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Best version of Sim City?

2000 is awesome, but only because of how nostalgic it is. Sim City 4 is where it's at these days.

With that said, does anyone else have horrible performance issues in SC4? I have a fairly decent PC (Q6600 @ 3.2ghz, GTX 260, etc) so I don't see what the problem is. :/

Also, behold the biggest douchebag in all of gaming:

2mevern.jpg
 
Jucksalbe said:
By the way, how is SC 2000 on PSX (the one on PSN)? What about the DS ones?
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If the PS1 version of SC2K is similar to the Saturn version, then it's basically just a straight port of the PC version with minor changes and an inferior control interface.
 
The PSX version is available on the PSN store but I can faintly remember it being shit when I played it a long time ago.
 
Since we're on the discussion, anybody played Sim City 2000 for PSP? I'm curious if it translated well or not.
 
Piggus said:
Also, behold the biggest douchebag in all of gaming:

2mevern.jpg
Click to expand...
Man, he's no douchebag. He's warning you of the consequences of your actions with precisely the right amount of urgency.
 
Not sure which is the best exactly as I've not played them all. But I just want to add to the chorus praising the SNES version: It was fucking awesome.

Great sense of humour, good controls, loads of unique additions, even some great music. An absolute gem of a game.
 
LaneDS said:
Despite all the advances the series made, I still prefer the SNES version. Always felt more accessible (largely by way of it's simplicity) and I love the music to death.
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Did you use that word on purpose?
 
Really miss the newspapers in 4, but just regarding the actual city building it is the best by a very long ways.
 
Jucksalbe said:
I'd say SC 2000, too. But I've only played 4 without expansion. How much does Rush Hour change? I liked 4, but I never managed to survive for long and the areas were so small. If Rush Hour really improves much, I should probably get that one.
By the way, how is SC 2000 on PSX (the one on PSN)? What about the DS ones?
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Rush Hour adds more trafic options. There is also an easier option to choose, so you can built a large city without too much trouble. You should definitely try it out if you like SimCity 4.
 
I really wish Sim City 4 would come to one of the DD services. I kinda feel like playing it, but I don't like physical copies :-/
 
HappyBivouac said:
Streets of Sim City, naturally.
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I think my favorite part of that game was that one of the packages you had to deliver was a huge box called "SimCopter bug list." :lol

Man, I remember being so hyped for SimCity 3000 back when it was being developed on the SimCopter engine. Then it was scaled back to what seemed (to me) to be just "SimCity 2000, but prettier." This was probably for the better, but it still kinda bummed me out.
 
HappyBivouac said:
Streets of Sim City, naturally.
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That game was great, my cousin and I would built the most bad-ass unfinished cities (using cheats and such) in Simcity 2000 with nothing but crazy ramps and hairpin turns and then jump into it with the car in SoSC.
 
What mods do people recommend. I bought Sim City 4 ages ago but never really gave it a proper stab. Spent countless hours in 3000 though.
 
I had a huge mountain course in Streets that I built from the ground up with SCURK. The whole goddamn map was just one huge mountain with chasms, ramps, tunnels, sharp cliffs, and so forth. It was awesome, but the AI was terrible at navigating it so it was never much of a challenge. :lol

Man, I wonder if those games run well on WinXP/DirectX9.
 
I remember when Sim City 2000 came out and I would stare at the back of the box in awe at how great the game looked. Now I do the same thing with Anno - Dawn of Discovery, there is just something about looking at all of the detail of the buildings, landscape, etc., from that aerial point of view.

Sim City 2000 has been sitting on my shelf collecting dust for years, I think I'm going to finally play it pretty soon now.
 
Himuro said:
I tried playing Sim City 2000 when I got my new computer but windows 7 rc won't let it work. :(
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Cant you run it in compatibility mode. Vista runs it then, but I haven't tried in 7 (since I dont have it :P).
 
nightez said:
I'm very surprised the Snes got a good version of Sim City.

How about Simcity 64 and Simcity Creator on the Wii? Any good?
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Given that Simcity 64 is a 64DD game, I don't think many people have any idea how good it is...

There was a version of SC2k on the SNES, though. I don't think it was that great, it has no mouse support I think and no terrain height so everything is just flat... the GBA version of SC2k is similar, I believe. I'm not sure about the PSX version of 2k... but I imagine it's better on PC.

Tiktaalik said:
I want someone to make a complex, more modern, well modelled Sim City, that's still a bit on the scaled down side. I think I kind of want a Sim Neighbourhood game.
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SimCity Societies then? Tried it?

brain_stew said:
Can't you just use Dosbox?
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If you're using the DOS version, yes... there's also a Windows version. I only have the original DOS floppy release, so I play it in DOSBox. :) It's only one floppy disk, but it's probably the best building sim game ever...

ClosingADoor said:
Cant you run it in compatibility mode. Vista runs it then, but I haven't tried in 7 (since I dont have it :P).
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Yeah, that often helps. Definitely try it... unless it's the DOS version, in which case use DOSBox.

fatty said:
I remember when Sim City 2000 came out and I would stare at the back of the box in awe at how great the game looked. Now I do the same thing with Anno - Dawn of Discovery, there is just something about looking at all of the detail of the buildings, landscape, etc., from that aerial point of view.

Sim City 2000 has been sitting on my shelf collecting dust for years, I think I'm going to finally play it pretty soon now.
Click to expand...

SC2k still looks pretty good really, I'd say... it just has such a great sense of style. 3k looked "better" but just couldn't match 2k in a lot of ways... that game really disappointed me. 4's better than 3k from what I've seen of it, but still, 2k is a special game.
 
Sixfortyfive said:
I think my favorite part of that game was that one of the packages you had to deliver was a huge box called "SimCopter bug list." :lol
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oh shit that is hilarious

I was way into SimCopter, even though I was well aware of its crappiness. It was just too cool darting around your SC2K city at night with the jazz radio station playing. Never bothered with Streets.
 
jooey said:
oh shit that is hilarious

I was way into SimCopter, even though I was well aware of its crappiness. It was just too cool darting around your SC2K city at night with the jazz radio station playing. Never bothered with Streets.
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SimCopter was pretty cool! I remember scoping out one of my military bases for the first time.

And finding the Apache.

And discovering that it had a rail gun + rocket launcher.

And trying it out on the nuclear power plant.

*BOOOOOOOOOOM*

*50+ medical evacs requested*
 
Never played 2000, well, I did briefly in grade 2 and of course I had no idea wtf was happening. 3000 is definitely my fave, graphics that I can still stand looking at (nice cartoony look to it), was relatively easy to earn cash and I really like the music. Didn't really get stuck into 4, I didn't like that you had to create your own neighbours. It was probably a positive for everyone else but I loved using computer-played neighbours for cash deals :D, great terrain effects though!

Also, speaking of Simtower, has any company released anything similar to it in recent times?
 
I guess this is a good place to ask: I got 4 awhile back and thought it was pretty fun to mess around with, but what's with the farms in that game? My citizens always had a huge demand for farms, but if you make agricultural zones they only make jobs for a few people. After awhile I just stopped worrying about it and it never seemed to hurt any of my cities, but it bugged me seeing that there was always a huge demand for agriculture that I didn't know what to do with.
 
Piggus said:
With that said, does anyone else have horrible performance issues in SC4? I have a fairly decent PC (Q6600 @ 3.2ghz, GTX 260, etc) so I don't see what the problem is. :/
Click to expand...

It's been a while since I last played it so I might be remembering this wrong, but I got farrrrrrr smoother performance in the game playing with software mode. Hardware ran like total ass.
 
it's good to hear that 4 is rather good. I played and enjoyed 200 the best way back when, and really wanted to play some more simcity lately. I will probably pick this up and give it a go. Such a great game.
 
I'm the second person in this thread to say SC3000. :lol


I never played 2000, and tried SC4 on several occassions but it just doesn't really click.
Could all the people who say 2000 over 3000 give some reasons why? Was 3000 really a step back in many ways, or is it nostalgia speaking / 2000 being played by more people in general? Because I know SC4 is the better game, I just prefer 3000. Is it the same with people preferring 2000 over 3000?


Also: the soundtrack from SC3000 is amazing. <3 Sim Broadway.
 
Tiktaalik said:
No you're right that's true. However, the region map does get split up into regions of random size and so you're a bit constrained in that sometimes an interesting bit of the map is tied to a small region.

If the way regions were handled was more refined and smoother (ie no loading or transitions) I wouldn't really have any gripes with it.
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Well, the SC4 addon community has ways of dealing with that: a .bmp dictates the division of regions by size, so could theoretically find the file and mod it with even MSpaint, I'm assuming, to change your region map sizes (to all large, or all medium, or small region borders, etc.)

If anything, you should grab some maps from the STEX or something; most of them are modelled on real-world proportions using satellite images to get the terrain just right. They are super large however (since each square in the game is about 16m^2) so proportions may be completely whack with those region maps, but you have alot of free space to use, I suppose.

The only gripe I have with SC4 with today's technology is the more addons you have, it loads much slower, plus IIRC, the game can only run on one core. Loading regions back and forth is a pain. Pretty sure the community could do something about it but that might involve hacking the .exe, which they are adamant in not doing.
 
SC3000 was widely regarded as a dud. This was released after the EA acquisition and if you've played it, its really more of a Sim City 2500 . The game is much too similar to 2000 without any of its charm. It was essentially a reskinned 2000 with more buildings.

To the topic, I got my start on the franchise with 2000 so I like it a whole lot. It's very highly playable and runs very well today.

SC4 is probably where my heart is at. I really liked the automata system where there's actual street life that reflects the traffic simulation running in the background. And at different time of day there's different scripted events, like school children crossing the street to the school I built. The traffic is generally specific to the buildings placed in a particular neighbourhood.
Further more, rather than the 'faked' traffic in 3000 which fade in and out with no ryhme or reason, the automata's truly do represent types of traffic, so that you can follow an automata from an apartment block to their destination. The Sims option also allow players to place flags on an automata and follow their day, from home to work to home and players can use the 'microphone' option to ask random automata what they think of the pressing issues of the day, or the neighborhood they are travelling in.

The houses also have a nice prop system that allows high level of interchangeability so that a neighbourhood that is in decline could essentially keep the same houses but the props around it degenerate from fancy sportscars to vans to beatup wrecking hulks of cars.

It's really quite neat.

Unfortunatelly, the game was a massive resource hog and ran sluggishly even on top specced machines of the day. I haven't played or installed it yet on my new machine so I can't speak to how well it runs on Windows7/Vista.
 
I consider Simcity 4 + Rush Hour to be the most, in-depth, difficult yet rewarding game. It takes a lot of play time and trial n' error before you get the right formula for a successful city. There's some great attention to detail, such as the traffic and gentrification. The game also has one of the best soundtracks I've ever heard in a videogame.
 
Just for the heck of it, I checked the Wikipedia article for SimCopter and found the best sentence ever

Their fluorescent nipples were drawn with a special rendering mode usually reserved for fog-piercing runway landing lights, so they could easily be seen from long distances in bad weather.
Click to expand...
 
Probably a toss up between 2000 and 4, both such great games. The SNES version is fantastic too, although I really enjoy playing these games on a PC more. I wonder where the hell I stuck my CD of 2000...

Only thing I don't like about 4 is it crashes on both my PC and laptop too often.
 
Streets of Sim City had such an epic map creator, like the best ever in a driving game.

Sim City 4 is pretty darn good though. Bit of a learning curve though.


Also, a Sim City game with co op would be so, so epic.
 
I played the hell out of the SNES version, to the point of being burnt out on the franchise for a long time.
2000 is a good one too. This thread makes me wonder what versions are available now, and do they work on XP/win7/osx ... :lol
 
Kinda OT...I have SimCity 4 and it's pretty damn good, but I can't install it on my laptop :(
I meet all requirements by far, running Windows 7 64-bit...
It always freezes at 6.96%. I've tried running as Administrator and safe mode, to no avail.
Could anyone help?

EDIT: Tried reinstalling..now it freezes at around 13% :/
 
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