Walcoom do ZimShitty, you want shitty beef hor shitty chicken?

Sorry, couldn't help the South Park reference. So this is the original SimCity! I remember playing the Windows 3.1 version over 20 years ago and ehhhhhh... I see the greatness of it for the time, but the original clearly hasn't aged well. Lemme break it down: You start by naming your city and choosing difficulty, difficulty affects how much money you start with, then build power plant followed by power lines, roads, resident blocks, commercial blocks, and industrial blocks. After that, repeat (with the exception of the power plant unless it blows up).

"Two goals to this game: Build block thing, repeat. EXCITING!!!"
-Mad Wolf

As the game progresses, sure you gotta add new things like parks police and fire departments, airports, seaports, train tracks, etc etc. But it just becomes block after block of the same stuff over and over on this flat map with no simulated terrain short of land and water. As the year advances (without a single nightfall) you get to see your budget, see how the people feel about their mayor that never is kicked out of office (you) and how to alter funds. Do you raise or lower taxes? Give or take away funding to the local PD/FD? Whatever you do, don't screw with traffic funds... In those famous words from SimCity 2000, "You'll regret this!" and roads will just... Stop being roads (May even blow up). But if you really get bored in this, what's fun is unleashing giant lizards to your city, creating fires and floods, and ultimately taking those ungrateful Sim bastards back to the Stone Age by bulldozing the Nuclear Power Plant.... Muahahahahahahaha...

"Yeah! Suck on that, SimAsshole! That's what you get for making SimArktikVixen cry, you douche! Burn in Hell!"
-Mad Wolf

And once you built your city spreading across the map, not really anything to do other than destroying it all to build it all again, or just starting a new game... Which is pretty much the same thing! Now, that said, SimCity really did offer something new... Games typically didn't have Create modes back then and we were ultimately left to the mercy of whoever designed game levels for companies. SimCity really opened the door to the player's own world of creativity without having to build a whole game from scratch. The idea of building your own stuff and managing it as well became such a hit we wound up getting SimAnt, SimEarth, SimTower, sequels to SimCity, and even the whole line of life simulations called The Sims!

But looking back is it really that great of a game? Well... I feel bad as this was Wright's big successful step into game designing spotlight but it doesn't really offer much with diversity like we get in it's sequel (SimCity 2000) nor does it really offer much challenge besides shortage of money and occasional disasters. But I do ackowledge the significance behind SimCity and the creative doors it opened. SimCity gets 3 out of 5 pseudo-Lego SimStuff.