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Episode 673: SimCity 2000 (Patreon)

Published:
2025-02-21 08:00:07
Imported:
2026-06
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At the dawn of the '90s, Maxis had a certified hit on its hands with SimCity: a game that invented a genre, and saw ports to 25 different platforms. So a generation of newly elected mayors-for-life could only ask "What 'snext?" The Bay Area developer tried to expand the Sim brand beyond the context of urban development, but when none of their other releases caught fire, they realized it was time to take another stab at the lightning-in-a-bottle experience known as SimCity. On this episode, join Bob Mackey, Kevin Bunch, Chaim Gingold, and Phil Salvador as the crew reticulates some splines and tries desperately to save the populace from a menacing mechanical robo-spider.

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Comments

Craig

I have the Saturn version sitting on my shelf like an albatross. Perhaps it’s time.

Dave Dalrymple

I've always suspected that SimCity 2000 had a secret means of copy-protection. When I played the bootleg copy I borrowed from a friend, I would constantly have unexplained droughts, and people would move out for no ascertainable reason. But when I finally bought a new copy (as part of a ten-game bundle of other EA-published PC games) I never experienced those problems.

Mike

I played so much SimCity 2000 in the computer lab at school when I was a kid

Andrew O.

It's in my old age, (and acquisition of a Steam Deck), that I've turned from the multiplayer FPS grind to games of simulation, strategy, and similar ilk. Being able to watch TV and game at my own pace after working all day is far more enjoyable than dealing with sweats camping for their K/D ratio. One of my favorites is Project Highrise, a spiritual successor to Sim Tower, where you construct and manage a building. Also, it was great hearing Phil on an episode and hope he's on more.

B. Traven

This is an all-time great episode of Retronauts.

John Simon

I wish I could time travel to near pre-netscape IPO silicon valley - you could tell something BIG was going to happen but they're still in the early issues of Wired and "Information Superhighway". But, california has its own culture Re: SC2K - Nice that you mentioned statistical micro-simulations like "donuts eaten" for police stations or "cats rescued from trees" for fire stations. I remember the statue of the mayor having "pigeons nesting" stat, and when the game was playing awhile where you're at the point of the getting arcologies, the number of pigeons could climb into the 100's. Re: SimEarth, I never figured out how to really play this game. But I remember you could have a certain amount of resource points to adjust temprature or wind or amount of space dust hitting areas of the planet. The top level "effect" would be to bring down a Monolith like out of 2001, and cause dramatic jumps in evolution. I remember enabling a cheat mode that allowed infinite resources, and brought down a hundred Monoliths. The result was a civilization of cephalopods who'd invented nanotechnology. Unfortunately, because they weren't on land they didn't develop a space program, which would have taken them off the planet, which is the win condition of the game.

Wood Duck

You need to go deeper! (Into the hole of weird PC kids like me who played loooots of the miscellaneous Sim games through the late 90s!)

Wood Duck

The crowning finale to my history of playing Sim games as a kid (see above) was SimCopter and Streets of Sim City. Not only were those game boggling to behold to a 12 year old in terms of visuals running on pretty standard hardware, the eclectic music, audio and faux-radio adverts pushed on a lever in my brain at just the right angle similar to The Simpsons. I still maintain SimCopter is primevally the first 3D GTA-style game, or at least the one I'm aware of. It took a long time but eventually the bluegrass music seed that Streets of Sim City planted in my brain blossomed into a love of old country and bluegrass as well as learning actual instruments. Vale Mr Dix Bruce! And let me put on my serious-podcast-criticism hat here - It kills me when Retronauts discusses an aspect or element of a game that's interesting or integral (in this case "what is the actual deeper simulation within sim city? what is it tracking really?") but don't research any deeper to back it up! I understand there's a spectrum between "friends just shooting shit off the cuff on mic" and "six hour long, thoroughly academic documentary that took a year to assemble" and that Retronauts is somewhere in the middle but it slays me to hear interesting points touched on followed by "oh well!" when a five minute google search will turn up some great information on the subject! /endrant A good jumpoff point I found on reddit https://www.reddit.com/r/SimCity/comments/3f1l1j/are_there_any_sitesarticles_that_go_into/

Bob Mackey
>>165855951

We leave lingering questions in podcasts so our listeners have something to do when they're done listening

TeamVenom

I am angry. ANGRY ABOUT CITIES

El Pescado

The SNES SimCity remains my favorite version of SimCity to this day. I had tried SimCity2000 (on the PSX!) and couldn’t get my city off the ground at all. Maybe it’s the fault of the port? All I know is Nintendo needs to get SNES SimCity on NSO. C’mon people.