SimCity 3000

SimCity 3000 followed up on the successful predecessor SimCity 2000 and in 1999 reconfirmed that city building can be just as addictive as an action game. The player founds a new town literally on a green field, divides plots into residential, industrial, and commercial zones, builds roads, power plants, and waterworks, and watches as a handful of houses gradually grows into a metropolis. Budget, taxes, demand for individual types of development, and citizen satisfaction are constantly changing, forcing the player to think in long-term horizons and react to their own mistakes - overcrowded traffic, pollution, or crime can quickly bring even a thriving city to its knees.

Compared to the second entry, the game added more elaborate relationships between neighboring cities within a region, the ability to make agreements on sharing electricity, water, or landfills, and expanded the range of special buildings and disasters that can spice up even the most carefully planned development. The isometric graphics with finely drawn terrain and buildings felt very fresh at the time of release, and together with calm, atmospheric music created the impression of a living, breathing city growing according to the player's decisions. Mouse controls, clear panels, and advisors pointing out problems made the game accessible even to people who had until then avoided strategy games.

SimCity 3000 became one of the best-selling titles of the genre and for many years defined what a serious city-building simulator should look like - its influence is visible in dozens of later games that tried to offer similarly deep city management. On a period PC running Windows 9x the game still runs smoothly today, and thanks to its modest system requirements it is one of the easiest ways to find out why the city-builder genre was so successful in the nineties.

Why play it: An ideal choice for anyone who enjoys thoughtful planning and wants to see the results of their own decisions grow building by building, without the pressure of a time limit.