Back when I was a teenager and on computers #1 through 3, I became obsessed with SimCity, SimEarth and sundry other SimUlations. I remember them as engrossing games that pleased my mother. For a change, no one died. The Sim games also had this highly subversive educational element, but the teaching never got in the way of the urban planning fun.
The latest installment in the SimX line is SimCity Societies (found via Marketing Green), which looks pretty extraordinary. From the game’s website:
Featuring an all-new, revolutionary feature set, SimCity Societies allows you to create your own kinds of cities and shape their cultures and environments. Make your cities green or polluted, contemporary or futuristic, rural or urban. Create an artistic society or a police state, an industrial city or a spiritual communityâ€â€or any society you want!
Whew, the language on that site could use an overhaul. I’m pretty sure that most SimCity players don’t think in terms of ‘feature sets’.
Be sure to check out the producer’s walkthrough video–it offers a glimpse of how layered this game seems to be. The thumbnail shows a screenshot of the game, with an inset from the original SimCity (courtesy of Wikipedia) for the Atari ST.
DarrenBarefoot.com 
I’ve never been a gamer, but as a web analyst, I value the gaming community, as it is on the cutting edge of interactive tech and user community formation.
Now I want to try something, a Virtual World scenario, like Second Life, as a venue for sharing and maybe even selling my original music.
I want a simulated online environs for staging techno music live performances, and to run a theatre of videos that members can view anytime, along with mp3s to download to CD burning or iPod.
Any suggestions for a totally clueless noob?
My recent techno cheesey music videos on YouTube, here:
http://tinyurl.com/2xnwf9
Vaspers: I’m no expert in virtual worlds, but I know people put on concerts (and show movies) in Second Life. As it’s the most versatile and popular virtual world at the moment, that’s where I’d start.
I must not buy the new Sim game. I’m not generally a gamer (I fit into the perfect Mario-focused Wii casual gamer demographic), but the old SimCity games sucked up waaaay too much of my time in the ’80s and ’90s, and now that all my old copies will only run in emulation, I don’t touch them. Which is a good thing.
At one point, we used to leave the original SimCity running in auto mode on my roommate’s old Mac Plus (black and white!) overnight, because of course it was so slow that’s what it look for anything interesting to happen.
I spent a lot of time with SimCity 2000 on my Mac Centris in the mid-’90s too. I still think that version, the first with a 3D perspective, was the apex of simplicity-vs.-sophistication in the series. SimCity 3000 was a disappointment by comparison (especially because of the weird and slow not-any-particular-operating-system interface). The Cure-derived music from SC2000 runs in my head occasionally.
And when my wife and I pass by a particularly anonymous block-like building (like, say, the Vancouver Police HQ just off Cambie), we’re still prone to making the “brrrrbt!” bulldozer construction sound from that game. Obvious power lines prompt the “bzzzzt!” of building those too.
Oh yes, we are a geeky couple, suited for one another.
I will never love another Sim game as much as I love the truly original Sim City.
Best game ever. The original was a work of art. In my opinion, the game deterioriated with each new version.
While the SimCity games were fun, my all time favorite is SimAnt. Being able to control hordes of black ants as they swarm the opposing colony is always fun =D.