SimCity (1989)

Release Date: June 9, 1989

Strategy, economic, sandbox, 2D, top-down, city builder, singleplayer

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A classic strategic-economic game in which we play the role of the mayor of a hypothetical city. Whether a small village turns into a thriving metropolis will depend solely on our efficient management and cleverness.

Enter SimCity and take control. Be the undisputed ruler of a sophisticated real-time City Simulation. Become the master of existing cities or create your dream city (or dream slum) from the ground up.

Whether you take over an existing city or build your own, you are the Mayor and City Planner with complete authority.

Your city is populated by Sims - Simulated Citizens. Like their human counterparts, they build house, condos, churches, stores and factories. And, also like humans, they complain about things like taxes, mayors, taxes, city planners, and taxes. If they get too unhappy, they move out; you collect less taxes, the city deteriorates.

SimCity is the first of a new type of entertainment/education software, called SYSTEM SIMULATIONS. We provide you with a set of RULES and TOOLS that describe, create and control a real or imaginary System. In the case of SimCity the System is a City.

The challenge of playing a SYSTEM SIMULATION game is to figure out how the system works and take control of it. Then, as master of the System you are free to use the TOOLS to create and control an unlimited number of Systems - Cities - within the framework and limits provided by the RULES.

In SimCity, the RULES to learn are based on city planning and management; resource management, factors influencing land value, human factors, strategies for dealing with disasters, unemployment, crime and pollution, and the quality of life in a city.

Some of the TOOLS provide you with the ability to:

* plan, layout, zone, bulldoze and re-zone a city,

* build roads, airports and sea ports,

* set up and maintain a power grid,

* even wreak havoc and cause destruction by unleashing natural disasters.

But the most important TOOL of all is the Simulator itself. Test your plans and ideas as you watch the city grow or shrink through the immigration and emigration of industrious Simulated Citizens. Sims will move in and build homes, hospitals, churches, stores and factories, or move out in search of jobs or a better life elsewhere. The success of a city depends on your design and management skills.

Perhaps the main goal of SimCity is for you to design, manage and maintain the city of your dreams.Your ideal place to live may be a bustling megalopolis, lots of people, lots of cars, tall buildings; high-energy, high-density living. Or it may be a small rural community, or a linked group of

small communities providing slow paced country living.

As long as your city can provide places for people to live, work, shop and play, it will attract residents. And as long as traffic, pollution, overcrowding, crime or taxes don't drive them away, your city will live.

Last updated on August 14, 2015

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Game Series

SimCity Series

Created by Will Wright, a series of strategy games in which players can prove themselves as builders and administrators of virtual cities. The series is developed by Electronic Arts-owned studio Maxis with the participation of other development teams (such as Tilted Mill Entertainment).

11 video games

SimCity Game Series