SimCity and SimCity 2000: How the City-Builder Began

The Strong National Museum of Play says few simulations have matched SimCity's popularity, influence or staying power. Will Wright's 1989 simulation turned urban planning into something people played for fun, and SimCity 2000 took the idea much further four years later. Here's how the city-builder got started and what the sequel changed.

A map editor that was more fun than the game

The Strong National Museum of Play traces SimCity back to Wright's earlier game, Raid on Bungeling Bay (1984). While building it, Wright found that playing with his map editor was as much fun as the game itself. He got interested in how cities grow and change, and in how planning shapes them. The Computer History Museum's profile says he started work on what became SimCity in 1985.

According to the Strong, Wright built the simulation after reading heavily on how cities work and on system dynamics, including Jay W. Forrester's 1969 book Urban Dynamics. Its programming echoed cellular-automata programs like John Conway's Game of Life, where each unit affects the ones connected to it. Wright often called the result a toy rather than a game.

SimCity (1989)

The idea was simple. You build a city and respond to its changing needs, and those needs shift based on your decisions. There's no set goal. The Strong quotes Wright: "Instead of telling the player how to win or lose, we left it up to the player to decide what the desirable outcome was."

A few key facts about the original:

• It was developed by Maxis, which Wright co-founded with Jeff Braun, and distributed by Brøderbund. The Computer History Museum dates Maxis to 1987 and SimCity to 1989.
• Computer Gaming World named it its game of the year for 1989.
• The Strong says it was still the best-selling computer game of the year in 1991, and that it later found a big audience on the Super Nintendo (the Super Famicom in Japan).
• It had a sense of humor, including a giant monster that could wreck your town.

The Strong argues SimCity's biggest impact was widening who played video games. When many people thought of games as arcade shooters or console platformers, SimCity drew older players looking for something thoughtful on their new home computers. The museum also notes a 2019 Los Angeles Times story about real-life city planners who grew up playing it.

How a genre grew from it

SimCity didn't just get sequels. Maxis followed it with other Sim games, including SimEarth (1990) and SimAnt (1991), both co-designed by Wright according to the Computer History Museum, and later The Sims (February 2000). The Strong says the many city-building games from other companies descend largely from SimCity, and that its nonstop, real-time play influenced real-time strategy games of the 1990s such as Command & Conquer and Age of Empires.

SimCity 2000 (1993)

SimCity 2000 was designed by Fred Haslam and Will Wright. The Centre for Computing History dates its Macintosh release to 1993, and Computer Gaming World's review in February 1994 listed the IBM PC version for early 1994. CGW's September 1993 trade-show report had already previewed it as a more advanced take on SimCity, with non-rectangular zoning, different types of roads, and elevation.

The Centre for Computing History notes the switch from the original's top-down map to an isometric (angled) view. The review, by CGW editor Johnny L. Wilson, describes more of what was new:

• Real terrain. Hills and multiple elevation levels, built-in terrain editing tools, and a map generator that CGW said used "reticulating splines" to give hillsides believable shapes.
• An underground layer for water pipes and subways, so you could plan utilities without cluttering the surface.
• More ways to get around. Diagonal roads, freeways with on-ramps, subways and buses, plus roads you could run to the map edge to connect with neighboring cities.
• Smaller zones and more choice. Smaller zones made neighborhoods look more realistic, and you could zone light or heavy industrial, commercial and residential areas.
• More city services. Schools could shape which industries would dominate later. Hospitals raised life expectancy. Spending programs targeted specific problems, such as attracting business or cutting crime through anti-drug education. You could also send police and firefighters straight to trouble spots.
• Your start year mattered. Starting in 1900 limited you to coal, hydroelectric and oil power, while later starts unlocked more options. Arcologies, which the review describes as self-sustaining cities inside one enclosing structure, appeared in 2000. Microwave and fusion power arrived in 2050.
• Tougher difficulty settings. On Easy you started with $20,000, on Medium $10,000, and on Hard $10,000 in debt from a municipal bond. Residents could also push back (NIMBY, or "Not In My Backyard") if you put a prison near expensive housing.

The game came with new disaster scenarios too. One was the Oakland Hills Fire, which CGW notes even marks the former home of Will Wright that burned in the real fire.

The review wasn't all praise. It noted some quirks fans of the original would run into. Freeways needed a road crossing at a right angle for on-ramps to work. Bridges couldn't curve. Custom signposts could block your view of a dense city.

Playing it today

GOG sells SimCity 2000 Special Edition, a 1995 edition (GOG lists Electronic Arts as the current publisher) that runs through DOSBox. GOG's description mentions the underground layer, bonus cities and scenarios, and tools for customizing buildings or designing your own graphics sets. Its extras include the manual and an urban renewal kit.

New to the classic? Try a hypothetical first city: start in 1950 on Easy, lay a small grid of mixed zones near a power plant, and check the underground view before your first water crisis instead of after.

What came next

The Computer History Museum's profile lists SimCity 3000 (1999) and SimCity 4 (January 2003) among the later entries, while Wright moved on to The Sims. Wright's original idea, letting players decide for themselves what a good city looks like, still runs through the genre SimCity helped start.