SimCity

"Hmm, let's see. Should I build the city or wreck it?"

Gameplay: 9/10
There are many things to do in this game. You can build a city from scratch, have fun inflicting disasters on your city, or fix the problems of existing cities. When you build a city, there are 1000 landforms to choose from, and then you start building with the money you have. You are the mayor. You can build residential zones, where houses, hospitals, and schools are built, and you can build zones for industry and commerce. You'll have to deal with problems like crime, pollution, and sometimes disasters. There are six disasters you can inflict: fire, earthquake, flood, tornado, plane crash, and monster, which is bowser. The disasters can happen on their own, or at least some of them. You can play for hundreds of years of game time if you want. You can, more or less, control how fast time flies. There are six scenarios available at the beginning where you have a certain amount of game years to fix the problems of a city. There isn't really a main goal in this game. One goal is to build a city with a half million people, which is pretty hard. There are graphs and figures you can use to see if the citizens are happy, what the biggest problems are, where the most growth is happening, ect. It will take some time to learn how you should build a city and how to make it work good. The games' big instruction booklet will help you out. You'll have to be careful in how much you spend, along with managing your budget...if you don't use the one million dollar code, that is. The controls are simple. You should seek help if can't get used to them in 10 minutes.
Graphics: 7/10
In the game you have a overhead view of the city. Although there isn't a lot of detail, the graphics are good enough. Heck, it's the SNES, what do you expect?
Sound/music: 6/10
The sounds are okay, but they probably could have been better. The music is good. There are like only two or three tunes I think. The tune that plays depends on the size of your city.
Replay Value: 8/10
As I said, there really isn't a main goal. You can just build a city for fun if you want, or you can give yourself challenges, like building a city with 500,000 people or building a city without hardly any problems. You can also have fun just trying to wipe out a city with disasters.
Buy/Rent: Buy
Buy it. This game is cool! It will probably be cheap too. I think mine was five bucks new. So take the job of mayor and have fun. overall: 8/10

Reviewer's Score: 8/10, Originally Posted: 01/01/03, Updated 01/16/03