.KEYWORD simcity
.FLYINGHEAD GAME REVIEW
.TITLE SimCity for your Palm device
.FEATURE
.SPOTLIGHT FIGALT simcity-cover.gif
.AUTHOR Jason Perlow
.SUMMARY Maxis Software’s SimCity is the title that started the entire "Sim" genre back in the late 1980s. Now, with the help of French developer Atelier Software, it’s finally come to the Palm Computing platform. Contributing Editor Jason Perlow gives you the run-down on the Palm version of this PC classic.
SimCity was one of the very first games I ever bought for the IBM PC — in fact, it’s the game that finally convinced me that IBM compatibles were good for something other than balancing Lotus 1-2-3 spreadsheets, running WordPerfect, and keeping track of personal records with Paradox. That was back in 1989. My, how times have changed.
If you’ve never played some variant of SimCity on any kind of computer, then you’re probably not a gamer. It’s the epitome of software toys, the kind of game that you keep playing and playing and playing all over again because it is infinitely replayable and almost impossible to pull yourself away from. The premise is simple – build a city, get people to come live in it, get them to buy stuff, make places for them to work, and then tax them to death. Sound easy? Ask New York Mayor Rudolph Giuliani.
The Palm Computing Port of SimCity is suitable for any Palm organizer running Palm OS 3.0 or later, like Palm III, Palm IIIx, or Palm V. You’ll need 230K of free memory to install the software. It comes on a 3.5" disk, and is available in English, French and German.
The Palm device version of SimCity is based on the original "Classic" version. It has a simpler economic and city planning model than some of the newer versions like SimCity 2000 and SimCity 3000. But the game is still as addicting and challenging as ever, given the simplification that’s required in order to run it on the Palm platform.
Most of the game is run from the main map screen, where you start off constructing a power plant, of which you have your choice of Coal or Nuclear. Coal plants are cheaper than nuclear plants, but over time they generate a lot of pollution. Nuclear plants don’t give off pollution and produce a lot more power than coal plants, but your SimCitizens don’t particularly like living anywhere near any kind of power plant (especially nukes), so you want to keep them far away from your city center.
Once you’ve built a power plant, you start zoning your city. There are three types of zones: Residential, Commercial, and Industrial. How and where you place these zones will be a major factor in whether your city becomes a New York, a Newark, a Detroit or a Belgrade.
Zones are square areas that you place on your map, and they need to be supplied with interconnected power lines or placed next to each other to receive power from your power plants. You have to build roads around them or the SimCitizens won’t be able to get anywhere.
The kinds of zones you build and when you build them is determined by the zone demand indicator, which is located on the upper right part of your screen. When SimCitizens demand new housing, new places to shop, or new places to manufacture things, you’ll be able to find out because the zone demand indicator has a bar graph that shows just how much they want it. Bars pointing upward indicate a positive demand while bars pointing downward indicate a negative demand.
Besides building zones, you can build rail lines, seaports, airports, parks, and stadiums to keep your SimCitizens happy and to inject income into the city. You also need to build Police and Fire Departments in strategic areas to deal with crime and to fight fires. You can pull up the Crime and Fire Coverage maps at any time to see if your city is getting sufficient Police or fire coverage, but beware – the more infrastructure you add to your city, the more it costs to support it and the more cash you use building stuff. By default, all funding is set at 100 percent, which is the amount of money it takes to run everything at 100 percent efficiency. When times are lean and you need cash, you can change your budget and decrease the level of committed funds. But if you skimp for too long, your infrastructure starts falling apart, and eventually people start to get pissed off.
Figure A shows that you can check your approval ratings at any time by choosing the "eval" menu and find out what your SimCitizens are kvetching about the most. You can also increase or lower tax rates to generate income or to provide incentives for people and businesses to move in. Balancing all these economic factors in order to keep your city healthy and bustling with people is a constant challenge.
.FIG A You can check your approval ratings in SimCity.
SimCity is great on the Palm Platform because you don’t have to commit too much time to it if you don’t want to. However, you’ll probably find yourself compelled to play it whenever you have idle time. You can play with it for a few minutes at a time during coffee and bathroom breaks, waiting for the train, and when you’re sitting in some awful meeting that’s been going on way too long and you need a distraction. Your current game is always saved, and your city is always there when you come back from doing some other kind of Palm-related activity.
If you’ve been hankering for a game for your Palm device that is a real challenge, provides good use for those little crannies of dullness during your day, and has infinite possibilities, SimCity is the game for you.
.BEGIN_SIDEBAR
.H1 Product availability and resources
You can get SimCity for the Palm Computing platform at http://www.ateliersoftware.com.
.END_SIDEBAR
.BIO
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