Look: 8/10 Functional, which actually says a lot considering all earlier strategy/sim and city building had convoluted UIs, tacky processes, or confusing looks overall. The more I thought about it overnight, I decided to up this. It is more than functional: the world map feature is exciting and has great colors, the UI is exceptional for its time, and it's decidedly the first sim/city-building/empire-building game that isn't a bunch of abstract white and gray squares or something--instead you actually see the hotel, see the amusement park, see the resort, etc.

Sound: 7/10 All the jingles are nice, from the theme music (tho that got quite old by year 5 heh) to the one that plays during the annual recaps. Not necessarily striking or anything, but very modern and effective. The newsflash "sound effect"/jingle was, indeed, quite striking though. Also, great ending music whether win or lose, both are great ha. The loss music is super ironic as it scans through your bustling city :-p I didn't include it in the rating, though, since that's my norm for this era. Not sure what year will be my cutoff year to have to include sound, if ever, since I sometimes like to play without sound.

Play: 8/10 Welp, I was nervous going in: sure, SimCity type simulation games are my preferred type of "Strategy" games, but even with this being one of the very first of that exciting upcoming genre, it looked like it'd be a lot of meaningless RNG and overly convoluted gameplay like most early strategy games have. But, instead, I was pleasantly surprised by this video, which gave me the confidence to give this an earnest try

The video made me realize you get to engage with a "world map" feel (gotta love that, reminds me of the upcoming Dragon Quest/FF/JRPG maps, well, lets be honest, it reminded me of my beloved RPG Maker/RPG Maker 2 map creation systems :-p ), that you can just build for fun without an immediate RNG-based illogical end or frustration, and it really is like Sims City with building roads for the hell of it, gas stations, restaurants, capitalizing on movies sending people to ski resorts or weather sending em to the beaches etc. Still, it was apparent that this was meant for 2-player, with the screen literally being cut in half ha, so I was nervous I might not fully get to engage with the game. It's cool that, while there is a set time limit (eg., I stuck to level 1 with 5 years, which is long but not too long for me, like most strategy games are wont to do), you really are just competing with your top performance. Anyway, all this gave me the drive to try this earnestly--and I was sincerely excited! I got anxious when I saw there are factory strikes and other seemingly RNG-based events (tho after reading up, it seems those are most related to resources available etc, very very cool if true... welp, indeed, it turned out there are RNG-based events like great white sharks, tornados, increased license fees, etc. that can hurt ya. oh strategy/sim games). The manual can be found here. I haven't played many ColecoVision games yet, so it took me a while to figure the process out. (Ah, after reading the manual, I found the answer about how to "win" the game: make $250m , way more than the YouTube video guy and commenters estimated... gah). Pro-tip: Read the manul. For instance, I finally tealized you have to press a side button (L/R) while in Build Mode to access more build options such as Resort and Coal Mine and the stuff I planned to build early, I was about to give up on the game cuz it was coming across as too complciated! But that's a simple realization

Feel: 8/10 I sooo love the news flashes, I feel they were well-done unlike the pandemic-type and wargame-type strategy games so far. It was just a nice, fun touch. I also love the annual zoom-around recaps, feels rewarding and instead of feeling like I'm constantly expecting an army to destroy mine or a disease to wipe out my empire like in most early strategy games, I just was excited to see my city grow and my fortune grow. Great stuff. Plus, the jingle was nice. Lol! I just read this from youtube user caliburngreywofl:

In 2 player, you can poison your opponent's skil lodge with a nearby coal mine, and suck their casino dry by slamming a toll booth or twelve leading to it.

That's so great, I love that. Accurate, real, ahead-of-its-time, clever, and fun. Love it. I so would love to try 2-player somehow. Maybe I can force, er, convince one of my brothers ha. I had played Utopia for Intellivision, which generally gets lauded, and didn't enjoy it: it was slow and unclear and not very enjoyable. But just 2 years later, this interesting release hopefully is opening up the strategy era I might enjoy! I had fun building at least one of everything, trying to be strategic about everything and usurp a lot via toll booths, but even with that mindset, it got a little old-feeling by Year 4. I am glad it is as brief as it is, tho 2-player can go much longer

Attachment: 8/10 Someone claims there is an end goal: double your net worth within the 5 years. I haven't seen any solid evidence of that, and I enjoyed just trying to come out ahead and build an awesome city (Welp, seems it's true: The guy who made the video said it's basically just different music if you do "win" the game, and lol the guy in the video got the sad/loss music and it's so perfect as it recaps a beautiful city, very ironic and juxtaposed-feeling). People also claim it really does make a difference where you build things, like building blue collar things near each other at first then developing to higher class things etc, but I mostly just stuck with following the newsflashes and otherwise, building what I want ha. I didn't even come close to the goal, but still decently proud heh, and had fun tho it tired a bit near the end! I think I should have put down more toll booths? And maybe sold certain properties when there's a bad newsflash (I always stuck with everything I built). Maybe I'd play it again to see, but as innovative and exciting and relatively fun as this was, in the end, not positive I'd play it again. Perhaps if I can get someone to play it 2-player!

Oh, weird, it didn't show my net worth which was about 170k not sure where it ended up

Edit: As motivated as I was to replay this, it got old again near the end-game. It just was too repetitive at a point. Still, by far the best pre-SimCity city-building game I've played so far. It was fun to try hard in this playthrough, even if it got a little repetitive at the end. But it was all worth it! I succeeded! (with one month to spare heh). I wish I could get a a screenshot of my whole land, all the cottages huddled together, the insane amount of malls throughout, the amusement parks, etc.

And of course, the fact that I did replay this (and likely wont forget it, even if it's not a game I will regularly replay), coupled with the fact I would definitely replay this in 2-player mode, boosted this to an 8. It really could even be a 9.

Completion: Beat the game at Level 1 Playtime: ~1 hour