Today I switched on the Amiga 500 to play Amiga games and simultaneously record the gameplay to the LG VHS/DVD combo player. One of the game titles I played on the Amiga 500 was Sim City version 1.1.
The last time I played Sim City would have been back in 1997, twenty five years ago, before I gave my Amiga 500 away to a friend to make way for my first ever IBM computer with a 686 processor.
Sim City version 1.1 on the Amiga 500 is an amazing game! The game takes one minute to load on an A500 with 512K RAM memory expansion.
Sim City – City Builder Window
Sim City opens up in a DOS-like window and has the feel of the early Microsoft Windows 3.1 DOS programs that open up in their own windows. Sim City on the Amiga 500 uses two window panes. The main window is the City Builder Window where you can build parts of the city.
Sim City – Map & Graph Window
The main second window is the map and graph window, which serves as a pop-up window over the top of the Sim City Builder Window. To open the graphs window, navigate to the white bar at the top of the City Builder Window. Right click will bring up the Windows dropdown menu, which has the Map&Graph option.
The Map & Graph pop-up window can also be opened by navigating to the icons ribbon in the City Builder Window, located to the right side of the city map. Ironically, this icon appears to be two separate buttons, but in fact, the blue map on the left and the statistics graph on a white background to its right appear to be the same button.
The Map & Graph Window is broken up into two panes. The map pane allows you to see various graphs to evaluate how you are doing currently in Sim City. The graphs you can choose from are listed below.
- City Form
- Transit
- Population
- Crime
- Land Value
- Fire Protection
- Power Grid
- Zones
- Traffic
- Pollution
- Growth Rate
- Police Influence
The Map & Graph Window also has a statistics pane, which allows you to see forecasts 10 years or 120 years into the future. The forecasts you can choose from are listed below.
- Residential
- Commercial
- Industrial
- Crime
- Cash Flow (CF)
- Pollution
Sim City – Budget Window
Sim City also has pop-up Windows for the Fiscal Budget. There are options to set a tax rate, and to allocate a level of finances for fire, police and transit services, up to 100%.
Sim City – City Evaluation Window
Sim City also provides a pop-up Window for City Evaluation. This window provides valuable information on Public Opinion, Worst Problems, Statistics on population, net migration, assessed value, city category and game level, as well as Overall City Score.
Sim City Playability
Sim City on the Amiga 500 is still a great game. Sim City version 1.1 has a few basic options. You can build residential, industrial and commercial units, fire station, police station, airport, stadium, harbor, and green grass.
Sim City Gameplay
Ten minutes into playing Sim City, I realized that the game doesn’t have more options, other than the choice of either a nuclear or coal fired power plant. This means I was able to master the game concepts relatively quickly, and move on to build the city, and manage the books. It was interesting to have free reign to build a city.
Sim City Drawbacks
The only drawback in Sim City on the Amiga 500 is cash flow, whether you can make money or not. I only played Sim City for one hour, so I did not have a chance to test what happens when your budget goes in the red.
The other drawback of Sim City is boredom. With such a basic palette of city builder options, building a city becomes too predictable.
Natural Disasters In Sim City
Towards the end of the game I simulated natural disasters. There are six natural disasters to choose from.
- Fire
- Flooding
- Air Disaster
- Tornado
- Earthquake
- Monster
This is where you can have some random fun. I simulated an earthquake and tornado to add some novelty to the Amiga Retro World video on YouTube when people played that game back.
My Amiga 500 Sim City Review
I believe SimCity 1.1 is the first version of Sim City. Every game played on Sim City is unique. If I were a reviewer, Sim City would receive 4.5 stars out of 5.
The reason I played Sim City on the Amiga 500 today is because I read in January 1998 that Lyssa and I got addicted to the PC version of SimCity, Sim City 2000. I had owned a PC for a few months at that point. Lyssa and I used to squabble over the decision around how to build our city in SimCity. Those were quite important decisions that form the bedrock of any harmonious relationship.
Diary Of A Mad Chaos is a daily diary written from March 1996 until today, of which individual books and book series have been created, namely “The Lost Years” an exploration of young, entwined love, the “Wubao In China (猎艳奇缘)” book series which provides an extensive comparative analysis of the cultural differences between Eastern and Western societies, and the book titled “Foreigner (华人)” an exploration of race relations in Australia.
