SimCity™ 3000 Unlimited

Firstly, like others, I have a lot of nostalgia for Sim City 3000; particularly of playing it on my first PC during the halcyon summer of 1999. And like others, the inability to play it over the last few years due to compatibility issues have made the nostalgia all the more intense. Sadly, the game doesn't hold up. The most fundamental problem is that the cities don't feel very alive. Load up a map like London or Seoul and you'll see what I mean. A few cars trickle around here and there, there's the odd pedestrian wandering around; the cities feel more like a sleepy mid-western commuter towns than world cities. The buildings also repeat way too often. Look at the screenshots on this page and you'll see what I mean on both counts. Cities in SC4 feel truly alive with the day-night cycle and the intersecting transport networks filled with cars, monorails and elevated trains; a visual inspection alone was enough to tell you where the traffic issues were. People complain that SC4 is too difficult but the Rush Hour expansion addresses this and it's hard to go back to a game without its expansive transport options. There are also some irksome bugs; scrolling is way too fast - hopefully GOG will address this. There also seems to be a lot of missing buildings in the scenarios which leaves ugly gaps everywhere. On the plus side, the game runs well and the buildings and overall design are still charming. The music is outstanding and gets you in the mood to build. Watching neighbourhoods grow and develop is still a fundamentally enjoyable experience. Time seems to march on at African swallow speed these days and sadly it hasn't been kind to 3000. It was worth paying the few dollars to relive memories of getting up early during that summer to build my cities as the hours passed listening to tracks like Window Washer's Dream but if you're looking for a good city builder now, SC4 is the one that will truly make you feel like the mayor of a bustling metropolis.

I had this game many, many years ago on a burnt disk with SimCity 3K written on it. After many years of running the game the disc scratched and became unplayable. I check gog only to find that it had not had a copy yet and got lucky finding the Disc version at a used game store, but now that it does I will get it when my disc dies. But onto the game. The graphics aren't 3D, the Cities are simplistic, and I love it. Because they kept the game simple it can run on almost anything so it is silky smooth (though you might want to play with the graphics if you are running it on a monitor with a resolution grater than 640X480). The music is top notch with amazing City Building style to it. And when you do get board the disasters are always waiting to level your city. It is fun by all sense of the imagination, IMO its the same as 2000 but with a better UI, and way better than 4 since it doesn't use 3D and they very cool style of the game shines through. Its bright, colorful, sound fantastic, and worth every penny.

A game where you try to profit off of building cities while balancing the demands of your citizens. For someone who's not played before, it may be rough to start where some of what you need to do isn't obvious, like maximum distances away from roads, education, water, traffic, pollution, crime, etc. These things could result in going bankrupt quickly where there's little you can do. So I'd suggest referring to online tips to play the game properly. But once you get over the initial hurdle it becomes addictive in that you get a good sense of progression where you are expanding your city at an accelerating pace to the point where you have more money than you know what to do with. Then it becomes an open sandbox where you are free to use your imagination and try out some different city layouts without having to worry about money. There are still some annoying quirks. -Like the fact that power, garbage, and water buildings will eventually expire and demolish themselves and cannot just be auto-renewed. -No auto-saves, so the game could (and did) crash and you could lose progress. -Some kind of bug with water distribution, where if you get to a big enough city size, only water towers can supply water to the remaining parts of your city. -Sluggish controls at times.

The game is showing its age but it's still my favourite of the SimCity games thanks to its jazzy soundtrack and the fact it hits the sweet spot of not being too simplistic like the original SimCity but not as complex as SimCity 2000 (with respect to micromanaging industry tax rates) or SimCity 4 (with respect to the managing of multiple cities and the sheer number of options available). Recommended!

This is the single best SimCity game. The iteration that followed was worse. And the newest is pretty terrible. Some people claim that the SimCity games are impossible in the late-game but this one seems pretty doable at metropolis size and density. I've dropped several hundred hours in it.