SimCity 4

I think by making fun of the Animal Crossing commercials brought me back memory of an extremely well done simulation game - SimCity. I actually didn't get a chance to play SimCity, but I've gotten my hands on SimCity 2000 which was actually published around 1993 and fell in love of being able to create my own town and build little roads and railways.



To recapture that memory, I bought a copy of SimCity 4 expanded edition and found out the game had changed since then and gotten a lot more realistic and complicated. There's a lot of different factor for this game, you're the mayor and you're given a large sum of money in the beginning and you have to start by building some energy source (i.e. a coal power plant or nuclear power plant), some water pumps and lay down some tubes for the sewage system. And then you can create some roads and then start creating some residential zones, some commercial zones and some industrial zones. As time passes, people will start building buildings, and you need to building an education and a health system. Problem like fire, pollution, crime and traffic will change, and you need to make sure everything goes right and continue to expand. At the same time everything has a maintenance and monthly cost associated with it and you want your budget to balance or even earn money from taxation and deals with other cities.

I suck at being the major, I like to build things too much too soon. I always want the perfect city with beaches, a full educational system and a hospital, which emulates my regular spending pattern. In order to be successful, a player needs to start small and be patient. Thank god, technology is so popular that there are developers out there that would create some plugins and mods to bypass all that. Some user created a tree that would generate money. (Yes, a money tree) My money tree created 8 trillion Simoleons in a month, enough for me to buy anything I want... woohoo! There are also futuristic energy sources that would actually purify air at the same time. Some users get artsy and create sites like the World Trade Center or the Tokyo Tower for us to put them anywhere we want. My favorite is from an user from Amsterdam that recreated tons of buildings in his city so that players like me can create an European town. There are impressive Gothic cathedrals, opera house and the Anne Frank house.



Although after you get that much money, the game sorta loses its purpose. Then, you can utilize the game's ulterior functions to create disasters like fire, earthquake, tornado, aliens or monsters. Some people will build tons of nuclear plants and then create a fire and watch the whole city blow into oblivion. Haha. It's like Tamagotchi from years ago after you get bored bringing up your chick, you'll find different ways to kill it and see all the bad endings.