Sim City 64 Preview

Publisher - Nintendo
Developer - Nintendo
Platform - N64DD
Release Date - June 1998
Type - Adventure/Construction

Let me tell you a little about Sim City before getting on with the preview. In all forms of this game you have to zone out sections of land for three purposes, Industrial, Commercial and Residential. You also need to build power plants to give your citizens electricity, and connect that power plant to the different zones. In recent versions of the PC hit you need to also provide water to your citizens. It doesn’t stop their either though. You will need to entertain your citizens with amusement parks, stadiums, water parks and then you will need to educate them with things like colleges and schools. So, what’s the object of them game? Who can have the most fun is probably the best way to put it. Personally I like building up a huge city and then demolishing it, however others prefer to raise a city from the slums and turn it into a metropolitan.

Sim City 64, for the n64dd? Yep, and it’s going to be a "Miyamoto" game so you can expect a lot of improvements over the aging PC and SNES versions of the game. It will be a Sim City like no other. In this game, as the mayor, you become an active citizen in your city. You could go gambling, watch a football game or go suck up to your citizens to gain more votes, all in 3D.

You can expect all the usual Nintendo trademarks in this game since it is being published and developed by Nintendo. If you remember the seven digit seller SNES Sim City then you will understand why most people are physced about this game. The SNES Sim City offered a lot more then ever the PC version did (some say it was better then Sim City 2000). Now that it is about to be joined by a 64-bit cousin that is created by the same developer, a fan of Sim City can’t hope but get excited over this.

So far the game will be in complete 3D, citizens will be walking the streets and you will be able to see them go about their lives. You can only imagine what the writability and real-time clock of the n64dd will do for this game. You could have it set so that your city will grow even when the game is turned off and you are asleep. The real-time clock could record the date you turned your n64dd off, then it could load up that time the next time you turn your n64dd on and change the look and status of your city accordingly. That is only one of many possible features.