"An excellent, classic computer game that made Maxis a great company."

The first time I ever even heard of SC2K was seeing it in a store. It looked FABULOUS. I got it for my irthday sometime later, and when I played it, I just could not get the thing to open the submenus. About three years after taht, I finally figured out how to open them, thanks to a friend, and I have been playing SimCity 2000 ever since then. Now I am able to build a thriving city that fills up the entire limits, generates about twenty-five thousand dollars per year, has incredible city services and education, is fun, and makes everyone happy in it in a maximum amount of about three hours or so, which I think should be the universal difficulty level for all games.

GRAPHICS: 93
These are a definite good point. All buildings look different somehow, and there are four different camera rotations to make building much easier. I also love the Arcologies, the graphics on the Launch Arco rule! This is just about as good as a computer game company could have done ith the technology they had access to when SC2K was made.

SOUND: 8/10
MUSIC: 10/10
One word: excellent. There so many soundtracks, I cannot name them all, I can only say that they are awesome. The sound can get kind of annoying, especially when you press buttons in the City Toolbar, but it is OK for most of the time. And when you have to bulldoze the forests for one reason or another, the sound of your citizens booing you get REALLY annoying, but that's the only bad thing about this part.

CONTROLS: 9/10
What controls? You only need a mouse compatible with your version of SC2K, but if you like, you can use various keyboard commands, like Control and M to get the Map window up. So simple, a baby can learn them in less than one hour.

DIFFICULTY: 10/10
Pretty simple, although there are different difficulty settings. I normally use either the Easy or the Medium levels. The Hard level is just plain CHEAP! As I said before, I can create an excellent city in about two or three hours. This should be the universal difficulty setting for all games, computer and video.

OVERALL: 9/10
This is the perfect example of a model computer game. Not too easy, not too hard, just perfect. And it has the perfect amount of depth, too. You add police, fire protection, hospitals, schools, colleges, and fun things like parks and stadiums. Any more involved would have been too involved to have any fun with it.

GRAPHICS: 9/10

SOUND/MUSIC: 8.5/10

CONTROLS: 10/10

DIFFICULTY: 9/10

OVERALL: 9/10 (not an average)

FINAL THOUGHT: Costing only a mere fifteen to twenty-five dollars, you can pick up a copy at any store like OfficeMax or Babbage's. Go out and become a SimCity builder right now!

Reviewer's Score: 9/10, Originally Posted: 01/16/00, Updated 01/16/00