Review NaN of 1
Price Paid:
$20.00
from Toys R Us Summary:
I remember the very first Sim City games that came out for desktop PCs in the late 80s. I got Sim City for my Amiga computer about that time, and it was an amazing thing. An AI based system simulation for desktop PCs was a very advanced concept at that time.
The original Sim City was pretty simple by today's standards. It featured a top down view that you could scroll around your screen, and low resolution graphics with very tinny music to go along with it, and just a handful of zoning and other city creation options.
Since a GBA has more storage, more Ram, a nicer display, and way more processing power than the 16 bit desktop machines of the 80s, it only makes sense that any GBA version of Sim City would outshine the early originals.
And it does. Sim City 2000 on the GBA is very neat, very powerful, and a lot of fun to play...if you are into the Sim City concept to begin with. To be truthful, many gamers will not care for this title. It is not an action game, nor is it a RPG, nor is it a puzzle game. In the tradition of all Sim games, it is a system simulation. And this will translate to 'boring as hell' for most GBA gamers.
But if you like the Sim series of games, and if you have a GBA, then you will want to pick up this game. It has a really neat and well designed interface, the graphics are sharp and bright, and though you can only have one saved original City on the cart at one time (there are several that you can 'adopt' that are pre-made), you will find that having a city to nurture and grow that will fit in your pocket, backpack, or briefcase a very addicting thing.
For those of you that have been on another planet for the last twenty years and have never heard of Sim City, I will explain the basic game dynamic. Sim City allows you to be a central planner with almost unlimited power. You can be Donald Trump, Sam Walton, and Joseph Stalin all rolled into one.
If you want to grow a city from scratch, you choose from one of four barren sites, with nothing but bare land and some water, and lay down areas according to Zones. You determine if an area is to be light or heavy Residential, Commercial, or Industrial property. You do not actually build anything. The microscopic Sims, who begin to move in after you've made the area livable, do the actual construction. You determine where power plants, prisons, hospitals, seaports, and much more are geographically placed. You must take care of connecting roads, bridges, and power lines. The Sims will make their activity known, as you watch the areas change with new development. Right before your eyes you will see new hi-rises go up, new factories being built, planes fly overhead, and more.
You can choose to begin your city in one of four epochs, which are 1900, 1950, 2000, and 2050. Because of this, there are some restrictions on what you can build. You cannot, for instance, build a nuclear power plant in 1904. If you set up a game for a very long time, you will actually see architectural changes occur as the decades pass in your city.
However, being a true system simulation, there is much more to Sim City 2000 than this. There are numerous disasters that can befall areas of your city, riots can break out, and the Sims will make their displeasure known to you should the quality of life not be to their liking. You also have to manage your city's finances by issuing bonds, raising taxes, spending money on schools and police, and much more.
Sim City 2000 pushes the GBA hardware to the max. Once your city has attained some size, screen redraw time really slows down during editing. Zoning, Bulldozing, and other operations really put a load on the CPU, and you'll see the well known 'Please Wait...' message quite often. When you are zoomed in all the way, a working map is about 15 or so full sized GBA screens that you have to scroll around in. Since all of this area can have ongoing activity in real time, this game is one of the few that really gives the GBA a workout, so a bit of patience on the part of the player is required.
When all is said and done, this is a very good game for fans of the Sim genre of games. It really is amazing to see something like this on a pocket gaming console. Back in the day, I used to let my Amiga run overnight with the monitor turned off just to see how my city had evolved in the morning without any direction from me, and this version lets you do the same thing, only it's happening in your pocket and with many more gameplay elements.
The game supports a ton of options, the most important being that the speed of your city's evolution is changeable at any time. You can also limit and specify which disasters can strike or if there are any at all, you can automate finances (at least until things begin to break down), and you can define your starting parameters when starting up a new city to make the challenge harder. Report this review >>
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