either game.
The cities made in SCURK can be saved and used for SimCity 2000.
[edit] Ports and special editions
SimCity 2000 has been released on a wide range of platforms and version since its debut in 1993, ranging from ports of personal computers and video game consoles, to special editions.
[edit] SimCity 2000 Special Edition
A re-packaged version of SimCity 2000, SimCity 2000 Special Edition, was released in 1995 for Apple Macintosh, Microsoft Windows and DOS PCs, partly because the original SimCity 2000 cannot be run under Windows 95, even in prompt mode. In addition to containing SimCity 2000, it also featured the SimCity Urban Renewal Kit, the Vol. 1 scenario pack, new cities selected by Maxis from a 1994 competition, bonus scenarios and cities, and movies. The movies were a first for Maxis; SimCity 2000-SE was the first "Sim" game to feature "real" videos (compared to "animated bitmaps", such as the winning screen in SimAnt). These videos included the introduction movie and four commentary videos by Will Wright; the latter were accessed via the "WillTV" application that came with the game.
[edit] SimCity 2000 Network Edition
A network version of the game, SimCity 2000: Network Edition was released in 1996 for Windows.
The network edition had the ability to share in-game resources and to compete or cooperate with other cities. If the user is on an appropriate network (TCP or IPX), then SimCity 2000 Network Edition works in a similar way to SimCity 4, giving the ability to cooperate with other cities.[citation needed]
SimCity 2000 Network Edition featured slightly different gameplay in network mode, where mayors may start with more money, but must buy land before building upon it.
This version also features a revamped user interface. Instead of a static toolbar, items are accessed via cascading menus from the right of the screen, resulting in more screen real-estate for SimCity itself, without sacrificing functionality.
[edit] SimCity 2000 (PlayStation)
The PlayStation version of the game remains largely unchanged (although the game's directions for getting help is to press alt+shift, which is only possible using a computer keyboard[citation needed]). The only additions are scenarios, including one that involves a new volcano forming in Vancouver (destroying most of the city, and requiring the mayor to rebuild it). The port also allows the player to tour their city from a car's perspective and has a full motion video intro. This version was released on the Playstation Network in Europe for both PSP and PS3 on November 20, 2008.
[edit] SimCity 2000 (Nintendo 64)
A Japan-only release of SimCity 2000 for the Nintendo 64 in 1997, produced and published by Imagineer Co., Ltd., featured some additional features, mainly minigames, a dating game, horse races and monster breeding, among others, all of them in 3D. A few new "natural" disasters were also included, most of them being giant monster attacks (players were able to use their monster to fight against them). Even when these extras gave the game a lot more to do, many consider it lost the original feeling of the game, since the extras were intended to appeal specifically to the Japanese market.
[edit] SimCity 64 (Nintendo 64DD)
Another Japan-only release, SimCity 64 was based on the SimCity 2000 game but was heavily customized for the Nintendo 64DD game system. The ability to view the city at night was added, pedestrian level free-roaming of a city, and individual road vehicles and pedestrians controlled by their own AI wandered the player's city. Cities in the game are also presented in much more advanced 3D graphics, making SimCity 64 the first true 3D SimCity game[3].
[edit] Subsequent releases based on SimCity 2000
- SimHealth – Released in 1994, the game simulated President Bill Clinton's healthcare reform proposals for the US; designed for a niche audience at best, the simulation never achieved great popularity. It featured a user interface that resembled a city in SimCity 2000.[citation needed]
- SimCopter – A flight simulator based on the cities of SimCity 2000, SimCopter, was published in 1996. It had the capability of importing SimCity 2000 cities and allowing the user to pilot a helicopter around them and accomplish missions such as rescuing people or putting out a fire. Reviewers of the time pretty much agreed that the game was an interesting idea, but once the novelty wore off players were stuck piloting a helicopter around a hideously ugly land, with very little to actually do. SimCopter was perhaps best known for a rather notorious Easter egg which, if successfully triggered, depicted scantily clad men in a homosexually provocative state. Due to the uproar, this "feature" was patched over in a future release.[4][5]
- Streets of SimCity – Published in 1997, Streets of SimCity was a racing game based on the SimCopter engine. In addition to racing, it also featured courier missions and vehicular combat. However, the fact that this game was incredibly processor-intensive prevented this game from being a commercial success.[citation needed]
However, despite the lukewarm reception of each, both SimCopter and Streets of SimCity later inspired the feature "U-Drive-It" from the SimCity 4: Rush Hour expansion pack.
[edit] References
- ^ SimCity 2000 at MobyGames. Retrieved on June 19, 2006.
- ^ "Info & Strategy – Arcologies in SimCity 2000". SC3000.COM. http://www.sc3000.com/sc2000/info/showarticle.cfm?id=0016&openItemID=cid.16. Retrieved on July 18 2006.
- ^ GameStats: Sim City 64 Cheats, Reviews, News
- ^ "The Greatest Easter Eggs In Gaming". GameSpot. http://www.gamespot.com/features/6131572/index.html?q=The%20Greatest%20Easter%20Eggs%20In%20Gaming. Retrieved on June 19 2006.
- ^ "Activist "Easter Egg" Gets Gay Programmer Fired". PlanetOut. http://www.planetout.com/news/article-print.html?1996/12/06/2. Retrieved on June 19 2006.
[edit] External links
- Sim City 2000 Zone, an active Sim City 2000 website that lets you upload your cities and tile sets to be viewed by the public
- SimCity 2000 at MobyGames
- SimCity 2000 updates
- SimCity 2000 Network updates
- SimCity 2000 Urban Renewal updates
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