| 1 | [[quoteright:350:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/Southland-Jan__20_781232735690_350x263_9724.jpg]] |
| 2 | [[caption-width-right:350:[[SceneryPorn Downtown]], [[WaxingLyrical there's no finer place for sure!]][[note]]A highly developed high-density area in a city in ''[=SimCity=] 4''.[[/note]]]] |
| 3 | |
| 4 | ->''"Is it time -- to be Mayor?"'' |
| 5 | |
| 6 | A SimulationGame released in 1989, and the first ''Sim'' game "created" by Creator/WillWright (actually a team of developers, most notably Don Hopkins, who go largely uncredited). It's been around for a while: the original was widely released, it could be played on first-generation Platform/{{Apple Macintosh}}es (i.e. the ones with black-and-white screens) and popular 8-bit microcomputers (the Platform/ZXSpectrum, the Platform/AmstradCPC, the Platform/{{Commodore64}}), as well as a console version released as a launch title for the Platform/SuperNintendo, which was developed by Creator/{{Nintendo}} themselves. |
| 7 | |
| 8 | You are the mayor of a city which is inhabited by Sims. You build the roads and infrastructure (power plants and other utilities, schools, etc.), you allocate the zones where your Sims will live and work, and the Sims decide where they want to live and what they want to do and (depending on tax policies) how many Simoleons they will pay you. You will need that money to maintain and increase the infrastructure. Natural disasters also happen on occasion, and you can even cause them on purpose. |
| 9 | |
| 10 | Eventually, ''[=SimCity=]'' proved to be so successful, it managed to spawn five sequels over eighteen years: |
| 11 | * ''[=SimCity=] 2000'' (1993) was the first major extension, replacing the 2D top-view with faux-3D isometric graphics, and introducing most of the features of later games: water pipelines, underground rail, highways, healthcare, education, rewards, a wider assortment of power plants and a separate building editor, the SCURK ([=SimCity=] Urban Renewal Kit). Interestingly UK PC Gamer magazine still ranks this as the best [=SimCity=] despite its age. It is widely remembered as a port overdosed title, even though not a single console from Super NES to Nintendo 64 was capable of running that game without collapsing. This game was also a starting point for several other ''Sim'' spinoffs, at least in as far as two of them - ''[=SimCopter=]'' and ''Streets of [=SimCity=]'' - loaded ''[=SC2000=]'' maps and rendered them in full-3D, making ''2000'' an ersatz LevelEditor for them. |
| 12 | * ''[=SimCity=] 3000'' (1999) was mostly a graphical and feature update. Originally it was going to be in full 3D, but the technical limitations of then-current hardware led Maxis to revert to 2D graphics. The graphics stayed isometric but were promoted to high-definition, new variables were added including fire hazard, approval rating, water and garbage pollution, neighbor deals ([[AdamSmithHatesYourGuts which were quite unfair]]), and support for bigger cities that could reach the million inhabitants with a bit of luck. (It also eliminated hydroelectric power plants that lasted forever, so you could no longer leave your city running overnight and come back to a prospering metropolis with a million Simoleons in the bank; this was counterbalanced by a much more forgiving revenue system that made it much easier to maintain power plants) A later expansion, called ''Unlimited / World Edition / UK Edition'', added a scenario editor, a building editor, as well as Oriental and European building sets. This was [[VideoGameRemake remade]] as ''[=SimCity=] DS''[[note]]some people however argue that [=SimCity=] DS is just [=SimCity=] 2000 with 3000's skin slapped on and some minigames thrown in- the game suffered the same loading times and scrolling issues that plagued the console ports of [=SimCity=] 2000[[/note]] and also for [=iOS=] under the title ''[=SimCity Deluxe=]''. |
| 13 | * ''[=SimCity=] 4'' (2003) was the second major extension; the buildings are rendered in 3D with high resolution, trimetric bitmaps, but the terrain was now a full 3D mesh, and the assortment of civic buildings was expanded (the schools, for example, were split into elementary schools, high schools and private schools), a maintenance cost was added for all the utility buildings, and the game was designed to allow for third-party mods. However, the greatest new feature was the regional gameplay: instead of playing with isolated cities, you could now play with an entire region divided in cities, you could get all your services from another city at a fair price, your Sims could live in your city but work somewhere else, and the demand in your neighboring cities would affect your own demand. A later expansion, called ''Rush Hour'', added more transportation options, such as ground highways, monorail, elevated rail, one-way streets, toll booths, and there are also many third-party mods, such as the Network Addon Mod, which adds more rail systems, elevated roads, and more traffic crossings. Aside from the in-depth city management options, the player also had the option to design the region from scratch. This extended to the possibility of using real-life satellite imaging to add real world regions in game. The .sc4 files used as save files for city layouts in this game would also be used in ''VideoGame/TheSims2'' for neighbourhood layouts, so this game could be used as an effective LevelEditor for that game. So far, due to its many, many hidden depths and vast modding community, this game is considered the best of the series. |
| 14 | * ''[=SimCity=] Societies'' (2007) was completely different from the previous games. Instead of laying out your zones, placing your infrastructure and seeing your city developing, you would place a building that generates a certain "societal value", which can be Productivity, Prosperity, Creativity, Spirituality, Authority, and Knowledge. These societal values were used to affect the look and functioning of your city: a lot of Authority, for example, would turn your city into a [[PeoplesRepublicOfTyranny Stalinist capital]], with [[SinisterSurveillance security cameras]], [[IndustrialGhetto slum housing for the poor]], posh buildings for your leaders, and SecretPolice, while a lot of Productivity and Prosperity would turn your city into a New York-esque metropolis filled with skyscrapers and high-rise condos. The entire societal value system, as well as its long-promised full 3D graphics, greatly hyped up its pre-release value; however, the community found it [[ItsEasySoItSucks disappointingly easy]] and shallow, and the 3D engine was prone to grinding even hulking great [=PCs=] to a halt at higher zoom levels. |
| 15 | * ''[=SimCity=] Creator'' (2008) is a standard [=SimCity=] game that offers a wide selection of architecture themes such as Egyptian, Roman, Japanese, European, Las Vegas, near-future, and even fantasy themes that result in crystal-style or confectionery-style cities. The game was exclusively released on the Nintendo Wii and DS. It's notable for being the first game in the series to allow curved roads, as well as for having advisors[[note]]who consisted primarily of characters from ''{{VideoGame/MySims}}'' alongside other characters designed in the same style[[/note]] who could actually take over a section of the city and see to its needs, though they had to be leveled up in order to do a good job. It also has the widest variety of available disasters. |
| 16 | * ''[[VideoGame/SimCity2013 SimCity]]'' (2013) was designed by Maxis, who intended this game to be more of a direct sequel to ''[=SimCity=] 4'' than ''Societies'' was. It also introduces online multiplayer to the series proper, a game mode that has not been explored since the long-forgotten ''[=SimCity=] 2000 Network Edition.'' However, due mostly to poor planning, server overload and bugs wrecked its release -- badly enough to prompt Paradox to greenlight ''VideoGame/CitiesSkylines'', which literally bills itself as "the ''[=SimCity 5=]'' that never was". Periodic updates over a period of eight months restored the game to approximately the level of functionality promised on launch, albeit with major bugs still gone unsquished. Late the same year, an expansion was released: ''Cities of Tomorrow'', focusing on bringing cities into TheFuture by building huge {{Arcolog|y}}ies called Mega Towers, unlocking new technologies with an advanced Academy, or taking over the region as [[MegaCorp OmegaCorp]] and dispensing the highly addictive {{phlebotinum}} Omega while gradually overtaking all facets of Sim life. |
| 17 | * ''[=SimCity=] Social'' was [[http://www.strategyinformer.com/news/18027/report-VideoGame/SimCity-social-hitting-facebook a Facebook game]] that took the concept of both the 2013 remake and ''The Sims Social'' and combined them. The game was retired in June 2013. |
| 18 | * ''[[https://www.ea.com/simcity-buildit/ SimCity BuildIt]]'' (2014): Developed by Track Twenty for iOS and Android, ''[=SimCity BuildIt=]'' is technically a spiritual successor to ''[=SimCity=] Social'' though not advertised as such. It's visually styled to resemble the 2013 release, but everything you hate about ''[=SimCity=] Social'', including Facebook integration and socialization, and microtransactions, returns. |
| 19 | |
| 20 | Unlike ''VideoGame/TheSims'', ''[=SimCity=]'' requires you to work above the level of the individual Sim. You are managing a city, and what you do will affect dozens to millions of Sims, at least, if you know what you are doing. |
| 21 | |
| 22 | The game is open-ended. There is no ''win'' condition (although in ''2000'', if you've built enough launch [[{{Arcology}} arcologies]] "the exodus" occurs and all your Sims fly off to live in space), but it is not an EndlessGame either; you can tell if you're doing better or worse, but [[WideOpenSandbox you can keep doing it as long as you want, resources permitting]]. It should be noted, however, that certain versions of the game do have a ''GameOver'' scenario. For example, certain versions of ''[=SimCity=] 2000'', ''3000'', and ''4'' will end with you getting kicked out of office if your city's treasury enters the red for a certain period of time. |
| 23 | |
| 24 | It shouldn't be confused with ''ComicBook/SinCity'', unless you forget to build police stations. Or are playing on the appropriate map. |
| 25 | |
| 26 | The series also spawned a number of spin-offs ''other than The Sims'', some of which are listed below. Most of them tend to be "''[=SimCity=]'' [[JustForFun/XMeetsY meets such-and-such]]." |
| 27 | |
| 28 | * ''[=SimFarm=]'': ''[=SimCity=]'' meets a farm. Grow crops, raise livestock and influence the fate of the local town. |
| 29 | * ''VideoGame/SimEarth'': ''[=SimCity=]'' meets a planet. Take a terrestrial planet from formation to the point where its sun goes red giant, through the evolution of life and development of civilization along the way. The "largest scale" Sim game, ''VideoGame/{{Spore}}'' included. Notable for coming with a {{Doorstopper}} of an instruction manual. |
| 30 | * ''[=SimLife=]'': ''[=SimCity=]'' meets evolution. Similar to ''[=SimEarth=]'', but focused in more on life and evolution. |
| 31 | * ''VideoGame/SimAnt'': ''[=SimCity=]'' meets an ant colony. Win the battle of the back lawn against both the red ants and the humans, and try to invade their home. |
| 32 | * ''VideoGame/SimTower'': ''[=SimCity=]'' meets a skyscraper -- similar to the "regular" games, but on a smaller scale. |
| 33 | * ''[=SimIsle=]'': ''[=SimCity=]'' meets the rainforest. Balance the demands of industry, ecology and tourism on a series of tropical islands. |
| 34 | * ''[=SimTown=]'': A "kids' version" of ''[=SimCity=]'' with bigger graphics, a smaller town, simplified game mechanics and more focus on individual citizens. |
| 35 | * ''[=SimPark=]'': ''[=SimCity=]'' meets a nature reserve in North-West America. Doubles as an enviromental educational tool and a way to hear people constantly whining about there not being enough cars. Its disasters include Kudzu (a rapidly spreading weed) and a garbage dump. Like ''[=SimTown=]'' it's mostly geared towards children. |
| 36 | * ''[=SimSafari=]'': ''[=SimPark=]'' meets a safari park in the savannas of Africa. It is a similar environmental education game, but you also hire employees from the nearby village, helping to bring the people out of poverty by supporting their economy rather than through charity. |
| 37 | * ''Streets of [=SimCity=]'': Actually a major break from the resource simulation genre, instead being a driving sim - with some combat elements thrown in, no less. Perhaps most notable for two things: you can upload ''[=SimCity=] 2000'' maps into it, and it was a rather remarkable forebearer of much later open-ended games like ''VideoGame/GrandTheftAuto'' (except that the player is stuck in his car, and it was naturally much more primitive; that said, it even shares many similar themes, if you can believe that) Sadly, it had a number of bugs that kept it from gaining a wide audience. |
| 38 | * ''[=SimCopter=]'': Another break from resource management simulations into a primitive flight sim; the player's goals were to deliver people to various destinations, drop water on fires, assist police chases and deliver patients to hospitals (many of which were injured by the player if he or she dropped them from his or her helicopter from too great a height). All of the player's craft were based on real-life helicopters, including the unlockable Apache attack copter. Like ''Streets'', ''[=SimCopter=]'' also took ''[=SimCity=] 2000'' maps as playable settings. |
| 39 | * ''[=SimGolf=]'': Create your own golf course and then play on it. Various elements of design are the starting locations, hole locations, placement of water, rocks, sandtraps, trees, and other hazards, and even changing the gravity if so desired. Not to be confused with ''Creator/SidMeier's [=SimGolf=]'', which was published by Firaxis. |
| 40 | * ''[=SimHealth=]'': Try and change the circa-1993 US healthcare system! Although remarkably deep, it was policy-heavy, had a 90 degree learning curve, and was not very entertaining. |
| 41 | * ''VideoGame/SimTunes'': A break from simulation entirely, this was a pixel art and music creation program that happened to be under the ''Sim'' label. It was marketed under the Maxis Kids label like [=SimTown=]. |
| 42 | ---- |
| 43 | !!YOU CAN'T CUT BACK ON TROPES LISTS! YOU WILL REGRET THIS! |
| 44 | |
| 45 | [[foldercontrol]] |
| 46 | |
| 47 | [[folder:Across multiple games]] |
| 48 | * TwoDSpace: Most titles don't allow for overpasses or underpasses. Have a street crossing another street? A railroad crossing a street? You're going to be impeding traffic with a stoplight or a railroad crossing. |
| 49 | ** The exceptions are ''4'' and ''2013''. In ''4'', avenues could have just one intersection for a street, road, or avenue. In ''2013'' between both mods and update 7, players could raise and lower the roads to create underpasses and overpasses to avoid having intersections. |
| 50 | * AdaptationalHeroism: [[MegaCorp OmegaCo]] is often portrayed as a ToxicInc whose product, [[{{Phlebotinum}} Omega]], is not only polluting, but also [[FantasticDrug addictive]]. However, in ''Buildit'', their buildings don't pollute (even if Omega residential buildings have higher service demands than others) and they're portrayed in a more positive light. |
| 51 | * AllegedlyFreeGame: ''[=SimCity Social=]'' and ''[=SimCity BuildIt=]'', being reliant on microtransactions but are free to install and play. |
| 52 | * ArcWords: The DS version of ''Creator'' has "The happiness of the city is in your hands!" said at the end of each advisor meeting. |
| 53 | %% * ArtisticLicenseEconomics: To make way for RuleOfFun. |
| 54 | * AttackOfThe50FootWhatever: A traditional Disaster, whether it be Franchise/{{Godzilla}}, [[Franchise/SuperMarioBros Bowser]], [[AlienInvasion Aliens]], [[AIIsACrapshoot a giant special effects robot]], [[VideoGame/TheSims Servo]] or an Epic creature from {{VideoGame/Spore}}. |
| 55 | ** The [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yogziBGCv0A&t=4m17s Random disaster]] feature in ''[=SimCity=] Creator'' for the Wii could summon some of the series' staples such as HumongousMecha and [[AlienInvasion UFOs]], but it can also summon some pretty bizarre ones too, such as giant hammers and GiantHandsOfDoom that pound your city, controllable giant SpikeBallsOfDoom and [[ThisIsADrill drills]], and even a stampede of giant llamas. |
| 56 | %% (Zero content example) * BigBrotherIsWatching: All too literally, too! |
| 57 | * BootstrappedTheme: Actually, there is no theme to represent ''[=SimCity=]'' as a whole, but, each game seems to get its own little theme via one of the pieces in the game: |
| 58 | ** ''[=SimCity=] 2000'' has its own theme, which can be heard hidden (via an ice cream truck or building sound effect) in all other titles. In the special edition, the theme plays in the "About" screen. |
| 59 | ** ''[=SimCity=] 3000'' and its expansion ''Unlimited'' have a leitmotif (appropriately titled "Sim City Theme" on the soundtrack) which filters into many of the other tracks in the game. |
| 60 | ** "Street Sweeper" is used as background music during the opening cutscene of ''[=SimCity=] 4 Deluxe'', which leads some to believe that it is this to that game. |
| 61 | ** In ''[=SimCity=] 2013'', one can hear [[RecurringRiff DAH dun duh-duh-duhhh duhn dun-duuunnnn]] in many of the songs in the soundtrack, essentially making it this game's theme. |
| 62 | *** It's even the doorbell chime for the Mayor's Mansion. |
| 63 | * ColourCodedForYourConvenience: From ''[=SimCity=]'' to ''[=SimCity 4=]'', the zones have always been green for Residential zones, blue for Commercial zones and yellow for Industrial zones. The SNES port of ''[=SimCity=]'' changed the colour of Residential zones to red. |
| 64 | ** Also, ''3000'' had a dominant color for each zone type, density and income level. Mid-class apartments, for example, were brick red, rich houses had light green grass, heavy industry was brown, and small businesses had lots of pink esplanades. This remained to some degree on the ''Unlimited'' expansion, where the European building set, for example, had brown historic buildings as light commercial and light gray mid-class apartments. |
| 65 | * CommandAndConquerEconomy: averted; you place infrastructure, but the Sims will build structures themselves in properly zoned land. |
| 66 | * TheComputerIsALyingBastard |
| 67 | ** People demand Fire Departments even when disasters are disabled. No point in building them unless [[HarderThanHard Disasters are on]] (and in ''[=SimCity=]'', set them to ~1% funding until needed). ''[=SC4=]'' replaced turning disasters on or off with most disasters only being there for VideogameCrueltyPotential, but some disasters would still happen on their own -- fires, for example, start pretty much only in places without adequate fire coverage, implying that the fires you see as disasters are actually fires that got out of control and require your intervention. |
| 68 | ** The treasury specialist in ''[=SimCity=] 2000'' recommends floating a bond to take advantage of low interest rates - ignoring the fact that it's sometimes hard to get a stable enough cash flow to maintain power plants that [[SelfDestructMechanism self destruct]] every 50 years. |
| 69 | ** Your advisers in ''[=SimCity=] 4'' have a tendency to incessantly shower you with messages telling you that your neighbours want to escalate the terms of their service contract with you even when there's no option to do so (not to mention that you might already be selling them five times as much water as they actually use, in which case they probably ''aren't'' in the market for more water) |
| 70 | ** [=SimCity=] 2013 is full of this. |
| 71 | *** The trash and school statistics do not always tally up. If you grab a calculator and manually add up the attendance per school, more than often you'll find that the numbers are not the same as the numbers shown on the statistics pane of the school tab. Also, the game may claim that a school is full even though it isn't, and it will claim that not everyone is attending school even though the graph view shows that every kid in every residence is attending school. Also, not enough high skill workers? [[BlatantLies Add more schools!]] [[spoiler:(the correct thing to do in this situation is to instead upgrade the college or add another)]]. Also, one early quest in the game tells the mayor that they may incorporate themselves as a small city on reaching 2500 residents, but upon taking the quest the number required doubles to 5000. |
| 72 | *** Also all a problem has to do is pop over the threshold for a moment to bring about a screaming alert at the player. Sewage has a rough moment processing? The game tells you that the system can't take it, even though by the time you take a look at your plant the rough patch has passed and there aren't any pressing problems. |
| 73 | *** In addition to that, if you build a teeny-tiny city you will be able to actually do an actual head count of the number of tiny sims you can see and discover that though your population may be "18" you can find 21 people walking around. |
| 74 | *** The biggest Drama magnet of them all? The city population as shown in the UI is intentionally scaled to look extra big once you go past a few hundred. |
| 75 | * CoolCar: ''Streets'' features (as playable vehicles) a 1969 Chevy Camaro, Ferrari 250 GT, the original 1966 Ford [=GT40=], plus a 1973 GMC C-Series van and Volkswagen Beetle. Non-playable vehicles include a 1964 Ford Thunderbird and a Mercury Cougar. Players can weaponise them; see WeaponisedCar below. |
| 76 | * CrapsackWorld: It can be built, if you really want to... |
| 77 | * CreatorsCultureCarryover: |
| 78 | ** Quite a few things work the way they do in the United States and not in other countries. For instance, it is the responsibility of the city government to fund and operate the police force, whereas in many if not most countries, that's the function of a higher level of government (e.g., in France, it's the central government, while in Germany, it's the state government). Of course, the developers had to use ''some'' country as a model. |
| 79 | ** The game resembles the United States in that the easiest solution to population growth is usually to expand into a previously undeveloped wilderness area. Most European cities don't have this option. |
| 80 | ** The lack of mixed zoning policies has been [[http://www.humantransit.org/2009/06/did-sim-city-make-us-stupid.html remarked]] as basically being US urban planning, circa 1960. The tendency to prefer highways to commuter rail, etc. in anything but the largest cities (driven by weak commuter algorithms) is also quite American. The former may have been a product of simplified programming; the concrete-slapping that the latter can induce, however... |
| 81 | * CripplingOverspecialization: Anything involving nuclear power is bound to result in catastrophe... |
| 82 | ** In ''2013'', any of the fossil fuel specializations can ultimately set you up for trouble if you do not prepare for the raw resources to run out in the city. Luckily, the global market tends to be fairly kind with the price of coal, ore, and oil at the moment. |
| 83 | * CriticalStaffingShortage: Implied when you set the budget for services really really low. The Fire Marshal outright states your city needs more firefighters. |
| 84 | * CutAndPasteEnvironments: Advanced to a large scale standard! |
| 85 | * EasterEgg: You can build the game studio's headquarters, the California Plaza, in your cities. Then there are all the hidden Maxis logos and game references. Also, all the games from ''3000'' and onwards have ''2000'''s theme hidden somewhere. |
| 86 | ** In ''3000'', you have to manually edit a configuration file to unlock the ''2000'' theme. In ''4'', it's the ice cream truck jingle. |
| 87 | ** In ''2000'' itself, we have Nessie and Maxis Man. Also the Moose: if you start clearcutting too much forest, the sims will protest. Eventually you're asked if you want to hear the moose... |
| 88 | ** ''[=SimCopter=]'' has one of the most famous Easter eggs of all time: [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jacques_Servin one of the development team]] was gay, and became offended when asked to program in [[AWinnerIsYou a celebration sequence]] with bikini babes... so he added bikini-clad men, forcing a recall when they were discovered. This programmer would later go on to pull culture-jamming pranks as one of [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Yes_Men The Yes Men]]. |
| 89 | ** Another Easter egg in ''4'' appears more obscurely in the form [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Larry_Walters a man sitting on a floating balloons-strapped lawnchair]]. As Maxis is a Californian outfit, [[CreatorProvincialism it comes as no surprise why it's there]]. |
| 90 | ** In 2000, the Inspect mode turns the cursor into a cross-hairs. If you click the mouse while that cross-hairs is over a helicopter, the helicopter will then go into a tailspin and crash. And depending on where it crashes, this will also start a fire. |
| 91 | ** In the ''[=SimCity=] Urban Renewal Kit'', typing "vaudeville" will cause a crudely-animated Launch Arcology with a top hat and cane to dance across the screen twice to some (presumably) vaudeville music. |
| 92 | ** ''[=SimCity=] DS'' features Bowser's Castle as a landmark gift. |
| 93 | ** When your in-game date in ''4'' reaches October, your cemeteries will be visited by ghosts and zombies. Likewise, every mid-June will bring a graduation ceremony at your university. |
| 94 | ** The "dollyllama" cheat in ''4'' replaces your advisors with llamas! |
| 95 | * ExactlyWhatItSaysOnTheTin: If you zoom in and look closely at the signs and billboards on buildings, you'll find their descriptions to be extremely concise. For example, low-tech industrial buildings will have signs and billboards that label them as "Standard Factory", "Dirty Factory", "Mill" or even "Low-Tech Industrial" and "Low-Tech Factory". |
| 96 | * FictionalCurrency: Starting with [=SimCity=] 3000, the unit of currency is officially called the ''simoleon'' for [=SimCity=] 4 and [=SimCity=] 2013. |
| 97 | * FlyingSaucer: Alien invasions, although the ''[=SimCity=] 2000'' alien was a robotic eyeball with four legs. You can fly one in ''[=SimCity=] 4'' with the Rush Hour expansion. |
| 98 | * GameBreakingBug: |
| 99 | ** The modding community of ''[=SimCity=] 4'' had to fix a raft of bugs that were never patched and severely harm large cities, including an over-simplified pathing system that grants the ability for commuters to get stuck constantly moving in circles between connected cities without ever getting a job anywhere or drive halfway across the map to get across the road, the Opera House having a limit of 1,200 R$$$ Sims after which it knackers the entire city's education rating, most industry-high tech buildings not actually employing any R$$$ Sims due to a math error... |
| 100 | ** ''[=SimCity=] 4'' also has a rather well known bug in which the game will crash if you use the scroll wheel to zoom and you push the scroll wheel too much. |
| 101 | ** ''[=SC4=]'' has never received optimization or patching for newer [=PCs=] and operating systems past Windows XP, and there's an array of graphics, rendering, gameplay, and crashing issues that some users have experienced. The forums for the game on Steam are filled with user suggestions to fix some the problems via launch option strings, using Windows 7 compatibility mode and tweaking screen resolutions. |
| 102 | *** To wit, the game's in game graphics settings only offers four resolutions: 800x600, 1024x768, 1280x1024, and 1600x1200. And it certainly doesn't offer widescreen ratio resolutions, even though the game engine does. One needs to manually specify the resolution via command line incantations directly as per Steam forums recommendations to get those resolutions. Would it kill EA to offer a drop down list instead of only a set of four radio buttons? |
| 103 | ** The 2013 edition of [=SimCity=] has a requirement that you must always have a connection to EA servers in order to play it, even in single-player. However, as with many always-online games (and worse than most in this case), most of the servers were severely overworked, making the game borderline unplayable. There's a few big in-game bugs as well. Build two sewage treatment plants, and the game won't know how to balance the load between them, nor will it give you the ability to do so yourself, resulting in backed-up pipes and angry citizens simply because one plant gets most of the sewage. Aside from those mentioned above and those mentioned in TheComputerIsALyingBastard, the game engine also contains some nasty bugs that produces a LuckBasedMission: the ''Fireworks Fun'' quest, due to a bug that causes all utility vehicles like fire engines, police cars and even garbage trucks and buses, to cluster together as a group instead of working independently. |
| 104 | ** There is also a subversion in the original. When the game was tested under, at the time, the upcoming Windows 95, it would crash because a critical bug caused the game to read memory right after it freed it. Under the single-threaded operating systems of the time, this didn't have any adverse effects, but under Windows 95, the memory might have already been reallocated and either contain garbage or cause an access violation. Raymond Chen and the other Microsoft developers at the time were obsessed with backwards compatibility, and wrote an exception into Windows 95 that would specifically check to see if ''[=SimCity=]'' was running and put the memory allocator into a special mode that would delay the freeing of memory, thus ensuring the game would run without incident. |
| 105 | * GameMod: Hundreds of thousands of them, especially for ''[=SimCity=] 4'', are available on tens of fansites. [=SimCity=] 4 is so modifiable, the Network Addon Mod qualifies as an unofficial expansion pack! |
| 106 | ** [=SimCity=] 2013 is also moddable, but was much more difficult to do so so less mods were made. |
| 107 | ** The ''Urban Renewal Kit'' was an official expansion for ''2000'' that allows you to customise city layouts and building sprites and tilesets. |
| 108 | ** MassiveMultiplayerCrossover: If you consider what some of these mods contain, you can find some cities with [[Franchise/SuperMarioBros Princess Peach's Castle]], [[Franchise/{{Pokemon}} Pokémon Stadiums]], [[VideoGame/MetalGearSolid have metal gears as a disaster]]. |
| 109 | *** Also should be noted that in the Super Nintendo version of the game, Dr. Wright would be chased by Bowser, which would indicate that Bowser was attacking your city. Also, you could build a Mario statue in your city after obtaining a population of 500,000 people. |
| 110 | * GameMaker: Will Wright conceived it as a scenario editor for his WWII game ''Raid on Bungeling Bay'' and programmed it as such for the Commodore 64 in 1985, before expanding it to a full-fledged application. Several developers turned "the toy game" down because [[ItWillNeverCatchOn it wasn't "arcadey" enough]]. |
| 111 | * GRatedDrug: Averted in an independent mission in ''Streets'', which has you track down and stop what is explicitly a heroin shipment. And in an E-rated game! |
| 112 | * CarFu: [=SimCopter=] let you win a criminal-catching mission by ''[[VigilanteExecution crushing the suspect to death by landing on him]].'' [[SelfImposedChallenge Required very precise flying skills to do it without taking damage]], but [[VideogameCrueltyPotential a definite guilty pleasure]]. |
| 113 | * HollywoodProvincialism: Probably most blatantly in ''[=SimCity=]'' 4. The landscapes resemble southern California, right down to the brown, muddy rocks. The water is a tropical light blue. City streets and roads can be lined with palm trees, bus stops resemble the RTA and BART systems, all highways are three-lane concrete affairs. |
| 114 | ** On the other hand, Maxis did send some members of the team to Europe to study the contemporary architecture of England, France, and Germany for the European building set in ''Rush Hour''. To a lesser extent, the European and Asian building sets from the ''[=SimCity=] 3000'' expansion are also aversions. |
| 115 | ** A raft of {{Game Mod}}s for ''[=SimCity=] 4'' will also change the vegetation and terrain textures. One adds snow at high altitudes, one that adds mountain forest trees, one that replaces the passenger trains with France's SNCF Corail trains, one simulates the landscapes of northern Mexico -- forest in the mountains, desert in the valleys -- and one that, quoth the mod's own description, "turns the water from light Caribbean blue to dark rest-of-the-world blue". |
| 116 | ** Maxis has blantatly admited that ''2013'' features landscaping from the California region. Also, a lot of the buildings, especially for the low and mid-wealth sims, very much resemble buildings from the So-Cal area, including fast food restaurants with giant objects (like a donut or a hamburger) for signs and rather modern adobe strip-malls. |
| 117 | %% (Zero content example) * IsometricProjection: ''2000'' and ''3000'' and their derivatives. |
| 118 | * LoadingScreen: ''[=SimCity=] 4'' features goofy loading status messages, such as "Deciding what message to display next", "Deunionizing bulldozers", "Retrieving from back store", and the ubiquitous "Reticulating splines". |
| 119 | ** ''Streets'' has a variation of the ubiquitous [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indian-head_test_pattern Indian head test pattern]], with the head in the centre in place of the middle circle and wearing a '70s PornStache, which only appears after the opening scene and before the game loads. The 1964 Thunderbird appears, perpetually driving through a tunnel when the player chooses a mission. |
| 120 | * LogicBomb: Most games have an example or two where the simulation suggests two seemingly contradictory things at once. In the 2013 game, for example, residents will claim "where's the shopping?" while the commercial building ''next door'' will lament "no shoppers", even if the two are the same wealth level. |
| 121 | ** Even worse, the game will have residents declare that they couldn't find any job and become homeless[[note]]which is especially bad since it results in a spike in the amount of criminals in your city and by extension causes crime waves.[[/note]], even if your details screen shows that there are a more jobs than residents for each wealth level. |
| 122 | * MadLibsDialogue: The source of the WordSaladHumor and WritersCannotDoMath tropes mentioned below. Because the game is creating news stories by randomly picking pre-generated sentences, filling in the blanks with random data, and then stringing them together. |
| 123 | * MegaCity / SkyscraperCity: You can make one if you so wish. By putting in high-density in both Residential and Commercial zones, your city will easily turn into a metropolis with those towering buildings, not to mention raking in the revenues quite effectively that you'll be staying in the black. |
| 124 | * ModernStasis: Your city could be in the year 2300, and yet architecture, fashions, trends, and industry are pretty much the same (yes, even the high-tech industry doesn't get any higher or more improved). Sim City 2000 introduces some futuristic power stations and the giant "arcology" apartment buildings, but their presence doesn't seem to have any effect on the rest of the city. |
| 125 | * MortonsFork: One of the random events you could experience in ''[=SimIsland=]'', you would receive an SOS from a passing tanker requesting immediate help. It was carrying a cargo of toxic waste, which proved too much for the ship's hull to handle. You are given the choice of either unloading the toxic waste for storage onto your island (which you could never get rid of) in order to allow the tanker to repair its hull, or turn them away and have them risking a major ecological disaster at sea. |
| 126 | * NeverRecycleABuilding: ''[=SimCity=] 2000'' takes this trope at full speed. The moment tenants move out of a building, it is instantaneously transformed into a dirty, run-down ghetto shack, regardless of what it was before. |
| 127 | ** As does ''3000'', but the abandoned building varies depending on the zone and density type (e.g., a light residential building will turn into the aformentioned ghetto shack, and a light commercial building will turn into a run-down shop). |
| 128 | ** ''4'' averts this by overlaying a dilapidated texture on abandoned buildings. Also, a building can be re-occupied by lower income tenants. |
| 129 | ** Also averted in ''[=SimCity=]'' 2013. Like in ''4'', a dilapidated texture is overlaid on abandoned buildings. In addition, homeless people will squat in abandoned buildings. |
| 130 | * NintendoHard: The first game, and ''[=SimCity=] 4'' features the hardest money-management metagame ever. |
| 131 | ** The ''Rush Hour'' / ''Deluxe Edition'' of ''[=SimCity=] 4'' adds difficulty settings, and even the easiest difficulty setting is still pretty hard. Forget the fact that you start off with 500,000 Simoleons on this setting; if you don't spend them wisely and generate revenue within a couple of years, you ''will'' be bankrupt. On the other hand, the difficulty of maintaining a thriving city in ''[=SimCity=] 4'' is what compels people to keep playing it. Those who play a sufficiently large number of hours may see everything differently, and maybe even have increased respect for every government in RealLife. |
| 132 | *** And if you can't generate enough revenue to offset the capital that's constantly spent, you'll be stuck constantly performing missions around town. |
| 133 | ** This also applies if you choose to keep disasters enabled, since enabling them while running at cheetah speed in ''2000'' will cause a simple fire to wipe out the city before you can react. |
| 134 | ** At least some of the money-management difficulties can be solved by applying the lessons in a tutorial in [=SC4=] appropriately named "[[AllThereInTheManual Making Money Tutorial]]". |
| 135 | ** Traffic takes the center stage in ''2013''. |
| 136 | * NoCommunitiesWereHarmed: Averted, many sample cities and challenge scenarios are recreations of real cities. [[TokyoIsTheCenterOfTheUniverse Tokyo]], Los Angeles and various big cities from around the world are the usual suspects. |
| 137 | ** There was also a really fascinating one in ''2000'' where you took over Flint, MI in the 1970s, just before [[Film/RogerAndMe shit hit the fan]]. |
| 138 | * NoFairCheating: Some early [=SimCity=] editions on the PC have a cheat code that grants the player money ... at the cost of possibly triggering a major earthquake. |
| 139 | * NotInMyBackyard: In ''3000'', ''4'', and ''2013'', how zones are developed and how desirable they are is a considerable gameplay factor: while uneducated plebes and the low-level businesses and factories they work for can pop up anywhere, middle and upper-class citizens and businesses will only want to set up house and shop in unpolluted areas close to their workplace/employees/customers and places with good schools, hospitals and other city-provided services. Places like landfills and power stations will drive away all but the most destitute of sims, while parks, plazas, landmarks and reward objects will attract the wealthy. Finally, any irradiated area is a universal no-no—even the poorest Sims won't bother settling down in such areas. |
| 140 | ** One Sim's NIMBY may be another Sim's treasure. For example: farms hate heavy road traffic while commercial buildings absolutely love it since it brings more customers to them. |
| 141 | ** Certain structures such as heavy industry, prisons, toxic waste facilities and casinos ''will'' result in the petitioners screaming at you. Industry and prisons are a necessity if you want your city to grow, but structures such as megaplex malls and army bases have negative effects as a cost for funding to the city and increase to certain zones, so it's up to the mayor to balance the risk/reward, or not use these bonuses if the city can thrive without them. |
| 142 | * ObstructiveBureaucrat: Several advisers, the transport minister from ''2000'' and the financial adviser from ''3000,'' are a lot more demanding than most of the others. One petitioner is even portrayed as "never having met a city decision she liked" and does she ever live up to that moniker. Several of the other petitioners; environmentalists, low income earners, and those demanding lower taxes among them, are more unreasonable than others. One actual obstructive bureaucrat is particularly nit picky, but does not complain as much as some of the others and occasionally rewards you for your efforts with a city hall, courthouse and army barracks. |
| 143 | * PermanentElectedOfficial: You, of course, Mayor [[PunnyName Defacto]]. |
| 144 | ** Subverted in 2000, 3000, and 4: The game ends when you get kicked out of the office, which happens if you run into the red and refuse to do anything about it (say, take out a loan, repeal money-losing ordinances or build income-generating buildings) for a certain period of time. |
| 145 | * PoliceState: In ''2000'', ''3000'', and ''4'', if you put too much funding on your city's law enforcement, your Sims will complain about oppression and will suffer a lower standard of living due to your police [[KnightTemplar going to great lengths]] [[JaywalkingWillRuinYourLife to ensure that no crime in your city]] [[AllCrimesAreEqual goes unpunished.]] In ''2000'', the police station's stats will actually show that more crimes are being punished than committed! |
| 146 | * RealIsBrown: ''[=SimCity=] 4'' did this with all the buildings in attempt to make them look more subtle. Probably one of the earlier uses of the trope as well. |
| 147 | ** If you've used Google Street View to look at the center of any small town in the US (or the brown-brick skyscrapers of many midsize cities), you'll know that this is largely [[JustifiedTrope justified]]. |
| 148 | ** Averted or played straight according to player preference in the 2013 release, as it gives players the option of applying various graphic filters to their view which changes color contrast ratios. Some give the city a more subdued color look, others give it a more bright and vibrant look. Despite having no mechanical effect, they can drastically alter the "mood" a city projects. |
| 149 | * RidiculouslyFastConstruction: Everything is instantly built except for the Residential, Commercial, and Industrial Structures. |
| 150 | * RunningGag: "Reticulating splines" has appeared as a loading screen line in every game since ''[=SimCity=] 2000''. Also, a lot of things seem to be centered around broccoli and llamas for some reason. |
| 151 | ** The "Reticulating Splines" status is so pervasive, ''[=SimCity=] 4'' even parodies it, with the status "Gesticulating Mimes". Reticulating Splines ''is'' a legitimate process (it means "forming a grid from lines defined by formulae") which likely would have been necessary for ''[=SimCity 2000=]'' at the time it was made, since it used a grid-based landscape with height appearing isometrically. |
| 152 | ** In 3000, the news ticker often makes references to an apparent kitty kibble shortage. Said kibble manufacturers deny everything, but the kitties are increasingly unhappy as you play. |
| 153 | ** Llama-related gags abound in both ''The Sims'' and ''[=SimCity=] 3000''. In the original The Sims Exchange days, one user ran with this and regaled readers with the tales of Llama Man, a "The Tick"-like comic book superhero. |
| 154 | ** Newspaper articles in 2000 have a running gag of declaring things to be bald. After a chemical cloud disaster, the headline in the paper is "Bald Pollution", and several people involved in the newspaper stories are noted as being bald. Sometimes, bizarre headlines such as "Bald Radio Found" crop up as well. |
| 155 | * SceneryPorn: In every game except, possibly, the first, this has been a major emphasis (though secondary to the applicability of the simulation itself), to a degree determined by the technology available to the average consumer at the time. Broken as the base may be on ''Societies'' or ''[=SimCity=] 2013'', nobody can deny that they have the capability to make absolutely beautiful cities. |
| 156 | * SeriousBusiness: Players have spent years at a time trying to recreate real cities, [[BigApplesauce most commonly New York]], and in ''[=SimCity=] 4'', embarking on enormous region-wide building projects. Some of these are so intricate that players alter the game's programming specifically for them; all while writing elaborate backstories and plots for their worlds. Several fansites hold competitions for the best of these. Also, architecture students often use ''[=SimCity=] 3000'' and ''4'' to test the theories they have learned in urban planning class. |
| 157 | * ShoutOut: The very existence of the California Plaza as a landmark; some of the buildings in the game are named after Maxis staff. |
| 158 | ** In ''[=SimCity=] 2000'', one of the buildings was styled after the historic Orinda Theatre in Maxis's then-hometown. |
| 159 | ** One of the buildings that may appear in a Hi-Tech industrial zone in ''[=SimCity=] 4'' is called [[VideoGame/CommandAndConquer Kane Tiberium]]. Go figure. |
| 160 | ** In ''[=SimCity=] 2000'' many neighbouring city names are references to ''Series/RedDwarf'' and ''Series/BlakesSeven'' |
| 161 | ** In ''[=SimCity=] 3000'', one of the types of residential buildings is named "Sheeza Brick House" in reference to the song "Brick House" by The Commodores. |
| 162 | ** One of the disasters in the 2013 game is an Epic Creature from ''VideoGame/{{Spore}}''. |
| 163 | ** You can build [[Franchise/SuperMarioBros Bowser's Castle]] in ''[=SimCity=] DS''. |
| 164 | * SpaceCompression: Even taking into account the high densities of the metropolis, many cities and buildings seem too small to contain the population they supposedly contain. |
| 165 | * TerrainSculpting: The games allow the player to modify the terrain as befits the needs of a growing city. However, doing so as a mayor is expensive (unless you cheat). Fortunately, each game since ''2000'' has had a mode wherein a player could sculpt the terrain for free before founding a city there (and in ''4'', there are more ways to do so pre-founding as well). The controls have become increasingly precise and lifelike, and support for terrain imports became available, so as to recreate real-world locations. In ''4'', you can also make craters before or during city play by [[VideogameCrueltyPotential dropping meteors or summoning volcanos]]. |
| 166 | ** ''3000'', ''4'', and ''Societies'' all allow the importation of height maps for a city (or whole region in the case of ''4''), meaning if you can somehow convert a Topographic map to a height map, you can basically recreate any real life location. ''4'' even offered a service that would allow users to use USGS data to create regions modeled after any part of the US. |
| 167 | * ThemeAndVariationsSoundtrack: The SNES, 3000, and 2013 games all employ this musical trope. The SNES version features a heavily modified version of the melody for each stage of the city, 3000 has a recurring riff throughout the tracks, and 2013 (and its expansion pack) use the main theme and its variations to create the soundtrack. |
| 168 | * TorchesAndPitchforks: |
| 169 | ** ''2000'' has the Riots disaster, which can be more accurately described as Torches and Protest Signs. The angry mob will light buildings on fire and [[EnemySummoner rally other Sims to form more angry mobs]]. If left unchecked, they can potentially raze an entire city to the ground. |
| 170 | ** ''3000'''s rioters traded the torches for some sort of improvised explosive. They can hurl them several blocks away, starting fires over a large area, but unlike their predecessors they can't create additional mobs. |
| 171 | * AdvancedTech2000: ''[=SimCity=] 2000'', and ''[=SimCity=] 3000''. |
| 172 | * UltimateAuthorityMayor: You ''play'' as one. |
| 173 | * UltimateJobSecurity: Outside of the scenarios, the only way to get fired is to run your city too far in the red. |
| 174 | ** On the other hand, you can't fire any of your advisors. You may wish you could if the Environmental Advisor in ''4'' obtains a Court Order to shut down a water tower or pump because the water quality is bad (forcing you to buy an expensive Water Treatment Plant or demolish the old pump and put a new one elsewhere). |
| 175 | * UnbuiltTrope: ''[=SimCity=]'' is arguably the TropeCodifier for ConstructionAndManagementGames. However, much of the lasting appeal of the classic game, as well as the sequels, is the disaster scenarios, and the ability [[VideoGameCrueltyPotential to deliberately destroy a thriving city with disasters]]. This is, literally and figuratively, a GenreDeconstruction made by the first widespread game of the genre. |
| 176 | * VehicularCombat: ''Streets'' is built on this trope. |
| 177 | * ViceCity: If you choose to legalise gambling and build only a select few police stations or not any at all, your city will be this. |
| 178 | ** In ''3000'', this also applies if you don't have any jails constructed (which were first introduced in this game). Even with several police stations built, with no jails, your city's LE will be forced to let criminals go and continue their cycle of crime as they please. |
| 179 | * VideogameCaringPotential: To a detrimental extent, in many ways. Focus too much on giving your citizens an idyllic existence with parks and marinas and police officers on every corner, and you'll run into the red. |
| 180 | ** TruthInTelevision to some extent: There's a reason that programs like that tend to get cut when the budget gets tight. |
| 181 | * VideogameCrueltyPotential: The very existence of the "disasters" menu -- ''[=SimCity=] 4'' even gives players the power to control where disasters hit, ''and'' turned ''off'' most disasters appearing randomly, meaning the ''only'' reason for disasters is this. |
| 182 | ** ''[=SimCopter=]'' has a LOT of potential: |
| 183 | *** Finding the Apache allowed you to shoot missiles at buildings and cars, destroying them, and mow down civilians with the machine gun. The "U-Drive-It" feature of ''[=SimCity=] 4: Rush Hour'' also had a drivable attack helicopter, in addition to a tank, a jet fighter, and a UFO. Additionally, you could use the Apache's rockets to ''[[GoingCritical cause a nuclear meltdown]]'', by ''blowing up'' a city's nuclear power plant (if one was built). The resulting explosion would level most of the city, destroy your helicopter and start numerous medievac and fire missions. (If you didn't want to lose the Apache, it was best to let the fires burn their way up the silos and switch over to a cheaper helicopter. You lose whichever one you flew last.) |
| 184 | *** There were also [=UFOs=] flying around the sky from time to time. Shoot them down with a few missiles. There were no serious repercussions for doing so (except sometimes they'd cause a fire when they crashed.) |
| 185 | *** You could drag and drop passengers from their seats to forcibly debark them. Their expression if you do so while flying was priceless. |
| 186 | ** On a more subtle level, leaving Sims impoverished without basic municipal services, sending residents on long commutes through woefully under-capacity streets, giving tax incentives to heavy polluters... [[LongList you get the idea]]. |
| 187 | ** One that overlaps with EasterEgg: In ''2000'', you could shoot down the traffic copter with the Center tool. |
| 188 | ** In ''2000'', you can get rid of rioters by lowering the terrain that they're standing on until it becomes water. That's right, you can [[KillItWithWater drown]] [[BadBoss your own]] [[PayEvilUntoEvil malcontent citizens]]. |
| 189 | *** Drowning people that couse too much trouble? [[DoesThisRemindYouOfAnything Where have we heard]] [[Videogame/RollercoasterTycoon that one before?]] |
| 190 | *** And start fires if "disasters" are switched on. Another amusing one in ''2000'' is to build anything other than low-density residential next to an airport runway. Naturally, daily 911 disasters with massive fires will occur if "disasters" are switched on. If they are off, the planes merely explode. You can also blow up oil tankers by raising the land under them so they are lifted out of the water, and destroy trains by destroying the train tracks they are stuck on. |
| 191 | *** In discussing [=SimCity=] 4 the producers said they took out the plane crash because of September 11. |
| 192 | ** Demolishing a crowded bridge in ''[=SimCity=] 4'' will cause all the vehicles on it to drop into the water below. |
| 193 | ** One player spent 5 years designing and building the perfect city that would push the population to the max at the same time allowing the city to exist in a perfect state for over 50,000 in-game years. The price of this is a [[http://www.viceland.com/blogs/uk-games/2010/05/10/the-totalitarian-buddhist-who-beat-sim-city/ totalitarian police state where Sims live unhealthy, regimented lives under the constant watchful eye of the police and the average life expectancy is 50.]] |
| 194 | ** In ''2000'', if you zone a high-rise in the way of an airport's runway, airplanes will crash into it. [[TooDumbToLive Repeatedly]]. |
| 195 | ** In "[=SimCity=] Social," this is in fact encouraged, as certain rewards are only available if you pull pranks on your friends' cities. A mild example, though, as most acts of trickery are fairly benign, but a few of them involve sprinkling laxatives into the flour at the bakery (which is actually more dangerous than it looks in cartoons) and throwing gas on the flames of a burning building. |
| 196 | ** In ''[=SimCity=] 2013'', hackers can now take advantage of the "always online" requirement to [[http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20130318/01035222365/simcity-always-online-drm-lets-hackers-play-godzilla-with-anyones-cities.shtml wreak havoc in the cloud-saved cities of other players]] (It does not save them though). Whether if this continues will depends on the fallout from the game's launch. And don't bring this up in EA's forums. They are banning people about this. No, not banning people for actually ''wreaking'' the havoc - banning people for ''pointing out'' that there's a flaw in their "always online" requirement. |
| 197 | ** In ''Streets'', you can destroy any vehicle, including civilians, rival couriers and police. |
| 198 | * VideoGameCrueltyPunishment: One of the rumors about ''[=SimCity=] SNES'' is that bulldozing too many Hospitals/Schools will provoke a disaster. |
| 199 | ** In "Gallahad's Watch" in ''Streets'', if you kill an innocent by destroying their vehicle, the mission ends immediately and displays a message explaining that you are not above the law. |
| 200 | * VideoGameTime: The day-to-day business of citizens could be seen but it happened on a different time scale to the rest of the game so that day-to-day business was happening on a week-to-week time. In Sim City 4, they made the My Sim feature explicitly work on a different time scale. |
| 201 | ** Lampshaded in ''[=SimCity=] 3000'' when one unpauses a game a while after pausing it and making tweaks. The ticker will display a hilarious message about the sims wondering if time stopped and about things that weren't there before the game was paused. |
| 202 | * WeaponisedCar: ''Streets'' is ''built'' on this trope, too. Currently the page image. Options include machine guns, missiles, smoke screen, {{oil slick}} and proximity mines. You can also install armour, a radar scanner, military grade radar, devices that will allow your car to fly, jump or create a forcefield. |
| 203 | * WesternTerrorists: Group 9, the antagonists of "Gallahad's Watch" in ''Streets''. [[OmniscientCouncilOfVagueness Little is known about them]], however "Only one man stands in their way, [[BullyingADragon and they're about to piss him off]]." |
| 204 | * WideOpenSandbox: One of the first games in this genre. |
| 205 | * WorkInfoTitle: The "Sim" in the titles lets you know it's a series of {{Simulation Game}}s. |
| 206 | * WhatTheHellHero: |
| 207 | ** Your advisors will call you out if you're not too nice or competent. |
| 208 | ** Or if you cut back on transportation funding in ''[=SimCity=] 2000''. |
| 209 | ** Chucking a few too many meteors in ''[=SimCity=] 4'' will sometimes cause a ticker message that says "Mayor *insert name here* a little too trigger happy..." |
| 210 | * WretchedHive: If you legalize gambling and don't put around any police stations, your town will be on its way to becoming like this. |
| 211 | * YouBastard: |
| 212 | ** Done subtly in ''[=SimCity=] 3000''. When the commercial zones reach Astronomical land value, the ''Fountain of 9 to 5'' and ''TGIF Hang Spot'' show up. |
| 213 | ** Also, one of the large factories in ''[=SimCity=] 4'' is called ''Dead Forest Paper Company''... |
| 214 | * YouRequireMoreVespeneGas: ''[=SimCity=] 2000's'' water supply. The manual mentions this is deliberate, because Maxis' headquarters are in [[HollywoodProvincialism Southern California]], and as such, have its constant thirst. |
| 215 | ** In ''[=SimCity=] 4'', electricity takes the center stage. You can still have limited development without water, but an area without electricity will not even develop. This is the case in the rest of the series as well. |
| 216 | ** The manual for ''Sim City 2000'' also mentions that, yes, the developers ''know'' that cities existed before electricity, but [[BreakingTheFourthWall the sims themselves are electronic beings]] and therefore ''they'' require that electricity to live. |
| 217 | ** The requirement of Water and Electricity are both initially optional as of [=SimCity=] 2013, however people will complain and then abandon their home if they're not given both after they move in. This system is necessary because power plants in this game cannot function without workers, nor water pumps in turn without power. |
| 218 | ** In [=SC2013=], water once again is limited, though it can be replenished. Other resources exist such as coal and oil, which are, as in real life, nonrenewable. However most people don't notice they are non renewable because people fill the map and get bored long before running our or ore/oil/coal. Even if they do run out, players can simply research more advanced energy production or import more resources at a trade depot (albeit at a higher cost). |
| 219 | ** The SNES version has a near GameBreakingBug where upon loading any saved city, the electricity will start off as non-existent for 5 seconds before restoring itself. This can have a severe effect on certain blocks, easily dropping a C-3 High building down to a C-1 Low for example or dropping a growing R-2 High to low density housing. Of course as a cartridge game with a very niche following, this bug was never fixed. |
| 220 | [[/folder]] |
| 221 | |
| 222 | [[folder:''[=SimCity=]'' - Original Game]] |
| 223 | * CopyProtection: ''[=SimCity=]'' came with a folded dark red sheet of paper with dozens of city names and "code blocks" printed in slightly darker red that was impossible to duplicate with contemporary facsimile machines. You have to enter the city name corresponding to the blocks, otherwise the game would wreck your city with disasters. |
| 224 | * EarlyInstallmentWeirdness: The first game is this in all sorts of ways if you come to it from one of the later installments: |
| 225 | ** The view is entirely top-down, not isometric or 3D; |
| 226 | ** The view's not zoomable at all; |
| 227 | ** Zones are a fixed size: 3x3; |
| 228 | ** There are no different zone densities; low/high density is all decided by the game; |
| 229 | ** There's only one type of road - no highways; |
| 230 | ** There's no water system; |
| 231 | ** There's no underground view or construction whatsoever: no water pipes, no subways, nothing; |
| 232 | ** The land is entirely flat; |
| 233 | ** There's no education systems, health systems (schools and hospitals can be built by the game on zoned land) or garbage systems; |
| 234 | ** There are very few sounds and no music at all. |
| 235 | * ViolationOfCommonSense: It was a viable strategy to build no roads whatsoever in the original, relying exclusively on train tracks laid out in the same fashion. While this method was twice as expensive, it completely eliminated traffic as a concern and the majority of one's pollution as well. |
| 236 | * {{Zeerust}}: The original ''[=SimCity=]'' feels especially dated now that the year 2010 has come and gone and there was no nuclear meltdown in Boston (if you discount the one in Fukushima, Japan in 2011). |
| 237 | [[/folder]] |
| 238 | |
| 239 | [[folder:''[=SimCity=]'' SNES]] |
| 240 | * AdaptationExpansion: The Super Nintendo version of the game introduced the rewards system. Also, introduced the only recognized mascot of the series, Dr. Wright. Think of him as precursor to the education, transit, and health czars in subsequent games. |
| 241 | * CosmeticAward: The "View" gift, while not costing anything, merely allows you to see your city tilted at an angle as if on a tabletop. |
| 242 | * TheCameo: In the SNES ''[=SimCity=]'', you're able to erect a statue in Mario's honor. There is also a disaster where Bowser rips through the city looking for the portly hero. If the statue is present when Bowser arrives he'll snatch the statue and leave your city alone. |
| 243 | * EndlessGame: There is no way to "win" Simcity. The game will simply keep going on until the player decides to stop playing. The closest thing to a victory condition is building a city that achieves megalopolis status, which happens when the population hits 500,000. [[spoiler: Though you get an additional congratulatory message if you go beyond that to reach 600,000.]] |
| 244 | * ExpositionFairy: Dr. Wright. |
| 245 | * FelonyMisdemeanor: You can get [[GameOver fired]] in a non-scenario situation, not by giving your city the highest tax rate in the world, not by letting crime take over your city, not by letting pollution create a hole in the ozone layer right over your city, not even by demolishing the entire city yourself, but by failing to make your loan payment at the end of a year. |
| 246 | * {{Jumpscare}}: |
| 247 | ** The Plane Crash disaster, which is a loud "WHOOSH!" (the jet engine) followed by a "BOOM!" (the crash itself). It can be quite startling if you're minding your own business and it occurs without manually triggering it from the Disaster Menu. And once you do build an Airport the planes will crash randomly, sooner or later, especially since there's no way to control the airplane or helicopter's movements to make them stop occasionally running into each other. |
| 248 | ** The [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u-MDyYe_eUY "Disaster" music theme]] can be quite startling since it begins with loud emergency vehicle sirens. |
| 249 | * {{Leitmotif}}: Each city size has its own background music. Additionally, the music varies slightly with the season, being more mellow in winter, for example. |
| 250 | * SuperDeformed: Dr. Wright is a very Japanese touch to an otherwise-Western game. |
| 251 | * UnendingEndCard: There is an option to "quit the game", which would lead to a "see you later" card accepting no input from the controller. [[spoiler:Well, it SEEMS like it isn't accepting input, anyway - you can put in a code to reach the debug menu from this screen.]] |
| 252 | * UselessItem: Hospitals will randomly occupy a newly developing residental zone, but they will have no benefit on your city, taking away valuable space until bulldozed. Schools would occupy the same niche, but by getting three, six, and nine of them at once, you get the gift of libraries which help develop your other residential zones. Once you got the libraries, though, the schools were fair game to demolish. However, [[AllThereInTheManual the instruction manual warns you]] that if you bulldoze too many schools and hospitals a disaster might be triggered. |
| 253 | * ViolationOfCommonSense: Again, just like the original game listed above, the SNES port had a strategy of building a city with no roads and just strictly with train tracks; thus eliminating traffic and reducing pollution in your city. In fact, the SNES game's instruction manual [[PlayerNudge blatanly encourages this]]. |
| 254 | [[/folder]] |
| 255 | |
| 256 | [[folder:''[=SimCity=] 2000'']] |
| 257 | * AbnormalAmmo: The beams that the alien monsters from ''[=SimCity=] 2000'' used usually set your city [[DeathRay on fire]]. On some occasions, their beams [[GreenThumb planted trees]], [[KillItWithWater created surface water]] or even built wind turbines, while still destroying the intervening buildings and infrastructure. Perhaps they were {{Well Intentioned Extremist}}s who thought the Sims' environment needed some help? |
| 258 | ** This makes the ''[[WebAnimation/DorklyOriginals Dorkly]]'' [[http://www.dorkly.com/video/17907/dorkly-bits-sim-city-monster video seem more accurate]]. |
| 259 | * AmbidextrousSprite: In [=SimCity=] 2000, most of the buildings are obviously asymmetrical but appear exactly the same when viewed from the north or south. When viewed from the east or west, the sprites are simply mirrored. |
| 260 | * {{Arcology}}: |
| 261 | ** The ''Plymouth Arco'', invented in 2000, is "Solid as a Rock", or so claims Plymouth Arcologies, Inc. It's known that they have stood through several earthquakes, notably in the [=NeoRepublic=] of Mexico and the Taiwan [=CoProsperity=] Region. Plymouth Arcologies are designed primarily to support heavy industries, as visually demonstrated by the [[{{Squick}} sewage and pollution literally oozing down the grungy outer walls]] of its obelisk-like design. [[CyberPunk Combined with the giant television screen built at the base, this arcology and its 55,000 industrious citizens has a distinct 80s dystopian cyberpunk theme going for it.]] |
| 262 | ** Going in the complete opposite direction from [[ScienceIsBad its predecessor]], the ''Forest Arcology'', invented in 2050, is a series of habitat rings built on top of each other, and is named for its attractive forest setting on the top level. Throughout the structure, citizens utilize recycling, operate ecologically sound industries, and maintain a [[LuddWasRight rich verbal heritage that replaces television and radio]]. Unfortunately, the youth of Forest Arcos are bored silly and roam out into your city where they stare mindlessly at soap operas and sports programs displayed in the electronics department at local malls. Most of its 30,000 residents are [[NewAgeRetroHippie tree-hugging hippies]]. |
| 263 | ** Invented in 2100 is the ''[[NamesToRunAwayFromReallyFast Darco]]'' -- slang for "[[FunWithAcronyms De-Urbanized Arcological Construct]]". Originally designed by the [[TheyCalledMeMad twisted genius]] of Dante [=McCallavre=], the artist/architect proclaimed it a reactionary response to the rigid, archetypal arcologies of his day. No one really knows what this means, and many engineers are frankly baffled at how the thing stays standing. Inside, the ill-lit corridors twist into [[AlienGeometry odd, meandering corkscrews that mysteriously turn back on themselves. Non-Euclidean would be the best way to describe it.]] There are rumors that a [[TheMorlocks strange sub-species of man inhabits the air ducts]]. The Darco can attract up to 45,000 [[TooDumbToLive brave]] souls. |
| 264 | ** ''"Launch" Arcologies'', invented in 2150, were nicknamed for their resemblance to modern orbital launchers. The resemblance is not entirely coincidental, as sophisticated methods of biological support were necessary to oxygenate and feed the thousands of inhabitants. While never tested, the manufacturers claim the occupants could stay self-contained for up to two decades. The sides of the arcology are equipped with vernier jets to [[BlatantLies stabilize the structure during storms and earthquakes]]. A small nuclear facility independently powers the building; spare energy is stored by electrolyzing water into two tanks for oxygen and hydrogen. The "Launch Arco" holds 65,000 inhabitants, but are also the most expensive to build. Build 450 of these in your city and the Exodus will occur. All of the launch arcos will explode, demolishing themselves while a message appears on your screen: "Your launch arcos have departed into space to find new worlds. You have been compensated for the construction." Note: building 450 of them will take up roughly 90% of your entire city's area, meaning you will need to destroy most of what you've already built just to accommodate them. This is, however, considered the unofficial "Win Condition" in [[EndlessGame a technically unwinnable, unending game]]. |
| 265 | * ArtisticLicenseMedicine: |
| 266 | ** The newspaper in ''[=SimCity=] 2000'' prints [[WordSaladHumor random nonsense]], such as bogus medical advice for earwax build-uppus, hypertension, llama pox, or pimples. |
| 267 | ---> ''Â Â Â Â According to the [source], everyone should be aware of the early warning signs of [disease]. These signs can include: vomiting up [second disease], loss of [body part] control and occasional fits of guppy violence.\ |
| 268 | Â Â Â Â "If you are experiencing all of these symptoms, then it's probably a [adjective] idea to take massive amounts of medication," representatives say.'' |
| 269 | ** The newspaper may also warn about "prolonged contact with any kind of [[SelfDeprecation simulated city]]." |
| 270 | * ArtisticLicenseHistory: |
| 271 | ** The Newspaper can mention things which are anachronistic to the time period your city is currently in. For instance, the news will sometimes mention communist takeovers (In Zaire) or tank columns being destroyed by rebels in a war... In 1903. Sometimes, you will have snippets which describe programmers and computers, completely oblivious to the time period your city is in. |
| 272 | ** Sometimes, a picture of 2 Vietnam-War era soldiers or a bunch of 80s protestors is shown in the newspapers- again, completely oblivious to the time period. |
| 273 | ** Somewhat averted with period-accurate utilities only being available within their specific time period (i.e, oil power plants are only available after the 1930s, while airports are available after the 1950s). Despite this, there are no graphics changes to represent cars or different building styles, and newspapers can say completely anachronistic things which do not match the time period of the city you're currently in. |
| 274 | * BerserkButton: Do NOT cut transit funding in ''[=SimCity=] 2000''. [[SchmuckBait You will regret this.]] |
| 275 | * {{Bizarrchitecture}}: The "Darco" [[Main/{{Arcology}} arcology]] in ''2000'' is said to be designed around what is best described as non-Euclidian. There's also rumors that a [[Main/{{Morlocks}} sub-species of human]] crawls around in the depths within. |
| 276 | * BlandNameProduct: The newspaper in ''[=SimCity=] 2000'' mentions some fake names. Journalists may win a Bullitzer (not a Pulitzer). Professors can receive the Nodel Peace Prize (not the Nobel Prize in Medicine). Athletes may win a gold medal at the International Games (not the Olympic Games). The game scenario for Barcelona mentions the 1992 Global Games (not the 1992 Summer Olympics). |
| 277 | * CargoShip: The newspaper in ''[=SimCity=] 2000'' discusses this {{in universe}} (and PlayedForLaughs), under the headline "Man Loves Computer". A man in a LoveTriangle spends more time with his computer (who has a female name) than with his wife. |
| 278 | * CheatCode: Older versions of ''[=SimCity=] 2000'' have codes that unlock all perks (including [[Main/{{Arcology}} Arcologies]]) and give you a pile of money. There's also the classic "double fund" code where you buy two municipal bonds via "fund", then one through the city management menu, triggering a {{Good Bad Bug|s}} where you end up with a loan with a ludicrous ''negative'' interest, meaning you get piles of money you'll probably never run out of every year. |
| 279 | * CreatorCameo: Using the Query Tool on a sailboat will result in a caption naming the boat "First Light", and listing the captain as J. Scirica, who was the then-Vice President of Product Development at Maxis. |
| 280 | * CriticalExistenceFailure: In at least ''2000'', a newspaper article quotes a scientist who cites a law of physics stating that all forms of power generation will instantaneously collapse exactly fifty years after they're built. This happens to be true for every power plant except hydroelectric and wind. Make sure you budget for replacement power plants. |
| 281 | * CyberCyclops: The Monster is one of the flying alien laser-shooting variety. |
| 282 | * DeadlyGas: In ''[=SimCity=] 2000'', volcanoes and chemical tanks that were destroyed by fire unleashed a big cloud of noxious smoke onto your city, which caused any building it touched to immediately abandon. The debug menu even had a disaster, called Toxic Spill, that spawned a whole bunch of them at once. ''[=SimCity=] 3000 Unlimited'' upped the ante by introducing the Toxic Cloud disaster, which dumped acid rain so potent that it ''[[HollywoodAcid dissolved]]'' any building under it. |
| 283 | * EasyModeMockery: A minor example in the ''[=SimCity=] 2000'' instruction manual. The manual at one point says that you have the option of turning disasters off...''"if you're a wimp"''. |
| 284 | * EldritchAbomination: The Monster in ''2000''. It's unclear whether it's a robot, a LivingShip, or even if it's actually from outer space and not just a movie prop gone berserk. |
| 285 | * HatedByAll: [[DownplayedTrope Downplayed]] and PlayedForLaughs with the Tax Advisor (from the Budget screen). Anytime you ask him for advice, his dialogue will be accompanied by the sound of a crowd booing (and he's apparently the only advisor who gets this treatment). And it doesn't matter what he says, as they will ''still'' boo him even if he advises you to ''lower'' taxes. Then again, it's kind of justified since he ''is'' trying to influence your decisions that could affect the financial well-being of your citizens. |
| 286 | * HoistByHisOwnPetard: Rioters can be snuffed out by fires that they started themselves. |
| 287 | * IWantMyJetpack: The old [=SimCity=] ''2000'' manual tells players not to "come to us in 2050 and complain that we don't have fusion power yet." |
| 288 | * KillSat: One of the disasters in ''2000'' is a microwave satellite missing the power plant it's supposed to beam energy to, and instead [[DeathFromAbove blasting your city.]] |
| 289 | * LeaningOnTheFourthWall: The newspaper in ''[=SimCity=] 2000'' may warn about "prolonged contact with any kind of simulated city." Better stop playing ''[=SimCity=]'' now. |
| 290 | * LevelEditor: |
| 291 | ** An interesting example in regards to ''[=SimCopter=]'' and ''Streets of [=SimCity=]'', which load ''[=SimCity=] 2000'' levels, thus making ''[=SC2000=]'' a level editor for them. |
| 292 | ** As for ''[=SimCity=] 2000'' itself, there was a program called ''[=SimCity=] Urban Renewal Kit'' (or simply called [[FunWithAcronyms "SCURK"]]) which was either sold as a stand-alone product or included with certain "special editions" of ''[=SimCity=] 2000'' and ''Streets of [=SimCity=]''. The Urban Renewal Kit allowed you to place buildings, roads, water, trees, and so on anywhere you like [[RuleOfFun regardless of whether it would make the city functional or not]] (for ''[=SimCopter=]'' and ''Streets of [=SimCity=]'' levels or to even make a city you could print out as a physical picture). It also included a pixel editor for objects so you could change the appearance of buildings, which could be imported into ''[=SimCity=] 2000'' as building sets. |
| 293 | * MascotMook: The Monster in this game shows up pretty much all over the place, from the main menu to the GBA port's help screens. It's so iconic, it's impossible to think about ''[=SimCity=] 2000'' without thinking about the Monster. Which is funny, since the Monster ''rarely'' shows up in-game, unless you deliberately activate it with the Disasters menu. |
| 294 | * ShowWithinAShow: A game within a game. The newspaper in ''[=SimCity=] 2000'' reports that school students may play mayor in a city simulation game. Some students go to the school nurse, afraid that they might live in a simulation. |
| 295 | * WordSaladHumor: The newspaper stories in ''2000'' can delve into this as a result of being semi-randomly generated. Remember when that star lacrosse player suffered a twisted kidney and a fractured uvula, or that scare about bogus handbags being sold as a snake oil cure for textured pimples? |
| 296 | * WritersCannotDoMath: The newspaper in ''[=SimCity=] 2000'' cannot do math. Journalists just insert random numbers in their stories. So the "fifth" microwave accident in history can happen after the "ninth" one. Or this: "The victory all but assures August River a berth in the playoffs for the seventh time in 28 years and would only be trip number 3 in the history of the franchise." |
| 297 | [[/folder]] |
| 298 | |
| 299 | [[folder:''[=SimCity 3000=]'']] |
| 300 | * BlandNameProduct: |
| 301 | ** Some of the larger buildings in ''[=SimCity=] 3000'' and later are modelled after real world buildings, but named differently. For instance, 450 Sutter appears as "Vu Financial" and the Pacific Telephone & Telegraph Building (also known as 150 New Montgomery Street) is "The Galvin Corp". Some may even recognise Battersea Power Station as the form of the Coal Power Plants. |
| 302 | * CheatCode: [=SimCity 3000=] displays a cheat code entry menu when you hit [Ctrl][Alt][Shift][C]. The codes can usually be found online. |
| 303 | * ColorCodedForYourConvenience: Zoned buildings of each different wealth tier and density level in the American tileset have a different dominant color. Tall red brick high-rises means high density middle-class, pastel-colored condominiums means rich high density, light green grass means middle-class or rich low density depending on the size of the lawn, dark brown factories means high density heavy industry, and light gray factories means high density modern industry. |
| 304 | * [[CorruptCorporateExecutive Corrupt Civil Executive]]: Your advisors in ''[=SimCity=] 3000'' tend to give advice based or factors in their area of interest without any regard for the big picture, meaning they occasionally suggest somethat that's good for, say, public transport but would cripple the city as a whole. The manual [[{{Handwave}} handwaves]] this by suggesting they may have an agenda (which only results in paranoia over whether their advice is trustworthy even ''within'' their area of interest). |
| 305 | * CropCircles: The FlyingSaucer in ''3000'' will sometimes create crop circles in wheat fields. |
| 306 | * DownOnTheFarm: Under [[GuideDangIt specific conditions,]] it's possible to get farms in your Light Industrial zones instead of the usual factories. It's much harder to get and keep them than in ''[=SimCity=] 4'', though, because you might get farms and dirty industry mixed together in the same zone, which typically drives the farmers out due to pollution. |
| 307 | * NoCelebritiesWereHarmed: |
| 308 | ** The portrait of the Green Gaians spokesman looks like actor Howard Hesseman- known for playing Dr, Johnny Fever on ''[=WKRP=]'' though the portrait looks almost identical to his appearance on ''Dragnet'' as a hippie. |
| 309 | ** One of the neighboring mayors looks like weatherman Al Roker, while another bears a strong resemblance to Fred Rogers- one of your advisors looks a fair bit like his puppet Lady Elaine Fairchild, as well. |
| 310 | * SecretTestOfCharacter: Typing "call cousin vinnie" in the cheat console will trigger an event where a shady woman called Vinnie will offer you a large sum of money acquired through dubiously legal means. If you accept, you will simply get $100,000 with no strings attached. If you refuse, she will ask you to type "zyxwvu" on the cheat console to get the [=SimCity=] Castle on your reward buildings, which will crank up its surrounding land value to Astronomical and put your local approval rating all the way to maximum. |
| 311 | * TruthInTelevision: 3000 has what's known as a industrial pollutant impact fee, or carbon tax, which fills the city's coffers at the price of commerce and industry suffering. This has become a rather contentious issue in Australia and other countries where such a tax is causing businesses to close down. |
| 312 | * UngratefulBastard: In ''3000'', due to an unexplained bug, when your city's population reaches above 250,000, your citizens will constantly complain about the taxes being too high, ''even if you set the rates to exactly zero percent!'' This makes it seem like your citizens are an in-universe version of an UnpleasableFanbase. |
| 313 | ** Justifiable (to a degree) in ''3000'' because well planned large cities with high land values can have large positive cashflows (a tax rate complaint trigger) even with across the board 1% tax rates. The zero percent tax rate complaining, however, is a bug. |
| 314 | [[/folder]] |
| 315 | |
| 316 | |
| 317 | [[folder:''[=SimCity=] 4'']] |
| 318 | * AllThereInTheManual: The manual that comes with the game is an excellent way to play ''[=SimCity=] 4'' well, if you read it thoroughly. |
| 319 | * AmbulanceChaser: Instead of driving an accident victim to a hospital, the "evil" ambulance mission has you driving them to a lawyer's office first. |
| 320 | * AppleForTeacher: The symbol for an education building's grade is 5 apples. If all apples are full, the building is second to none, if none are full, it's garbage. |
| 321 | * {{Arcadia}}: Keep your city small, focus on agricultural development [[note]] or high-tech industry [[/note]], clean energy, plant lots of trees and build lots of parks and you have your own Arcadia. One reward, the Resort Hotel, only unlocks if you have little pollution. |
| 322 | * ArtificialStupidity: Drivers in ''4'' will take the shortest path, not necessarily the fastest one ([[TruthInTelevision much like real drivers]]), resulting in gridlock. The Network Addon Mod, in fact, makes a point of entirely rewriting the pathfinding algorithm to use the fastest path. |
| 323 | ** Without mods, the special Sims you can place in your city will get ''lost'' trying to find their work when it's ''across the freaking road!'' |
| 324 | ** Even worse, due to how the path finding engine works, [[http://www.simtropolis.com/forum/messageview.cfm?catid=22&threadid=75769&STARTPAGE=2&FTVAR_FORUMVIEWTMP=Linear#1404384 your commuters can be caught in an infinite loop]] while ignoring jobs in your own city. Ever wondered why nobody wants to work in your city? This is probably why. |
| 325 | * ArtisticLicenseLaw: Criminals caught by the police will go to prison even if you have no Courthouse in town, or even in the region, to give them a trial, which is a big no-no in most justice systems around the world. Possible subversion: That said, [[RealityIsUnrealistic in real life it's not uncommon for the courthouse to be combined with something else]], like the City Hall[[note]]Prominent example: Up until the completion of the [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Justice_Juanita_Kidd_Stout_Center_for_Criminal_Justice Criminal Justice Center]] in 1994, most criminal trials in UsefulNotes/{{Philadelphia}}--one of the 5 largest cities in the United States at the time--were held in the [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philadelphia_City_Hall Philadelphia City Hall]]. Please note that even after criminal functions were moved to the CJC, City Hall is still primarily a courthouse--it's just that the relevant trials are civil rather than criminal. (City government functions are mostly located in two nearby municipal office buildings or in rented space.)[[/note]] (pretty easy to get in this game) or even the police station. Perhaps the assumption is that this is what's going on. |
| 326 | * ArtisticLicenseNuclearPhysics: in ''[=SimCity=] 4'', nuke plants explode with a [[UsefulNotes/NuclearWeapons mushroom cloud]] and leave behind a glowing crater and a Chernobyl-tier exclusion zone, contrasting earlier editions that merely rendered the surrounding area uninhabitable. This may be [[InvokedTrope deliberate]], given that the effect [[TheCoconutEffect is expected.]] |
| 327 | * AwesomeButImpractical: A lot of the rewards fall under this: |
| 328 | ** The Movie Studio is technically free to build and maintain, but takes quite a lot of space (and is one of the last rewards to unlock, by that time the map is likely filled in), consumes relatively large amounts of resources for a relatively weak landmark effect. It does look good and adds some flair to the city. |
| 329 | ** The Country Fair. You'll need to heavily invest in farms to unlock it. It's a large lot that increases crime and drives away residential development from its vicinity (essentially being an "anti-park"). However it has positive impact on commercial development and mayor rating, and has the most complex animated 3D models, and looks pretty great. |
| 330 | ** The Bureau of Bureaucracy requires you to boost your healthcare and education funding to 100% to unlock... and just gives a decent landmark effect while generating lots of garbage (you can lower the funding to a more reasonable level once you have unlocked it). |
| 331 | ** The Opera House (which functions as a school under the hood, boosting education) has low-capacity (1200), no funding slider and doesn't actually tell you about its capacity, meaning it will eventually get over-capacity without you knowing or being able to do anything about it, which will slowly drag down your city's education level. That's right, if an opera is constantly sold-out of tickets then everyone in the city somehow slowly becomes a moron. Thankfully a fanmade patch fixes this. |
| 332 | ** Landmark buildings, they essentially are there to look awesome, increase commercial desirability, boost your mayor rating, and cost a lot to build and maintain. |
| 333 | * BlindIdiotTranslation: The French version of the game translated the "Fire" disaster as "Tirer" (as in "fire a gun") instead of the correct "Feu". |
| 334 | * BoringButPractical: |
| 335 | ** The Farmers Market, it's [[ExactlyWhatItSaysOnTheTin literally just a Farmers Market]], but it's small (3x3 tiles), it gives some residential demand cap relief and provides a passive, city-wide health benefit. |
| 336 | ** The Smoke Detector ordinance is extremely cheap and lowers the risk of fires. Useful in the early game where you don't necessarily have the money to have fire stations everywhere. |
| 337 | ** Coal Power Plants have the best "bang-for-your-buck" ratio of all power plants, standing at 0.04 Simoleon per megawatt. They're only balanced by their insane pollution. |
| 338 | ** Humble streets, they cost very little but don't have high capacity or speed limits. Use them in residential areas to create quiet suburbs (where having high traffic is [[CaptainObvious undesirable]] anyway) that feed into larger capacity roads, avenues and highways (a real life urbanism trick known as "[[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Road_hierarchy road hierarchy]]"). |
| 339 | * BunnyEarsLawyer: Yourself; assuming you are halfway competent, the city's residents will happily overlook your golfing in office hours and your toga parties. They're probably just happy you aren't [[VideoGameCrueltyPotential the other type of mayor]]. |
| 340 | * CatUpATree: 4 has U-Drive-It missions that either have you saving them with fire trucks or [[CatsHateWater hosing them down]] on [[EvilGenius Dr. Vu's]] [[EvilIsPetty orders]]. |
| 341 | * ChurchOfSaintGenericus: The unlockable "House of Worship" are vaguely Christian but otherwise have no specified religion, letting the player fill in the blanks. |
| 342 | * ColonyDrop: In ''[=SimCity 4=]'', one of the disasters is a meteor strike. |
| 343 | * CreepyCemetery: ZigZagged, cemeteries are unlocked as population grows, they have a strong park effect (meaning people like living next to it) and clear some air pollutions. They're also free to build and cost nothing to maintain, so there's only benefits to building them. Cemeteries will spawn zombies and ghosts as an EasterEgg, but they're perfectly harmless. |
| 344 | * CrutchCharacter: Well, Crutch Industry. Agriculture is this, every city starts with lots of agricultural demand and it's cheap to zone and provides some low-wealth jobs, which isn't a problem since low-wealth Sims are what you'll start with anyway. Farms give zero air pollution, but they pollute the water like crazy, except water pollution isn't a problem early on since you don't need water to jump start your city. And with enough farms you can unlock the [[BoringButPractical Farmers Market]] and [[AwesomeButImpractical Country Fair]]. The problem is that farms take lots of space for the small amount of jobs and taxes they give and unless you want to lead a rural community of uneducated hicks you'll need to switch to another job source eventually. |
| 345 | ** The "Legalize Gambling" ordinance, it gives you a measly 100$ per month, which is useful when you start the city and are scraping for every Simoleon, and it increases crime by 20%, but crime is not an issue anyway in the early game. The problem is that the 100$ per month doesn't scale with your city's growth unlike other ordinances, and eventually the 20% extra crime will start to hurt, so it's a good idea to cancel the ordinance after a while. |
| 346 | ** Windmills are a perfectly viable alternative to Coal Power Plants early on to power a settlement, but they have the highest cost-per-megawatt of all power solutions (0.25 Simoleons per megawatt) meaning that as the city grows it's simply not possible for windpower to scale up to fulfill the needs of the city. |
| 347 | * DealWithTheDevil: Business Deals are essentially this. If your city is performing poorly financially, your budget advisor will propose you make deals to build structures that generate revenue but have a mix of drawbacks and positive effects. These include the Casino, Army Base, Toxic Waste Dump, Federal Prison and the Missile Range. Unusually for this trope, it's easy to get out of the deal, just bulldoze the building, although this tends to be expensive. |
| 348 | ** The Rush Hour expansion added Area 5.1, which is an Air Force Base that's actually the secret evil lair of Dr. Vu. |
| 349 | * DifficultButAwesome: |
| 350 | ** In ''4'', it's often common strategy to just [[ComplacentGamingSyndrome play on the biggest map possible and develop a large self-sufficient city on it]]. However, actually sitting down to split up your region into various functioning roles can result in having varied means of keeping pollution and crime very low and restricted to only specific cities. |
| 351 | ** The Hydrogen Power Plant is effectively this, its actual cost per Megawatt isn't that great (tying with Solar as the second highest, only wind power is less efficient). However it can generate truly colossal amounts of energy. It's best used to power several cities through neighbor deals. |
| 352 | * DiscOneNuke: All you need to do to unlock the Tourist Trap (see LethalJokeItem below) is have at least 40 000 people in the ''region'', 6 connected cities in the entire region and connections with 4 different cities. In a well-developed region you'll sometimes unlock it immediately when you start some cities depending on where they're located. |
| 353 | ** With the U-Drive It missions in the ''Rush Hour'' expansion you can unlock some otherwise late-game buildings ''very'' early in the game. Particularly egregious is the Casino [[note]] Normally unlocks at 24 000 residents if you have the Legalized Gambling ordinance active[[/note]] which you can unlock with a Mayor's Limo mission, which itself is unlocked when you build the Mayor's House, ''which you get at 500 residents''. Another example is the "Sick Bus Driver" mission, where you drive a bus around a few bus stops in your city (trivial to set-up) to unlock the Convention Center, which would normally require a large airport along with other things. |
| 354 | * DonutMessWithACop: One LoadingScreen joke is about predicting how many pastries your city's cops will eat. |
| 355 | * DownOnTheFarm: You can {{invoke|dTrope}} and {{enforce|dTrope}} this in ''4'' with Agricultural Industry Zones. |
| 356 | * DrillSergeantNasty: Press the spacebar while driving the Army Truck and you'll hear a drill sergeant yelling in [[SpeakingSimlish Simlish]]. |
| 357 | * DynamicLoading: ''4'' employs dynamic loading failure to reduce memory consumption, rendering only the part of the map where the camera is focused on. If the camera moves to another part of the map, the rendered data at the first area is erased while the game renders the second area. With the proper settings, even the largest maps can be played on mid-end computers. The game will ''always'' render the ground first, before generating low-resolution copies of any objects, such as buildings, roads and trees, in the area and finally adding in all the details and eye-candy. The entire rendering process in one area can take anywhere from one to as long as ten seconds depending on how many objects are present and how much processing power and memory the computer running ''4'' has. |
| 358 | * FragileSpeedster: Some civilian vehicles in U-Drive It missions are pretty fast, but a few collisions with other vehicles will destroy them. |
| 359 | * GameBreakingBug: The Opera house has a hidden capacity value that's quite low (1200 Sims, though this is balanced by only having the oldest Sims actually attend the opera) and its funding can't be adjusted. When it reaches capacity it will start dragging down the IQ of the entire city, which can be crippling for a late game city, and if you haven't heard about this bug it's hard to figure out the Opera house is responsible. Thankfully patches exist. |
| 360 | ** The infamous I-HT (High-Tech Industry) bug. Due to the under-the-hood calculations the game makes for how many jobs a lot gives, many of the high-tech industries actually don't hire any wealthy Sims like they're supposed to do while still contributing to increase demand, meaning the only viable option for giving jobs to wealthy Sims is with office jobs and the occasional jobs from civic buildings. Like most bugs a fanmade patch for this issue exists. |
| 361 | ** If you have at least 3 cities that are all interconnected, due to the way job commuting is calculated, Sims can end up in a "[[https://tl.net/blogs/403386-simcity-4-tutorial-part-4#1 commuter loop]]" between each city, never actually getting jobs. It's thankfully fairly easy to avoid this bug if you know about it, though this may require sacrificing "realistic" city planning. |
| 362 | * HeadbuttingHeroes: Many of the advisors; most specifically, the Utilities and Environment advisors despise each other. |
| 363 | ** Camille Meadows, the Environment advisor, will go ''over your head'' and shut down a water tower if it is too polluted. Jonas Sparks, the Utilities advisor, recommends that you place a nice, noisy water pump directly outside her office as retaliation. |
| 364 | * HolidayMode: If you ever played Sim City 4 on Christmas Day (or set your computer's clock to December 25), cities built at higher elevations will have snow blanketing the landscape. |
| 365 | * ImAHumanitarian: A U-Drive It mission for [[BigBad Dr. Vu]] has you drive a hearse to steal a corpse and brink it to a factory for it to be turned into "[[Film/SoylentGreen Simlent Orange]]". |
| 366 | * KarmaMeter: The driving missions in ''Rush Hour'' can turn your Mayor Rating into one, as it will increase or decrease depending on what missions you perform. |
| 367 | * [[LethalJokeItem Lethal Joke Building]]: The Tourist Trap reward building from ''[=SimCity=] 4''. This seemingly useless llama-shaped building known for its far-spitting llama boosts the demand caps for low-wealth residents by a whopping 100,000, which makes it incredibly useful for building large cities. Although it has a slight [[NotInMyBackyard NIMBY]] effect on residential zones, it increases the desirability of nearby commercial zones by a significant amount. Commercial high-rises and skyscrapers seem to cluster around it as if it were a capitalist idol. |
| 368 | * MadeOfIron: Tanks in U-Drive It missions. They have lots of HP and can... well... tank a lot of hits from other road vehicles, meaning you can simply plow through traffic without worrying about exploding for a while. |
| 369 | * NewAgeRetroHippie: Camille Meadows the environmental activist has shades of this. |
| 370 | * OnlySaneMan: Neil Fairbanks - your City Planning advisor - is the only advisor who is actually remotely neutral. Every other advisor myopically focuses on their own aspect of the city. |
| 371 | * PassedInTheirSleep: If the sim you placed in your society dies from natural causes, they will die in this way, being replaced by a GenerationXerox descendant. |
| 372 | * PerpetualPoverty: In [=SimCity=] ''4'', it is possible to build up a city and its population to a point where everyone is highly educated and live to be 90+, all industry is high tech and there are plenty of skyscrapers with offices providing jobs for the rich and middle class. The player can even enact ordinances banning dirty industry and only zone high density industrial to keep pollution away. Unfortunately, the game engine punishes the player for this: it's almost necessary to have low income residents working in dirty factories somewhere or the player loses a potentially hefty chunk of tax revenue and the city's economy will never reach its full growth potential. It's made worse when a rich and highly educated city has such high land values that new enormous opulent apartment blocks are frequently built that are completely unsustainable and are almost immediately abandoned or turn dilapidated and ugly because only poor residents move in. |
| 373 | * RagsToRiches: To an absurd level, give your newly founded city some water, build an elementary school, a clinic, a small police station, a small fire station and a park or two (you know, things that pretty much every normal small city has) and watch as several luxurious mansions grow in your town, since having basic services apparently makes a town some sort of utopia that the rich will flock to. |
| 374 | * SchmuckBait: Confused why [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nDJzf5jqccw "Primordial Dream"]] is left unchecked by default and decide to check it anyway ''without'' playing the song first? Have fun playing the game while listening to the frankly out-of-place ''creepy'' track the entire game, ''because it will be the only one that will play if you do decide to check it!'' |
| 375 | * ShapedLikeItself: The [[ObstructiveBureaucracy Bureau of Bureaucracy]] building in ''[=SimCity=] 4''. [[DepartmentOfRedundancyDepartment It's the bureau that handles bureaucracy]]. |
| 376 | ** And the query sound for it: Office ambience (ringing phones, fax machines, chatter) with loud snoring. |
| 377 | * SpritePolygonMix: An unusual case: The game's buildings use simple 3D models whose textures are DigitizedSprites made with more complex ones. At first, it just looks like the buildings are simply pre-rendered sprites, but [[https://i.redd.it/qbpzjmce2hsc1.png modding the camera]] reveals what's really going on. |
| 378 | * StealingFromTheTill: If your city is profitable, Monique Diamond - your financial advisor - states that she'll overlook your Mayoral embezzlement. It's only fair, seeing as she is hinted to be doing the same herself. |
| 379 | * SurprisinglyCreepyMoment: "Primordial Dream", an ''extremely creepy song''... and it's only purpose? Playing over the ''empty barren wasteland after you obliterate the city!'' [[SchmuckBait Here]], [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nDJzf5jqccw have a listen!]] |
| 380 | * TakeThatAudience: The loading screen message "Pixelating Nude Patch" is a jab at ''VideoGame/TheSims'' modders who remove the pixelation effect from nude Sims. |
| 381 | * UselessUsefulSpell: The Carpool Incentive Program ordinance is bugged and doesn't do anything. It's supposed to reduce traffic. |
| 382 | ** The Nuclear Free Zone ordinance is just useless. It prevents you from building nuclear power plants, but the game is a CommandAndConquerEconomy so you can simply ''not build any'' if you hate them so much. It gives a small boost to agricultural demand, but agricultural demand is ridiculously easy to generate anyway, and it also boosts Mayor Rating a bit, but Mayor Rating can be raised in other ways, like playing the game correctly. On the downside it hurts High-Tech industrial demand, which is incredibly more useful. |
| 383 | * WorkingOnTheChainGang: If you build a Jail you will see prisoners working on adjacent streets under the supervision of police officers. |
| 384 | * WretchedHive: Caused by a bug in how the crime system functions, large lots like International Airports and the Military Base are considered major crime magnets by the game even if there is technically no more or less crime happening there. Even if you surround the airport with ludicrously well-funded Deluxe Police Stations the public safety advisor will constantly warn you that the area is a den of criminals. |
| 385 | * ZombieApocalypse: Shows up as a joke in Simcity 4 if you build a cemetery, zombies and ghosts will walk around your city. It's harmless. |
| 386 | ** One of Dr. Vu's mission has you take a crop duster to spray zombie dust on a cemetery. It's once again harmless but you lose some Mayor's Rating. |
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