am now, there’s one title that might top the list.

SimCity: The City Simulator, developed by Maxis and published by Broderbund Software

on the second of February, 1989.

SimCity is an undisputed classic that had an immediate impact on the simulation genre

and the millions that played with it, myself obviously included.

More specifically, the one I first owned was SimCity Classic from 1993.

It was the first boxed retail game I ever received, my first taste of proper computer

software that wasn’t just a bite-sized shareware release or something that came packed in with

our Packard Bell 486.

And it thoroughly blew my seven year old mind.

Gazing into that little 13” VGA monitor and seeing the simulation take place in real

time was like an epiphany.

Here was an entire virtual world that let me play god, effectively.

More than anything else I had played to date, SimCity Classic provided an intoxicating sense

of control, paired with an unending urge to experiment with each feature to see what happens.

SimCity induced a mindset I’d never experienced before, a way of thinking that, through exploring

its symbiotic systems, revealed that the physical world around me was larger, more complex,

and more fragile than I realized.

As a kid I learned that my house resided inside something called a residential zone, that

my parents worked in commerce, that my hometown’s profits relied on industry, and that Godzilla

could attack at a moment’s notice with disasters enabled.

Okay, so SimCity was never completely realistic.

And that playful sensibility is a large reason so many folks enjoyed it back then

because, let’s be honest.

When you first pick up SimCity, you more than likely end up setting off random disasters

and bulldozing the world.

That being said though, the older I got, the more SimCity I played, and the deeper I dove

into what made the simulation tick?

That’s when I started to truly appreciate what SimCity was all about, and why the software

was developed in the first place.

It’s a pretty well-known story at this point, but the roots of SimCity begin with designer

Will Wright and his first commercially-released game, Raid on Bungeling Bay.

Distributed by Broderbund in 1984 for the Commodore 64, Bungeling Bay was a top-down

helicopter shooter with more complexity than many of its contemporaries.

Instead of simply shooting anything that moves, here the goal was to take down the Bungeling

Empire by way of defeating the very infrastructure that made their cities thrive.

Enemy units came from factories, factories relied on supplies, supplies came from ships

and vehicles, vehicles rely on canals and roadworks, and the empire’s technology improves

the longer you play.

The oft-repeated tale is that Will Wright found greater satisfaction in creating the

buildings and infrastructure than bombing everything after the fact, leading to him

programming an increasingly detailed level editor that eventually became SimCity.

However, it’s also pertinent to acknowledge the works of Jay W. Forrester, Christopher

Alexander, and Stanisław Lem if you’re seeking a more complete SimCity origin story.

Over the years, Wright has repeatedly listed Urban Dynamics, A Pattern Language, and

The Seventh Sally from The Cyberiad as direct inspiration for how his simulation games function.

Urban Dynamics describes the systemic structures responsible for urban development and subsequent

decay based on computer simulations in the late 1960s.

A Pattern Language lays out 253 interconnecting patterns in human behavior deemed by the authors

to be universal, with solutions on everything from laying out city streets to constructing buildings.

And The Seventh Sally is a science fiction short story about an engineer named Trurl

inventing a miniaturized world filled with artificial citizens for a wicked king to tyrannize,

much to the horror of his friend Klapaucius.

With each of these inspirations in mind, it seems inevitable that a game like SimCity

would result, although early on it wasn’t called SimCity at all.

The pre-release Commodore 64 iteration from 1985 was titled Micropolis, a fitting name

considering it was about managing a microcomputer metropolis.

It wouldn’t last though due to a potential naming conflict with the pre-existing company

Micropolis, a manufacturer of hard disks and other storage media.

But being a simulated city, SimCity was a suitable second choice.

And once Will Wright met Jeff Braun a year later and founded Maxis Software in 1987,

things really got rolling.

Braun had a multiplayer jet fighter simulation he was looking to publish, and Broderbund

was becoming interested in Wright’s city simulator, leading to a deal where they’d

publish both of them through Broderbund.

Braun’s flight sim launched first in 1988, a game called SkyChase, technically making

it Maxis’s first published game even though SimCity was originally created earlier.

Then in February of 1989, SimCity came out for the Apple Macintosh and Commodore Amiga

computer systems, with the popular IBM PC-compatible version launching later that year in October.

And it’s the MS-DOS version we’ll be admiring throughout the majority of this video, because

from my point view, SimCity defines the overall feeling of late 80s PC games.

A feeling comprised of 16-color EGA graphics, crunchy PC speaker sound, crude mouse support,

and a feeling of captivating confusion and awestruck bewilderment at what the heck is

actually happening on-screen.

Removing the outer sleeve of the 1989 IBM PC’s release reveals a tasteful black box

emblazoned with the original Maxis logo.

Following this is a richness of physical content, kicking off with a trio of double-density

floppy disks in both 3.5” and 5.25” forms.

You also get a product registration card addressed to the first Maxis office space, a cozy little

commercial lot in Lafayette, California.

Nowadays, it’s now the Stillpoint Center for Health, Well-Being & Renewal.

Personal renewal, I presume, and not the urban kind.

Next in the box you get two advertisements, one for the upcoming SimCity Terrain Editor

and another for the Covox Sound Master.

The latter of which was the only sound card that SimCity supported on the PC at that point,

one that is now exceedingly hard to find.

Then there are a couple of sheets going over some last-minute game updates, system requirements,

and installation stuff.

Along with a fold-out reference card going over things like simulation dynamics and its

copious keyboard shortcuts.

Then there’s the all-important copy protection sheet, printed in dark ink on a deep red cardstock.

This was to thwart duplication attempts using a standard copy machine, which would only

provide an illegible muddied image due to this color combo.

And lastly, there’s the SimCity instruction manual, a 55-page book detailing a fantastic

amount of information regarding each and every menu, feature, system, and subsystem in the game.

It even has a whole section on the history of cities and city planning authored by Cliff

Ellis, providing a brief summary on urban structure, the effects of industrialization

and the automobile, the importance of open spaces in urban environments, and so on.

And it wouldn’t be complete without a bibliography with recommended reading for children and

adults alike, a section that would become a staple in Maxis documentation from here onward.

Speaking of legacy, collecting SimCity releases

can quickly become an obsession if you’re not careful.

My own obsession began when I first noticed these two different covers for the game: the

original release with artwork displaying the monster disaster and later boxes using a tornado instead.

Apparently Godzilla’s owners, Toho, had some qualms about the unsanctioned usage of

a Godzilla-like monster on the packaging, and that’s why every subsequent release

featured the tornado disaster box art.

Well, unless you were outside the US, with many releases using a photograph of Sydney,

Australia overlaid with brightly-colored drawings and labels of urban redevelopment.

And that’s just scratching the surface, there are

dozens upon dozens of releases for tons of systems.

But yeah, let’s go back to the DOS version and see what the game is all about.

And the first order of business is to determine the graphics mode you’ll play in, because

it comes with a ton of ‘em.

Several monochrome modes, 16-color modes, and even a 256-color MCGA mode if you have

the right patch installed.

We’re gonna stick with the hi-res 16-color mode for this video though, which starts up

with three menu options placed onto a classic American green city limits sign.

You can start a new city, load an existing city, or tackle a premade scenario, and starting

a new one has you choosing your city’s name and difficulty.

The latter affects your starting capital, frequency of disasters, taxation tolerance,

maintenance costs and more.

And seriously, hard mode is no joke.

Barely any money, citizens are constantly on the verge of rioting, and natural disasters

strike incessantly, even simultaneously.

If you play hard mode and manage to avoid having a pile of flame-scorched rubble after

five minutes, then my hat’s off to you.

Maybe stop playing SimCity and go fix real life Detroit.

As for the rest of us, let’s begin with a nice relaxing easy mode city, which always

starts with selecting an initial map location for your city center, followed by placing

one of two types of power plants: coal or nuclear.

Then you’ll wanna start dropping down zones of commercial, residential, and industrial

types, each of which comes in fixed 3x3 cells to be placed along the unseen map grid.

And not unexpectedly, zones have to be powered in order to do anything, and in the original

SimCity this is accomplished by connecting them directly to power lines or up against

already-powered zones.

Transportation is also a requirement, with railways and roads

being the two transportation options on offer.

Each powered zone will generate traffic so long as it has at least one transportation

tile directly adjacent to it.

And yeah, that’s it for the necessities in the original SimCity.

Compared to later games in the series there’s a lot it doesn’t do, like forgoing water

pipes, not bothering with subways or buses, ignoring schools and garbage disposal, and

leaving zoning density up to the simulation to decide.

It doesn’t even have outside connections, city ordinances, or individual zoning tax rates.

Really, as long as you have a power plant with zones and roads attached, you’ve got

a city with growth potential.

And at its core, SimCity is all about that potential for growth, along with stagnation

or decay, while balancing the demands of commercial, residential, and industrial zones.

Half your time playing SimCity will be spent keeping a watchful eye on the indispensable

CRI indicator on the left-hand side of the screen, which presents a vague and slightly-delayed

idea of what’s in demand.

The other half of your time will be spent eyeing your financials, which by default pops

up every new year.

But it’s a good idea to open this budget panel more often than that since it dispenses

some invaluable info on how much money you’re bringing in versus how much is being spent.

It’s also where you adjust the citywide tax rate and the budgets for transportation,

police, and fire services.

Speaking of which, traffic, crime, and fire are easily the three

most common types of “disaster” in any given city.

Unless you’re playing on hard mode of course

but let’s pretend that didn’t happen. [fire and screaming in background]

Anyway