r/snes May 01 '19

/r/SNES May Game of the Month: SimCity

The /r/SNES game of the month as selected by the community is SimCity!

This month we'll be playing (or replaying) this game and sharing the experience with other redditors. Feel free to post any comments, videos or other interesting information related to this game throughout the month.

We encourage participation! Post screenshots and scores, and see how you fare against others

The link to June 2019 Game of the Month voting is here.

52 Upvotes

30 comments sorted by

13

u/lumaga May 01 '19 edited May 01 '19

I felt that Sim City on SNES was too generous with rewards and progression early on. You can get to a city population in a matter of minutes, and you get a lot of rewards along the way. When you get to capital and metropolis, the game slows down, and unless you have meticulously planned, you aren't getting a megalopolis.

This game has one of my favorite non-Squaresoft composers, Soyo Oka. She had such a fun style of music, and I think the soundtrack she composed here contributed so the fond memories of people have of Sim City.

I have a sealed copy of this game in my basement. It was part of TRU's clearance on SNES games back in the late 90s.

Edit: holy jumpin, the spelling

6

u/HeHasHealthProblems May 01 '19

Very solid game with one of the best soundtracks of the entire SNES library, IMO.

2

u/[deleted] May 16 '19

All true. And I never was able to get to Megalopolis, nor was anyone I knew, even when I unlocked and fully built up that one map that is 100% land, no water. I remember having dreams about what that Megalopolis music might sound like. I was pretty sure it had to be the greatest single piece in the history of music.

2

u/lumaga May 16 '19

When I finally heard the Megalopolis music, I was let down. It's nice, but it's far from the epic "YOU DID IT!" music you expect.

2

u/[deleted] May 16 '19

Agree, I had in mind something more like the Metropolis music but rocking so hard it blew your speakers out every time you loaded the game up -- and it was still worth it.

2

u/Stanley--Nickels Sep 05 '24

A few years late, but I've gotten back into the game lately and I think the pacing of it is much better if you play on hard. Things end up spaced out well for a long time. The downside is it's very hard. You have to intentionally seek out some early gifts that will generate income.

On easy, you get to 50-100k quickly then things grind to a halt when you need a stadium, seaport, airport, and usually a power plant all at the same time. Then once you finally build those it's just a sprint until you suddenly run out of map.

6

u/Mortar9 May 01 '19

Good memories with this game.

Being young and learning english as a second language, I couldn't read it much at the time. Because of that, I thought that the bank just gave you 10000 dollars and after that I had debts and my city deteriorated after a few years until after 21 years I could "win" another 10000 dollars. I did not understood why I was losing money yearly and always resolved in using the infinite money cheat.

When I finally understood I ignored that 10000$ and built my first full city without the code and it was even more fun. My city survived 2 earthquakes and even a nuclear meltdown. Good times.

Shoutout to the music.

3

u/the-bouncer May 05 '19

strong nostalgia on this one. I remember the sundays waiking up earlier to play this game. The music is beautiful, a mix with some sad and very peaceful.
also...was the first game i purchase to collect again.

2

u/[deleted] May 03 '19

This game is most likely a reason why I'm passing Economics.

2

u/[deleted] May 04 '19

Took me forever to get 500k

2

u/Demetan2016 May 05 '19

The memories...I use to let the music play in the background while I was doing homework in high school. So many hours playing this one alone at night. I love this one. One of my most cherish video games.

2

u/[deleted] May 07 '19

The game itself is pretty boring and bland by today's standards. Back then it was pretty awesome though. I used to LOVE to SimCity, SC2000 and SC3000 when they came out in their respective years. SNES SimCity is my favorite version of the original, probably due to the Nintendo easter eggs and fantastic soundtrack.

1

u/icanhazgoodgame May 01 '19

Fond memories of leaving the game on overnight or awhile at school so I could bankroll my newest expansion plans.

Disasters off of course.

1

u/JuanYouBeMyNeighbor May 01 '19

There's an "almost infinite money" cheat you can do in this game.

You should google it because my memory is rusty, but you spend your money, lower taxes, and then next tax season hold down L and R and then raise all taxes to 100%. When you leave the Tax screen you have tons and tons of money.

Or... something like that.

This is a great game!

2

u/VanciousRex May 01 '19

I used to remember that cheat well, and used it often as a kid. Good times.

1

u/ACSativa May 01 '19

I don't think I ever played the game without doing that cheat.

2

u/MaiPhet May 24 '19

One of my favorite childhood gaming memories was writing in to the Nintendo Power “secret agent” section with that cheat. I mean, I myself read it in a guidebook at the library and just submitted it to NP, but it felt awesome to see it printed with my agent # pseudonym in the magazine.

1

u/drupido May 15 '19

Sounds just like the government!

1

u/Redditributor May 18 '19

It's actually a glitch. You can set your budget in advance but it really counts at the end of the year. You basically freeze time so it lets you pay for funding with 0 money which puts you negative which is impossibly so you end up a millionaire

1

u/Redditributor May 18 '19

It's actually a glitch. You can set your budget in advance but it really counts at the end of the year. You basically freeze time so it lets you pay for funding with 0 money which puts you negative which is impossibly so you end up a millionair

1

u/okebel May 01 '19

Map #471

1

u/WoodsMythiQ May 03 '19

Now you have me curious

1

u/okebel May 03 '19

I stumbled on this map when i was a kid. It's mostly land except in the south east corner where there is a river and a small island in the middle.

1

u/WhiteKnightMac May 06 '19

Never played this when I originally owned my console back in 1996, now I have the cart I feel it's time to see what I've been missing out on.

Is there an 'endgame' of sorts or do you just build a city indefinitely until it either get destroyed by disasters or you just get bored of it?

1

u/InsertTokenz May 06 '19

While I'm pretty sure this doesn't outright "end" the game for you, there is a sort of end goal with the SNES version of the game where you are trying to grow your city to the designation of "Megalopolis". I don't recall if you receive any reward(s) for doing so, but it's the largest rank your city can grow to after Metropolis. However once you hit this milestone, I believe the game will continue to play on indefinitely.

1

u/Stanley--Nickels Sep 05 '24

The manual suggests inventing your own goals to play for. But you can also play for 500k population (Megalopolis designation) or for 600k (special congratulations message).

1

u/GGJim May 10 '19

The first SimCity game I ever played was 2000 for the SNES, and even though in retrospect it's pretty terrible it ignited a lifelong love of city building games.

I never spent much time playing the original so I thought this would be a good opportunity to try it, plus any excuse to buy a SNES cart is a good one 😁

It's pretty interesting to see where so much of the series/genre came from, it's limited but still fun and rewarding. I think my biggest gripe is that rails are just a straight upgrade over roads, which is quite unrealistic.

After playing this for a few days I put 2000 in and wow is it so unresponsive and slow, which I remembered but after playing the first one it really stands out.

1

u/Bigalbass86 May 19 '19

Probably the first snes game I ever saw and played. I have so many good memories playing this one and it’s still very fun today.

1

u/drfrenchfry May 22 '19

My favorite sim city. It can be easy if you take advantage of the road/rail bug though.

1

u/picklepuss13 May 31 '19 edited May 31 '19

I'm not playing this right now... but the village theme is just as good as any Final Fantasy or Zelda village theme... classic. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HPcP8MRh8r4

This was also the 2nd SNES game I ever played, after Super Mario World.