The newspaper option provided many humorous stories as well as relevant ones, such as new technology, warnings about aging power plants, recent disasters and opinion polls (highlighting city problems). News comes in the form of several pre-written newspaper articles with variable names that could either be called up immediately or could be subscribed to on a yearly basis. Graphics were added for buildings under construction in the residential, commercial, and industrial zones, as well as darkened buildings depicting abandoned buildings as a result of urban decay. Querying a library and selecting 'Ruminate' displays an essay written by Neil Gaiman. Certain tiles also display additional information power plants, for example, display the percentage of power being consumed when queried, and querying roads displays the amount of traffic on that tile.

Using the query tool on tiles reveals information such as structure name and type, altitude, and land value. The budget controls are very important in running the city effectively.Īnother new addition in SimCity 2000 is the query tool. Enacting city ordinances and connecting to neighboring cities became possible. The budget and finance controls are also much more elaborate-tax rates can be set individually for residential, commercial and industrial zones. Players can build highways to neighboring cities to increase trade and the population. Most types of power plants have a limited life span and must be rebuilt periodically. There are a total of nine varieties of power plants in SimCity 2000, including coal, oil, natural gas, nuclear, wind turbines, hydroelectric dams (which can only be placed on waterfall tiles), solar and the futuristic fusion power and satellite microwave plant. Players can build highways, roads, bus depots, railway tracks, subways, train depots and zone land for seaports and airports. New types of facilities include prisons, schools, libraries, museums, marinas, hospitals and arcologies. It had a near-isometric dimetric view (similar to the earlier Maxis-published A-Train) instead of overhead, land could have different elevations, and underground layers were introduced for water pipes and subways. SimCity 2000 was a major extension of the concept. The unexpected and enduring success of the original SimCity, combined with the relative lack of success with other ' Sim' titles, finally motivated the development of a sequel. While its predecessor pioneered the city-building genre of video games, SimCity 2000 would become the model upon which subsequent urban simulators would be based over the course of the next decades.Ī screenshot of a city during an intermediate stage of the game An approximate total of 4.23 million copies of SimCity 2000 have been sold, mainly in the United States, Europe and Japan. SimCity 2000 was critically praised for its vibrant and detailed graphics, improved control menu, gameplay and music. Importance is put on increasing the standard of living of the population, maintaining a balance between the different sectors, and monitoring the region's environmental situation to prevent the settlement from declining and going bankrupt, as extreme deficit spending gets a game over. The objective of the game is to create a city, develop residential and industrial areas, build infrastructure and collect taxes for further development of the city. SimCity 2000 is played from an isometric perspective as opposed to the previous title, which was played from a top-down perspective.

It is the successor to SimCity Classic and was released for Apple Macintosh personal computers in 1993, after which it was released on other platforms over the following years, such as the Sega Saturn and SNES game consoles in 1995 and the PlayStation in 1996. SimCity 2000 is a city-building simulation video game jointly developed by Will Wright and Fred Haslam of Maxis.

Simcity 2000 browser