SimCity 2000: The Ultimate City Simulator

SimCity 2000: The Ultimate City Simulator

MS-DOS - USA - 1st edition.

Developer Maxis Publisher Maxis Published 1993-??-?? Platforms Acorn 32-bit, Amiga, DOS, FM Towns, Game Boy Advance, Macintosh Classic, Nintendo 64, OS/2, NEC PC-9800, PlayStation, Saturn, SNES, Windows, Windows 3, Windows Mobile Genres Management simulator, Sandbox, Simulation Themes Management Series Sim Distribution Commercial

SimCity 2000: The Ultimate City Simulator is an open-ended city planning management simulator game. It was developed and published by Maxis Software for the Macintosh in 1993, and then ported to many other platforms. It is the seventh game in the Sim series, and more of a complete remake of SimCity rather than a sequel.

Like the original, you play as the mayor of a city and make all the large decisions of zoning land for residential, commercial, or industrial buildings, and plan out the location of roads, power plants, but this game adds many more elements to take into consideration like the water system, highways, bus routes, and more.

Personal

Own?	Yes. MS-DOS port, special edition.
Won?	No. The game lacks a win condition.

I first played SimCity 2000 at my cousin's house. After I had bought SimCity on the SNES, we got into a Sim game kick, and began buying a lot of them. I bought SimAnt: The Electronic Ant Colony, and A-Train, they bought 2000 and the original, and my friend Jeremy bought SimFarm and SimTower.

I really liked all the additions of SimCity 2000: the isometric view, sloping land, the water system, the slow invention of technologies, and the nice music. And, of course, it was always fun to send the space alien to destroy everything. However, like most Sim games, I got bored with the game before too long because there is no specified objective. However, with the many new features, it stayed interesting for a lot longer than the original.

Review

7	7	7	5	8

Best Version: DOS

— This section contains spoilers! —

Good

• There is a surprisingly large amount of things to do in the game. There are dozens of units to build, several systems to manage, and all sorts of interesting things that can occur.
• The layout, interface, and graphics are all fantastic.
• Most of Sue Kasper's music is very enjoyable.
• The pre-made maps included several real-life cities including one only a half hour from where I grew up: Flint, Michigan.
• Like most Maxis games, it came with a very thorough manual.

Bad

• Instead of having the music fit the tone of the game, it plays entirely at random. You can get a snappy jazz number during a hurricane, or a dirge right after celebrating a milestone.
• I remember always having water pressure problems no matter how many water towers or pumps I created. Not sure if this was a bug, or something I was doing wrong that the game never clearly explained to me.

Ugly

• Nothing.

Media

The art on the box for all regions was painted by David Schleinkofer. It's fantastic and has incredible attention to detail. It really gets across the micro-managing aspect of the game as well as the futurism. I only wish the layout didn't obscure so much of it.

Box Art

• 

  DOS - USA.

Documentation

• 

  Manual - DOS - USA - Digital.

• 

  Manual - Game Boy Advance - USA.

• 

  Manual - N64 - Japan.

• 

  Manual - Saturn - USA.

• 

  Manual - SNES - Europe.

• 

  Manual - SNES - USA.

Screenshots

• 

  Title screen.

• 

  Starting a riot in Flint, Michigan.

Videos

Game play - MS-DOS.

Play Online

Game Boy Advance (Europe), Game Boy Advance (USA), MS-DOS, Nintendo 64, SNES (Europe), SNES (USA), Super Famicom

Representation

Strong female character?	Fail	There are no established characters.
Bechdel test?	Fail	There are no established characters.
Strong person of color character?	Fail	There are no established characters.
Queer character?	Fail	There are no established characters.

Download

This is the DOS demo version of SimCity 2000.

• Download (Info) - Demo.

Titles

Language	Native	Transliteration	Translation
English	SimCity 2000
Japanese	シムシティ2000	ShimuShiti 2000	SimCity 2000

Expansion

Three expansions were made for SimCity 2000. SimCity 2000: Urban Renewal Kit lets you customize maps for free and import new art or alter existing art, SimCity 2000: Network Edition lets up to four players work on the same map, or compete in neighboring maps, and SimCity 2000 Scenarios: Volume 1 - Great Disasters, adds new maps with new disasters. I've used the Urban Renewal Kit, but it didn't keep my interest for very long.

Links