Does anyone remember SimEarth?

[Jobu]

I enjoyed the hell out of that game. I've been watching Cosmos this week (recently released on Hulu) and I got the hankering to play something like it again. Do games like that even exist anymore? Everything I've read suggests Spore really isn't a suitable replacement.

I remember terraforming Mars, making sentient dolphins take over the world, created steamy jungle planets full of bugs then nuking them all with comets. I miss a lot of those old Maxis science-as-a-toy style games.

[Yegolev]

I remember this on SNES.  You probably mean a PC version?  It seems to have not been popular enough to have a remake of any sort.  You'll be running this on DOSBox.

[kaid]

I played sim earth a bit I mainly would just make weird looking landmasses then set the continental drift up and then watch the continents bounce around the planet like bumper cars

[schild]

SimEarth was so much better than Spore it's not even right to say they came from the same person/think tank.

I really hope he goes back to that sort of macro sandbox versus what he's doing now with The Sims and Spore.

My favorite of the Sim games was actually SimTower and I froth at the idea of making one of them myself.

[Trippy]

Gee, schild's favorite Sim is the Japanese game. Why am I not surprised?

[schild]

Gee, schild's favorite Sim is the Japanese game. Why am I not surprised?

You think I knew who Yoot Saito was when that came out? I didn't even find out until I got ahold of Yoot Tower, the sequel.

Not because it was Japanese, but because it was the best one. Just like Demon's Souls is the best dungeon crawler ever made. Being Japanese is purely coincidence.

[Reg]

SimEarth was an amazing game. I found a copy on an abandonware site a couple of years ago and fired it up again. Unfortunately, the graphics were just so dated that I found it unplayable.

I'd love to see a modern remake though.

[Jobu]

SimEarth was an amazing game. I found a copy on an abandonware site a couple of years ago and fired it up again. Unfortunately, the graphics were just so dated that I found it unplayable.

I'd love to see a modern remake though.

Yeah, this is kind of what I'm getting at. I could find it somewhere and play it on an old Dos emulator I guess, but the graphics would kill it. I want a semi-modern, spiritual successor. 

[Segoris]

SimEarth was an amazing game. I found a copy on an abandonware site a couple of years ago and fired it up again. Unfortunately, the graphics were just so dated that I found it unplayable.

I'd love to see a modern remake though.

Yeah, this is kind of what I'm getting at. I could find it somewhere and play it on an old Dos emulator I guess, but the graphics would kill it. I want a semi-modern, spiritual successor. 

That would be nice, along with one for SimTower and SimFarm as well Ahh...the fond memories of crop dusting virtual mutated edited crops with that old crop editor.

[UnSub]

SimEarth was okay, but I could never get Gaia to any point than "I'm sad" or whatever the unhappy face was.

Watched a friend finish SimAnt. That was enough for me on that title.

SimTower was fun. It's the kind of game I'd expect to see appear in a browser game, if it hasn't already.

Never got into SimCity on the Amiga, but liked the later 3D remake. The first remake, not the ones that really sucked.

[WindupAtheist]

SimAnt

STOP MOWING THE FUCKING LAWN ALREADY!

[FatuousTwat]

SimTower was the best, and I'm not a Japanese fanboy. I loved the cheat that made your lobby 3 stories and all fancy-like.

[nurtsi]

STOP MOWING THE FUCKING LAWN ALREADY!

SimAnt was awesome. I still get this warm feeling inside me when I think of my black ants raiding the red nest and stealing their babies.

[Yoru]

A lot of the early Sim games were awesome and are unmatched in scope/depth these past few years, but they weren't huge hits when they came out. SimCity's the only early Maxis game that really broke out.

A new SimEarth-alike would be a real wonder though. I'd also like to get my hands on SimMars, which Maxis cut to finish The Sims.

[Mrbloodworth]

SimFarm, bitches. 


(Found where you can download all of them. I think.)

[Sky]

The sad thing is, the original idea was for Spore to be a science-based sandbox, and incorporate aspects of all those games.

WW got EA'd. Focus turned to social networking, the corporate stroke phrase, and away from all the cool stuff WW wanted to do when he was in the early stages. And the game parts shoehorned in pretty much ruined the game imo. Just look at the first (real) expansion, Space Captain = more game, less science. In america, we don't take kindly to science!

[Yoru]

Spore:Space Captain makes baby Bill Nye cry.

[Nebu]

Sim earth never did much for me.  I loved sim city and played it like crazy, but played Populous a lot more than Sim Earth.  By the time I got sick of Populous, Civilization and Railroad Tycoon came out and ate up all my free time.  I bought Sim Earth, but it never got more than an hour or two from me.

[fuser]

Tower was awesome and spent a lot of time tweeking the elevator runs, once Transport Tycoon Deluxe came out it got shelved.

Who else bought SimCopter just for the city import feature?

[raydeen]

Sim earth never did much for me.  I loved sim city and played it like crazy, but played Populous a lot more than Sim Earth.  By the time I got sick of Populous, Civilization and Railroad Tycoon came out and ate up all my free time.  I bought Sim Earth, but it never got more than an hour or two from me.

Populous was probably my first 'sim'. Got it on the Genesis and played the shit out of it. Loved Populous II as well on the PC. Never could get into the regular Sim games. Too complicated for me. I did like Sim Tower though but failed miserably at it.

[naum]

The sad thing is, the original idea was for Spore to be a science-based sandbox, and incorporate aspects of all those games.

WW got EA'd. Focus turned to social networking, the corporate stroke phrase, and away from all the cool stuff WW wanted to do when he was in the early stages. And the game parts shoehorned in pretty much ruined the game imo. Just look at the first (real) expansion, Space Captain = more game, less science. In america, we don't take kindly to science!

Spore was really disappointing… …was expecting a lot more…  …wasn't awful, it just didn't live up to the hype, played it for a few weeks, got bored, moved on…

…in total contrast to SimCity, SimCity 2K…

…but then I've thought all WW successive projects were not very captivating… …Sims got deleted off my HD very quickly as I was not able to ascertain how it was any different than little girls playing with barbie dolls, SimGolf got a little play, but all the other Sim* knockoffs were lame…

[schild]

That's a lot of ellipses.

[UnSub]

Powermonger (Amiga) is the "god game" I was most disappointed in not being able to finish. One island was always guaranteed death, so I gave up.

But I loved roaming the countryside, killing sheep for food and watching the angels fly up to heaven during a battle from all those who died. Plus: conquering towns.

[stray]

i have sim earth and powermonger on my mac right now  among other things. i have no shame, but there's a juicy torrent (actually a 4 volumes) of old games for the mac, geared through cider to work correctly.

[Xanthippe]

Sim earth never did much for me.  I loved sim city and played it like crazy, but played Populous a lot more than Sim Earth.  By the time I got sick of Populous, Civilization and Railroad Tycoon came out and ate up all my free time.  I bought Sim Earth, but it never got more than an hour or two from me.

Populous was probably my first 'sim'. Got it on the Genesis and played the shit out of it. Loved Populous II as well on the PC. Never could get into the regular Sim games. Too complicated for me. I did like Sim Tower though but failed miserably at it.

Populous  - I loved that game.  The first one, not the subsequent ones.  I'd play it again.

SimEarth was awesome but like many sim-games, it would eventually crash my computer after it ran long enough.  (The Sims will crash too, eventually - and I've had several computers with sim-games on them).  I would so love a SimEarth that was stable.

SimFarm was fun but really really crashy.  SimAnt - I bought it for the novelty value.

I probably still have these games in my basement, which also contains an original IBM-PC,  a Sega Genesis somewhere, and various other crap.  I have trouble parting with games even if I lack the capability to play them (like a disk drive).

[Numtini]

SimEarth was actually the first computer game I ever bought back when I got my first Mac. It was a great game and hopefully it was somewhat accurate because I think I learned a lot from it.

Also love SimCity. Is there a current version? Does it suck?

Never tried the others.

[Reg]

The latest is SimCity 4 with the Rush Hour expansion. I think it's two or three years old at this point. I was disappointed in it when I first got it because it was the first Maxis game I'd ever bought that didn't play flawlessly right out of the box.  Since then it's been patched and has the expansion and it runs just fine - especially if you have a reasonably up to date computer and graphics card. When I first bought it it ran horribly slowly on my crappy PC.

It's a good game. It does all the things I expect a Simcity game to do.

[Jobu]

I found SimCity 4 to be a little lacking in terms of it's scale. What would previously be one gigantic map in SimCity 3, is now carved into suburbs that is each it's own map. So you work on a smaller scale than before, but you can connect all your cities in a kind of rural community pretty well. So instead of having one giant NYC map, you have Brooklyn, the Bronx, Queens, Manhattan, and Staten Island as seperate maps that understand what is happening in the other ones. So your Brooklyn map can be mostly suburbs and housing, while your Manhattan map is the big metropolis that they drive to. I still think it's fun, but you have to plan ahead a little more to get some really big cities going that way. It's gotta be, what, $15 these days? That's worth it.

[Reg]

I kind of liked dividing the city up into multiple maps. It lets you buy and sell things like power, water and garbage services between cities so you could keep the nasty polluting stuff out of your main town and have it all concentrated in a dirty little suburb.

[Ingmar]

The actual most recent SimCity game, sort of, is SimCity Societies, which is really not in the same vein at all. It has more in common with a Tilted Mill type citybuilder than any of the SimCities (but without the depth that the better ones of those have). I would rate it as pretty 'meh' but I did like being able to build an Orwellian dystopia with giant monitors around telling the drones what to do and re-education centers and such.

[Numtini]

15 for simcity and 20 for the simcity box that includes simcity and Societies.

[Reg]

Make sure whatever box you get includes the Rush Hour expansion. It added a lot of interesting transportation stuff.

[Xanthippe]

Are there any other decent god games out?  I've been slacking on keeping up the last few years.  (Btw, I hated Black & White - loved the concept, hated the implementation).

[Xanthippe]

The actual most recent SimCity game, sort of, is SimCity Societies, which is really not in the same vein at all. It has more in common with a Tilted Mill type citybuilder than any of the SimCities (but without the depth that the better ones of those have). I would rate it as pretty 'meh' but I did like being able to build an Orwellian dystopia with giant monitors around telling the drones what to do and re-education centers and such.

It's made by Tilted Mill, isn't it?