SimCity IBM PC MS-DOS Maxis 1989 Original Version

SimCity Original Version IBM PC 1989

Maxis Software released the original version of SimCity for IBM PC MS-DOS 2.1 in February of 1989. Conceived and designed by Will Wright, SimCity is a real-time city-building simulator presented in 2D top-down perspective. The IBM PC version of SimCity was programmed by Daniel Goldman.

SimCity is the seminal city-builder computer game. SimCity influenced Caesar of 1992 and The Settlers of 1994.

In SimCity players build and manage cities as Mayor and City-planner. The viewport consists of an icon panel, drop-down menus and a tile-based drawspace representing the terrain (the land, the map). 

SimCity operates similarly to Paint Programs. In order to build something players click on an icon that represents the thing they want to build. The cursor then changes to a bounding box that adjusts to the size of that thing. Players then click on the terrain to place the thing, which then appears as a tile-graphic embedded in the terrain. Some tiles can be painted on the terrain, such as roads; that is, the player clicks the road icon, click-holds on the terrain and paints the roads on the terrain.

For example, the player clicks the Residential icon and places the Residential tile on the terrain. No houses can be seen on the tile because the tile has no power. Next, the player clicks the Power Plant icon and places the Power Plant tile on the terrain. Then, the player clicks the Power Lines icon and paints power lines from the Power Plant to the Residential tile, thereby granting the Residential tile power. As a result, houses can now be seen appearing on the tile, over time, in real-time (game-speed is tailorable).

Cities are populated by Simulated Citizens or "Sims", which are tax-payers. The player needs to manage Sim happiness by not over-taxing them and managing the likes of power, proximities, transport, crime and pollution. In addition, the player must deal with natural and man-made disasters that appear from time to time, such as fires, earthquakes and such-like.

City-building progress is tracked via graphs, budgets, a fiscal report and the sims evaluation. By considering such data players can pin-point problems with their city and plan the future development of their city.

On IBM PC the original SimCity displays in glorious 16-color EGA 640x350 and requires 640 kbytes of RAM and 256 kbytes of vRAM. In lo-res 320x200 mode SimCity requires 512 kbytes of RAM and 128 kbytes of vRAM.

SimCity also supports monochrome CGA 640x200, monochrome Hercules 720x348, 16-color Tandy 320x200 and 16-color EGA 320x200 128K vRAM and monochrome EGA 640x350 128K vRAM.

The SimCity display is technically notable because it is graphically detailed and the viewport scrolls in high fidelity. Also, some tiles are animated. In addition, SimCity features drop-down menus, pop-ups and an icon-driven interface.

Relative to its time release (1989) SimCity stands as one of the most advanced and influential computer games in history.

SimCity audio supports IBM Sound, Tandy Digital and Covox Sound Master. SimCity also supports PS/2 mouse and IBM/Tandy and Covox Sound Master joyticks.

SimCity was distributed on 1x 3.5" 720kB DD diskette or 2x 5.25" 360kB DD floppy disks and extracts and installs to hard disk drive via SimCity Installation Utility. The install size is 500 kbytes and consists of 15 files.

SimCity Manual: 55 pages.

SimCity Copy Protection Red Sheet: Enter name of city.

SimCity Terrain Editor IBM PC 1989

Maxis released SimCity Terrain Editor in 1989 for IBM PC MS-DOS. SimCity Terrain Editor allows players to randomly terraform terrain, paint their own maps and modify existing maps. SimCity Terrain Editor was distributed on 2x 3.5" 720kB DD diskettes or 4x 5.25" 360kB DD floppy disks and extracts and installs to hard disk drive via SimCity Graphics Install Program Set 1. The install size is 280 kbytes and consists of 6 files.

SimCity Graphics Set 1: Ancient Cities IBM PC 1990

SimCity Graphics Sets add alternate architecture graphics and icons to SimCity. In-game, they are accessed via System Menu - Load Graphics.

Maxis released SimCity Graphics Set 1: Ancient Cities in 1990. SimCity Graphics Set 1: Ancient Cities consists of Ancient Asia, Medieval Times and Wild West. SimCity Graphics Set 1: Ancient Cities was distributed on 2x 3.5" 720kB DD diskettes or 4x 5.25" 360kB DD floppy disks and extracts and installs to hard disk drive via SimCity Graphics Install Program Set 1. The install size becomes 980 kbytes and consists of 31 files.

SimCity Graphics Set 1: Future Cities IBM PC 1991

Maxis released SimCity Graphics Set 1: Future Cities in 1991. SimCity Graphics Set 2: Future Cities consists of Future USA, Future Europe and Moon Colony. SimCity Graphics Set 2: Future Cities was distributed on 2x 3.5" 720kB DD diskettes or 4x 5.25" 360kB DD floppy disks and extracts and installs to hard disk drive via SimCity Graphics Install Program Set 2. The install size becomes 1.4 megs and consists of 43 files.

SimCity 2000 IBM PC 1993 Maxis

Maxis Software released SimCity 2000 for IBM PC MS-DOS 3.3 and OS/2 in 1993. SimCity 2000 is a DOS/4GW Protected Mode Run-time (v1.95).

SimCity 2000 displays in 256-color square-pixel SVGA 640x480. SimCity 2000 was programmed by seven Maxis coders.

SimCity 2000 eschews the top-down perspective of 1989 SimCity in favor of an isometric perspective.

SimCity 2000 requires an i80386SX CPU, 4 megs of RAM and 512K vRAM. SimCity 2000 supports SimCity Classic savegames via conversion.

SimCity 2000 was distributed on 2x 3.5" 1.44MB HD diskettes and extracts and installs via Maxis installation program. The install size is 5.8 megs and consists of 124 files. The executable is 1 meg and the *.dat file is 2.5 megs; the rest is audio and video drivers.

SimCity 2000 music audio supports PC Speaker, AdLib, Sound Blaster, Sound Blaster 16, Roland Sound Canvas, Pro Audio Spectrum, Pro Audio Spectrum 16, MPU-401 General MIDI, Sound Blaster Pro 1-2, AdLib Gold, Wave Blaster, Aria Sound Synth, Roland MT-32 and Roland LAPC-1.

SimCity 2000 sound audio supports Sound Blaster, Sound Blaster Pro, Sound Blaster 16, Pro Audio Spectrum, AdLib Gold and Aria Sound Synth.

SimCity 2000 manual: 138 pages.

cf.

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