SimCity

These days Maxis and Will Wright are probably most famous for The Sims. However 11 years before The Sims came SimCity. There have been many Sim games such as SimAnt or SimTower but until The Sims, SimCity was always the main one. I don't remember quite when I first started playing SimCity but I know I was playing SimCity 2000 (the first sequel) so it must have been somewhere around 1993-1995. I really enjoyed it and put a lot of time into it. When Simcity 3000 was released in 1999 I was in my first year at university and had far less free time. I remember playing it but nowhere near as much as 2000. All I really remember now was being disappointed that Arcologies were no longer in the game. In 2003 when Simcity 4 arrived I jumped right on it, I put quite a lot of time in to this one as well. Although probably not as much as SimCity 2000. In the last 9 years there has been no new SimCity and as I've mentioned before on this blog, unfortunately SimCity 4 has not aged well. Technically in 2007 there was SimCity Societies, however this was not developed by Maxis, was over simplified, got poor reviews and I've not played it. So that doesn't count. Now finally "SimCity is coming home to Maxis" says EA. Coming in 2013 will be an all new SimCity. They've decided to just call it SimCity, not SimCity 5. Does this signify a reboot and going back to the game's roots or is it ignoring the past and pretending it doesn't exist? For now I'm optimistic, they're saying all the right things such as "This is a PC only game" and "This isn't an attempt to update the game for the console generation". Also the announcement trailer looks great, even if it's not actually gameplay footage.