I have been playing a lot of the DOS version of Simcity 2000 recently. I grew up with it on my windows 98 pc, so revisiting it was nice. There were a few thing I picked up on that I never realized when I was young.

1: The game, especially the soundtrack, reminds me of Blade Runner. It has the synthy jazz instrumentals that are melancholic, but also has that classic simcity cheer.

2: The game kind of has a dystopian feel to it, at least visually. The ground is brown, with only sparse trees filling the world, buildings are fairly realistic, with not many colors, outside of the luxury homes and the Arcos are very intimidating structures, like something out of Judge Dredd or, again, Blade Runner.

3: Omg, water sucks in this game xD.

Why does this game feel so moody, at least to me? It’s also intensly funny, and I will never not laugh when 1700 llamas die in a plane crash.

    •  Snot Flickerman   ( @SnotFlickerman@lemmy.blahaj.zone ) English
      17•8 months ago

      SimCopter has a very special place in my heart as possibly the prank that led to the formation of the Yes Men.

      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SimCopter#Easter_egg

      The game gained controversy when it was discovered that designer Jacques Servin inserted an Easter egg that generated shirtless men in Speedo trunks who hugged and kissed each other and appear in great numbers on certain dates, such as Friday the 13th. The egg was caught shortly after release and removed from future copies of the game. He cited his actions as a response to the intolerable working conditions he allegedly suffered at Maxis, particularly working 60-hour weeks and being denied time off. He also reported that he added the “studs”, as he called them, after a heterosexual programmer programmed “bimbo” female characters into the game, and that he wanted to highlight the “implicit heterosexuality” of many games.

      Based “Andy Bichlbaum.”

  •  chipt4   ( @chipt4@beehaw.org ) English
    5•8 months ago

    A bit off topic but certainly related, I just heard about this:

    https://community.simtropolis.com/forums/topic/762980-the-future-of-sc4-modding-the-matter-of-digital-vs-disc-and-windows-vs-macos-in-the-dll-era/

    Thanks to the efforts of those continuing simmaster07’s line of work, namely Null 45 and memo, these sorts of revolutions are about to become more commonplace, bringing with them everything from improved game stability on modern systems, to long-requested new features and quality-of-life (QoL) improvements. Null 45 has already released over a dozen DLL mods on the STEX since November, one of the most recent of which allows more Building Styles. While I can’t reveal too much at this point in time, I will note that DLL files will become important components of major SC4 mods in the very near future. Suffice to say, we’re entering a very exciting time in the SC4 modding community.

    Edit: the caveat being, these will only work on the digital release windows version of SC4

  •  ThatFembyWho   ( @ThatFembyWho@lemmy.blahaj.zone ) English
    3•8 months ago

    I think it’s hilarious that people are still using DOS in 2024!

    Sim City 2k was the first time I used Windows 95. One of the teachers in my sixth grade class had it on their computer, and they let us take turns playing it. It seemed really amazing to those of us who grew up with more primitive computers, like Apple IIs, even Macs, various x86 clones running DOS, or occasionally Windows 3.1.

    My first PC in 1998 even had Sim City 2k “Network Edition” pre-installed. Played the shit outta that game!