Welcome to the first article in a series that will take a look back at the last 10 years of City Simulation games. (Maxis did a pretty good job covering the previous 10 here). It's been an interesting decade, and the genre has taken huge leaps forwards, and arguably backwards,  in this span.

As we reach the end of this decade, and with a major new release in the genre having just been released, I thought it would be an appropriate time to take a look back at how the genre got where it is today.With each article I'll be featuring a different game, and hopefully a few words from someone in the City Simulation community sharing their thoughts on the game.

This time we're featuring Simcity 3000 Unlimited, and Wren Weburg, of SC3000.com and Maxis fame, has shared some of his memories on how Simcity 3000 has had an effect on his life.

I hope this series brings back good memories for all of you, and I encourage you to share your memories in the comments section.

In the Year 2000...

The year 2000 was a big year. A new millennium. It began without the feared widespread computer failures predicted due to the Y2K bug, and as the year went on it saw the release of Windows 2000, the publishing of the final ‘Peanuts’ comic strip, and the launch of the first resident crew of the International Space Station. It was also the year that Simcity 3000 Unlimited was released.

Simcity 3000 Unlimited (or ‘World Edition’,  ‘Deutschland’,  ‘UK Edition’, depending on where you live) was a re-release of Maxis’ 1999 title, Simcity 3000.The game was well recieved by critics, scoring an 8.5/10 from Gamespot.com.

The original game was quite different than its predecessor, SimCity 2000. Besides the obvious graphical facelift, the game also introduced many features that today we take for granted in a City Simulator. These features included farming, waste management, business and neighbor deals.

The game also introduced three zoning densities as opposed to SC2000's two, and the concept of advisors, land values, and landmarks. The game's terrain and in-game disasters were also more realistic and visually impressive.

Rounding out the new feature list was a live music soundtrack composed by Jerry Martin. The jazzy score was a pleasant contrast to SC2000's MIDI-based tunes. Maxis has since made the entire SC3000 soundtrack available for free download on their website.

Simcity 3000 Unlimited further improved the game and introduced new tilesets, scenarios, disasters, and a new version of the B.A.T.

Getting the Game

I was only 10 years old when the game was released, but prior to that I had been a huge fan of Simcity 2000 ( I would steal my Dad's laptop and keep him from getting any work done while I built cities.) Naturally, I was very excited when i saw SC3000 Unlimited on the shelves, but unfortunately the laptop couldn't handle the game's intense system requirements:

Simcity 3000 Unlimited System Requirements

166 Mhz or faster Pentium or K6 processor Microsoft Windows 95 or 98 32 MB RAM 450 MB hard drive space (plus space for saved games) 4x CD-ROM drive 16-bit high color Video Card w/ 2 MB Video Ram DirectX 7 compatible sound card Internet Connection (Recommended)

Seriously... who had 32MB of RAM? Ridiculous! And an internet connection? Clearly I would have to wait until my family bought a new computer, which fortunately happened relatively soon and I quickly picked up the game and started playing. I was hooked, and was soon hard at work building up cities and then destroying them with the awesome new disasters

Community Perspective: Wren Weburg

For this article, we invited Wren Weburg to share his personal SC3000 memories, and he has generously provided us with a great story below.

For those of you who are unfamiliar with Wren, you should know that he started some of the first successful fansites for the SimCity series, including sc3000.com and sc4ever.com, both of which are now a part of the Simtropolis network. Wren went on to work for Maxis, and was active in the development of The Sims and Simcity 4. The Sc4 building "Wren Apartments" is named after him. He maintains a personal website at weburg.com.

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" To say that SimCity 3000 changed my life might be stretching it, but looking back on ten years, I’d have to say it made it a little bit better at the very least. My own personal story echoes that of many other fans, some of whom I’ve been fortunate enough to meet, or at least correspond with online. There’s a real passion for the city building software Will Wright started back in 1989, and its successors have been successful attempts at improving upon the experience, each iteration attracting new fans and spurring new creativity. But I’d like to focus on a particular time, because for me and many others, it was a formative time, and what better way to have a formative time than to spend it, well, forming things. Like cities, and lasting relationships.

Going back to 1998, The Minnesota Vikings football team was blazing a path to the Super Bowl. The team was having a standout year, to be sure. Long, epic passes deep to our new receiver, Randy Moss, thrown by the quarterback who came back to the NFL after a stint laying bricks. And what Vikings fan could forget the momentous wins over their rivals, the Green Bay Packers. It was a magical season. Yet, when it really counted, in the last playoff game before they would be headed for the ultimate showdown, a field goal sailed away from the goal posts and it was all over in a second.

Fortunately for me, that loss was on the heels of a great adventure that would have a few parallels. Earlier in the year, I received a letter from Maxis, makers of SimCity, inviting me to play test SimCity 3000. For someone who spent the better part of his high school days anticipating and playing SimCity 2000, and later making building artwork for it and sharing it on the 1994 Internet, and then even more time setting up a site in anticipation of its sequel, it was an opportunity that seemed surreal. That November, I headed to California to play the highly anticipated game before it came out, along with a lucky few from the community who were chosen as well.

So ok, maybe luck didn’t have everything to do with it. After all, everyone was chosen for their professed interest in the game, communicated by electronic signals over the Internet straight into the Maxis offices. Some of us had fan sites. Some were just very active participants in the online game community surrounding the Maxis SimCity site. And all along, Maxis was listening, as they always have. Before the Internet it was through the mail: letters from fans, possibly with feedback attached. Now it was starting to get easier and more immediate.

But back to the story. I’m again reminded of the missed field goal by the Vikings, because following the play tests, I’d wonder if I gave Maxis the best feedback that I could. We were all sitting at a conference table and were each asked for our one silver bullet, the one feedback zinger we thought would make the game better. My response -- the best I could come up with?

“I think you should get rid of the underground pipes.”

It seemed innocent to me at the time, and honest in my view, although, I would periodically regret not thinking of something better. For a weighty, once-in-a-blue-moon experience, you might hope you could make an impact. At least I had my feedback about the behavior of the tornadoes in the game to be proud of, as a Midwesterner. It wasn’t a touchdown, in football terms, but tornadoes and touchdowns go hand in hand and so I resolved to leave it at that. Besides, as far as heading to the place where your favorite game is made, and seeing the work that goes into it, and being able to contribute in any way you can and chat with your fellow online mayors, it’s just hard to forget the experience and not come away with the sense that community is really valued, with all feedback heard and taken into consideration. And really, you were there, man! You played, you gave honest feedback, you got to eat free for a few days.

Now, being a full time employee at the company following a summer 2000 internship, I get to see the fans coming in for the latest events, particularly for The Sims, the follow-up franchise from Will Wright. It’s a real pleasure to see everyone enjoying the whole experience as I did, something that takes me back and makes me realize the community is as strong and as involved as ever.

Still, historically, I’ll toss it out there that the community surrounding SimCity was pioneering. It was the early days of the innocent, blossoming Internet. The world wide network itself had piqued the interest of many digital mayors because it was a medium to extend and share the experience with the far corners of the world. A medium to make it personal, make it known, make it better.

Now we’re closing in on 2010. The Vikings are having another breakout year, perhaps the most promising since 1998. Some of the players are a bit different, and some are old pros. I can’t help but think that maybe there is another player out there right now who is about to discover the joys of a great game and the community that surrounds it. Some things don’t change. "

10 Years Later...

10 years later, Simcity 3000 has more or less faded from relevance with the release of newer, more advanced City Simulation games. Still, it was an important step that introduced many new features to the genre. Unfortunately for some, these new features only further complicated an admittedly complex game. Longtime fans of the series were indeed pleased, but a trend of alienation of newer fans was beginning to make itself apparent. Later releases in the decade would seek to break this trend with varying degrees of success.

 

Up Next: Simcity 4

by Cheese89