SimCity 2000

An empty green plain, a cursor and you as a mayor with absolute power. SimCity 2000 confronts you with the most enticing question in city-building games: can you build a functioning metropolis from nothing, one that won't go bankrupt, won't bury itself in traffic jams and won't revolt over taxes? The version for the Sony PlayStation brought this cult simulator to the console and opened it up to a whole new generation of players in front of the TV.

Compared to the original SimCity, the sequel made an enormous leap. Maxis replaced the flat top-down city with an isometric view that gave the metropolis depth and character. Suddenly there were layers: you could dig into the underground, deal with water pipes, the subway and utility networks, watch the terrain with its hills and valleys, and build highways and grade-separated intersections. Separate water management and more sophisticated power systems were added, where you chose between various types of power plants, each with different costs, output and environmental impact.

The core of the gameplay remained faithful to Will Wright's brilliant concept: you zone residential, commercial and industrial areas, supply them with power, connect them with transport and balance the budget among services such as firefighters, police, schools and hospitals. The city lives a life of its own, reacts to your decisions and mercilessly shows you when you overdo the taxes or neglect the infrastructure. Nor are disasters missing, from fires through tornadoes to raids, which can test just how resilient a metropolis you have actually built.

In development terms it was the flagship of the Maxis studio, which practically defined the entire genre of sandbox builders with simulations of all kinds. SimCity 2000 became one of the most successful and most-ported games of its era and was released on a countless range of platforms, from PC through Macintosh and Amiga all the way to consoles including the PlayStation. The console version had to solve control without a mouse, but it managed to preserve both depth and clarity, so you can enjoy full-fat mayoring even with a gamepad.

The influence of this game is still enormous today. SimCity 2000 showed that a strategy without enemies and without winning in the classic sense of the word can be as addictive as anything else, because your opponent is your own inability to keep the system in balance. It inspired countless later city builders and to this day is remembered as one of the peaks of the genre and as a game over which whole nights were lost to budgets and traffic.

For PlayStation players it was a chance to taste a previously mostly-PC genre on a console and in the comfort of the living room. Converting a title built on precise mouse work and lots of menus to a controller was no trivial task, but the result made it possible to immerse yourself in city management even without a desk full of peripherals. Thanks to this, SimCity 2000 retained its reputation as one of the few truly deep builders that could be fully played lying on the couch, thus strengthening its already broad fan base across platforms.

Why play it: For the timeless feeling of absolute mayoral power and for that sweet addiction where it's just one more district, one more budget, and suddenly dawn is breaking.