simcity posts

It's been a long time since SimCity has seen a new numbered release. The latest in the franchise, SimCity Societies, almost completely forgoes the city aspect to forge into new territory for the series. Monte Cristo has taken up the mantle of the city simulation, and began work on the Cities series, which as seen two releases. The first is City Life, which was hammered for lack of content and general poor quality. The second is the recently released Cities XL, which attempts to revolutionize the city simulation genre by including an MMO-styled component. While ambitious and interesting, Cities XL still falls short of the depth and ease of Maxis' defining series, which is a shame, because it has a lot of potential that was simply overlooked or neglected.

Sometimes you just need to sit down, slide a floppy into your A: drive, and enjoy gaming retro style. We know this all too well! That's why we have a list of the best and brightest from days long gone. These are some of our favorite games of all time, and we're sure that you'll love them as much as we do, if not more. Welcome to Boot Disk, and enjoy the retro ride!

Today, Will Wright is known mostly for his life-simulation The Sims. The series as a whole is easily the most popular out of any he has worked on, and is the most popular series in PC gaming. It has a wide appeal, with the grandmother next door being just as likely to play it as the hardcore first-person shooter gamer you hang out with on Saturdays. This was not what launched his career, however. The series that catapulted Will Wright to super-stardom, as it were, is SimCity. While the classic series has four installments (SimCity Classic, SimCity 2000, SimCity 3000, SimCity 4), the game that defined the series was easily SimCity 2000. Changing the viewpoint to isometric, upping the graphical fidelity, and adding many new options turned a relatively simple urban planning game into a classic that endures to this day.

The economic news in the real world isn't good and it looks like its going to get worse before it gets better. While corporations go bankrupt and more people lose their jobs as a result, we at Big Download have to ask ourselves, "Why don't business people take more hints by playing games?"

Yes, there are a ton of different economic models in various PC games over the years. You can manage to grow a whole city from nothing in a game. You can even grow an entire nation or even a vast space empire through the use of managing your money and available resources. Indeed the in-game activities of certain MMO games can actually be felt in the "real world." Here's a quick look at how managing your money in certain games is a good thing. Perhaps our current political and economic leaders can learn a thing or two.

Click on the image above to continue reading Money Mattters - Finances and PC games

Welcome to MacMonday, a weekly column where we'll talk about issues related to gaming on Apple's platform beyond "Why isn't PC Game X coming out on the Mac?" In this inaugural edition, let's discuss Spore, Will Wright's latest masterpiece.

At this point in time, the closest we can get to playing Spore properly (until its release in September) is to download the Creature Creator demo. Like any downloadable, the first thing you'll want to do is check the required specs to make sure your box can run the game properly. When you come to that, however, you'll see that the specs make two requirements upfront: an Intel Core Duo Processor, leaving PowerPC Macs out of the loop, and OS X 10.5.3 Leopard. Let's take a look at what this means for Mac gamers.

It's been a relatively slow week here at Big Download. That said, we've still seen a handful of interesting files. The biggest rage: the demo version of GRID, a critically acclaimed racing game. We also have the 1.1 patch on hand. If racing isn't your thing, though, there are alternatives.

Yeah, we're twiddling our thumbs for the Spore creature creator too, but why not kill time with these other diversions? Have a great weekend!

	GRID eBay Motors Demo 1.1 Try out this acclaimed racing game from Codemasters, which includes excellent replay features.
	GRID 1.1 Retail Patch This fixes several bugs and performance issues in the retail version of GRID.
	Nancy Drew: The Phantom of Venice Demo The young supersleuth challenges the criminal underworld of Venice as she tracks down a thief in this adventure game.
	SimCity Societies Demo SimCity Societies reinvents the SimCity franchise by focusing on the social values of your city over economic concerns. EA released this demo to promote the upcoming Destinations expansion, and the SimCity Box compilation.
	LEGO Batman HD Nightwing Trailer Batman is back, but this time he's more funny than threatening. If you've previously played LEGO Star Wars or LEGO Indiana Jones, though, you know that's a recipe for awesome!

Yesterday, Amazon let slip that the Spore Creature Creator trial will be included in the forthcoming SimCity Box compilation. In the wake of that news, IGN sat down with Maxis marketing VP Patrick Buechner. Buechner exposed almost all the information you could want about Creature Creator.

It won't just come with the SimCity Box. The same trial that's in the Box will be freely available for download at www.spore.com "around the same day" (so, around June 23). Additionally, there will be a stand-alone retail version of Creator Creator with four times as many "creature-making parts." No word on how much that will cost.

Creature Creator users will be able to piece together, mold, and paint creature models. They'll be able to try those models out in a test area, and share them with friends. Also, anything they make can be imported in the release version of Spore, which will become available in North America and Europe early this September.

Earlier this year, we all learned of EA's plans to release a Spore creature creator program prior to the launch of Spore this fall. We wondered: is it a demo, a character-creation-menu of sorts, or something in between? More importantly -- when and how can we get our hands on it?

We might have an answer to the "when and how" bit now. Amazon.com's product page for the SimCity Box compilation features (or rather, featured; we'll get to that in a moment) an image of the box art for said compilation. In the top-right corner, you'll find these words: "BONUS! SPORE Creature Creator Trial Version Inside!"

The image has since been pulled, but it's all over the 'net now. So that brings us to the earlier question: is it a demo, or what? Either way, it's probably not worth spending $40 for if you've got all those SimCity games already. If you don't, it's actually not a bad deal. For everyone else; maybe it will become freely available further down the line.

[Via Joystiq]