Still, SimCopter was a game that looked toward the future, anticipating some of the key elements that will end up making The Sims one of the best selling titles of all time. What’s most relevant, designwise, is how Wright made the title open to the player’s experimentation, allowing everyone to play at their desired pace, without a game over screen, in keeping with the philosophy of Sim City. The emergency calls system laid on top doesn’t really feel as robust, probably because of the short development time required for Copter to be out of the door by the end of 1996. As far as the simulation part goes, the feeling of being in an helicopter is well rendered, apparently the work Wright did on the prototype paid off. Designing a city then flying around in it, aboard the steel vehicle or even walking around like one of the citizens, it was a unique feeling: designing something then seeing it live and “breathe”. While not really as relevant today, the possibility to play with imported maps from SC2000 was indeed revolutionary at the time.
#Simtown in dosbox simulator
The overall gameplay was based on an old flight simulator that Wright had to shelve because of poor marketability, given a new coat of paint and injecting the novel idea of flying around Sim City 2000 maps. Still, that doesn’t mean that their first 3D title, SimCopter, doesn’t feature a vast array of interesting design choices.ĭesigned by Will Wright, released by the tall end of 1996, SimCopter – as the name indeed suggests – puts the player into the cockpit of a police helicopter, tasked with resolving such diverse issues as traffic jams, fires, holdups, riots, overturned boats and UFO abductions. But, even before 1999, it was abudantly clear that Maxis wasn’t really comfortable in developing simulations in 3D.
It was, then, Will Wright’s turn to develop and release a title before the end of the year.Įlectronic Arts’ buyout would arrive to both save the day and SimCity 3000 from a pretty gruesome 3D death, by forcing the developers to keep the game strictly 2D. Sim Park and Sim Golf both came out in the same year and barely made an impression on the gaming public. By 1996 things were financially coming to a head, management ordered internal development to pump out as many titles as possible within the year. SimTown, in 1995, was developed internally as a simplified city building title but saw little to no success.
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Their later titles seemed all over the place, with SimTower first released in Japan by OpenBook then Maxis subsequently converting it for PC and consoles. Their line of “SIM” titles, ever since the beginning, didn’t appear to adhere to any particular overall philosophy.
#Simtown in dosbox software
After its resounding success, Maxis seemed to be struggling to find a market for the remainder of their software library. While the overall narrative on the importance of the release of SimCity 2000 might be a bit less impactful nowadays, it was a gamechanger, perhaps even more so than the original title.
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