SimCity 2000 (1993)

Played a lot back in the 90s, windows 95 version. I usually used the infinite money cheat to focus on the sandbox of building a cool city. I remember having a massive city covering the entire map, with numerous arcologies, recreating my hometown, and beating all the scenarios legit. Last year (2023) I tried the SNES version on my PSP but did not play long. I forget why but since I moved it from the main emulator to the secondary, it must have locked up on that emulator. Now in 2024 I built an ideal legit city from scratch on the other emulator, which unfortunately meant a lot of letting the game run while I did other things because there was no fast forward or turbo mode.

I started with an oil power plant in the NE corner on a mostly flat coastal map. The plant could not be put directly on the edge so I filled those gaps with water pumps. Then I put dense industry 3 deep on both sides of the plant, then a road connecting to both neighbors. One of the most important rules of the game was that RCI zones will develop out to 3 spaces away from transportation. Even though technically 4 spaces could work if the 3rd space turned into a 2x2 building with the 4th, I always limited it to 3. So once I sorted out that corner (which stayed weird all along the east edge of the map), I had a long string of 3 deep industry along the north edge, and built the majority of the city in 9x9 blocks surrounded by road. This format gave a solid ring of 3 deep zones with a 3x3 spot in the center that I used for civic buildings that did not need access to roads (police, fire, schools, hospitals, parks, water pumps etc ). I spread all the way to the coast, where I put desalination and the prison along the edge, then the seaport further down the coast and surrounded by industry. I divided the map into quadrants with a T shaped highway going through the middle, though not towards the coast. It would have been a + shape if it was not a coastal map. The highways connected to neighbors and there were on ramps connected on both sides of every road. The highway placement was a little weird though so rather than having 3 deep industry on both sides of the highway, one side had 2 deep and the other had a single strip of light industry. I probably could have designed that better. I also had a rail line going from the seaport straight up to connect with the north neighbor, then branching west to that neighbor and going somewhat close to the airport in the NW corner. I put rail stations in the civic locations with some light residential around. Perhaps a better design would be to have rail going along the very edge of all 3 sides of the map like this, where r= road, R=rail, D=rail depot, i=industry

riiiiiiDDR

Though the question would be whether to put the depots right next to each other or spread them out 6 spaces and fill any dead space with civics. My overall design was to put industry around undesirable elements (map edge, highways, power plants, prison, ports), then a buffer zone of commercial zones, then a heart of residential. I flattened the few hills and filled in the large bay to create a uniform coastline. Despite filling out all the land available I only had around 90,000 people, so I began filling in the ocean to create more land. I left a 2x3 pool of salt water so I could cram 3 desalination plants in the civic area of each block. I left 1 tile of water along the edge of the map and only filled in about halfway along the coast before I reached 100k and unlocked arcologies. I would have to let the game run for hours to afford just 1 though! It did feel like the map was smaller than I remembered for the PC version. I had bus depots spread throughout the city but did not bother with a subway system. The transportation system in this game was weird due to the hard 3 tile limit for transportation. My understanding is that any zone up to 3 spaces away from a subway station could connect to any other zone up to 3 from any connected subway station, or rail depot if they are linked. So subway stations would probably be best placed deep in the residential heartlands in a ring formation through the middle of all 4 quadrants, with branches going to commercial and industrial areas, and likely linking up with the rail system at the map edges. Realistically, people would be willing to walk way more than 3 spaces, and mix the various forms of transportation, so the transportation system in this game unfairly favored driving and made rail and subway far less useful than they should be. I used ordinances to reduce pollution, fight drugs, neighborhood watch, promote sports, teach CPR, promote education, parking fines, and extra tax. At the end I turned on beautifucaton and carnival. I did not use legal gambling, volunteer firefighters, free clinics, or homeless shelters. I put funding for police and fire to 50% for the early game until they needed more. I played with no disasters. Even though fighting disasters was fun, remembering what was built where was not fun. At once point I forgot to keep track of my power plant and had to cut everything except transportation to 0% to afford to replace the plant. This was the dumbest aspect of the game; the 50 year time limit on power plants, which forced the forward planning to have enough money to replace the plants. The more sensible thing would be to put in yearly maintenance costs that could be easily tracked and budgeted around. I built 2 oil plants until I needed more power, at which point I let the city suffer through decades of brownouts until 1 plant died and I replaced it with nuclear. That was the most financially efficient way. I later replaced the other oil with nuclear, and much later replaced it with fusion. I never needed to replace the 2nd nuclear plant with fusion, but probably would if I started building arcologies. Microwave power was a decent option but every other option sucked. Coal was the cheapest but terrible for pollution. Gas was expensive and did not provide much; waste of money and space. Solar did not provide enough to be worth the space. On PC I used hydro dams on any slope tile that did not have a road. They made good use of otherwise unusable terrain but it was very unrealistic to plop down water on a hill and expect to build a hydroelectric dam there. It should have been something only buildable across rivers, and maybe in the ocean for tidal power. Regardless it was better to flatten the land for more dense zoning. If I was playing with disasters on I would either make everything except a few tiles from the coast 2 high (or everything except a section for the seaport), or put a single line of 2 high as a dike to stop flooding. Either way most of those slope tiles would be hydro dams. Wind turbines were pretty much useless for my flat map, but I have played on more rugged maps where I preserved the natural terrain. In that case, wind power was the best thing to put on the top of hills rather than fooling around with getting roads up there. My city was constantly suffering from water shortages despite having like a dozen desalination plants and many more ground water pumps. I hated the water system in this game. It was such a pain in the ass because the amount of water provided by the infrastructure was so unrealistically low and there seemed to be weird simulation of pressure and flow or something that made some areas permanently dry. I get that ground water pumps should suck, but even a single pump near a lake or a single desalination plant should sufficiently water a fair sized city. I got an airforce base in the same quadrant as my airport, though I made sure to terraform the coastline before just incase I got a naval base. It would be cool if the game allowed each type of military base in the same city.

This game was much better than the original Sim City, with a lot of replayability. Some of the design features were annoying but did not detract from the game too much. Many of the building graphics are burned into my memory, such that this game was an all time classic. The SNES version was much worse with slow performance, no fast forward, several other missing features, and text so dumbed down as to be childish and completel devoid of the odd charm in the PC version. Still it was cool to play it on the go. Might try the playstation version at some point to see if it is any better.

8.0/10 for PC.

6.0/10 for SNES