I’m not sure why I didn’t broadcast this the minute I found out back in March, possibly because I was too busy pre-ordering SimCity via the Origin store, but I thought it’s my duty to spread the word of a fantastic, and magical come back.. SimCity.

SimCity was the game of my youth. It helped me get through business studies as a child, and basically did more educating in a single game play then school did in 5 years - not only did it make learning fun, you never actually knew you were learning!

I joined the party with SimCity 2000 (I actually got a Maxis box set, including SimCity 2000, Sim Tower and Sim Isles), back when it was a proper Maxis\Will Wright game. You could spend an entire evening hand crafting every square tile in your city, enjoying every minute of it without ever getting bored. Sandbox style games (games which simply don’t end) were new at the time, so the conventional game play faded away, as did my summers.

Shortly after SimCity 2000, Maxis was acquired by Electronic Arts, who kept the title alive, but the game was already shifting focus to ‘The Sims’, focusing more on social interaction then good old fashioned building (except SimCity 3000’s building editor, that was simply awesome). Eventually, SimCity got very ‘cartooney’.

Now I’ve seem some trailors for the new title, simply called ‘Sim City’ - and it looks amazing. The quality graphics that make a city look beautiful yet realistic are back, social interaction is still there - but it’s not the only focus.

Perhaps because some of the original Maxis team have come back to make this new title, I can’t wait to see what this becomes.

	Posted May 16, 2012
	Written by John Payne