SimCity 3000 - PC

Amazon.com With SimCity 3000, you have more power than ever before to build and control your city! Recreate your version of the world's greatest cities using landscapes such as San Francisco or Berlin and landmark buildings like the Empire State Building or Big Ben. To put your stamp on your city, create your own buildings using the SimCity Building Architect Tool. Then zoom in close to your metropolis as it comes to life with people and traffic in living color and full 3-D sound. All new missions and cool disasters test your abilities to run your city or even destroy it. For a greater challenge, negotiate and barter with neighboring cities to strengthen your metropolis. In SimCity 3000, the city is yours. Product Description You're in charge of creating an entire city from the ground up. Trade resources with neighboring cities. Import your favorite city from SIM CITY 2000. Download the building architect tool and design. Review The city simulation that put Maxis on the map ranks with Pac-Man and Tetris as one of the greatest games of all time, so certainly the Electronic Arts-acquired developer had big shoes to fill, not to mention a big publisher breathing down its back, while working on the second sequel. Now that the dust has settled, either against all odds or to no great surprise, SimCity 3000 is fun, thoughtful, and satisfying, not to mention pristine and pleasant to the core. Soft, bright colors, an attractive and intuitive interface, and stylized comic characters all fit together with an easy-listening soundtrack to make SimCity 3000 a comfortable, relaxing place to be. Your city exists in an eternal springtime; no matter how bad things get for your upstart town, at least it won't rain. The graphics not only look good, but they tell you everything you'd want to know: You can see how well a developed area is doing at a glance, as buildings that look expensive probably are, and those that are ramshackle and sparse are probably worth a lot less. The graphics are much more detailed than SimCity 2000's, but only along the same lines - that is, you can zoom in closer than ever before, down where you can see individual pedestrians and automobiles, and everything looks real. At the same time, there isn't much variety in types of buildings, nor do you get seasons, nighttime, or anything specific. In fact, the difference between SimCity 2000 and 3000 is only skin-deep - it's a cleaner, prettier game, but if you're familiar with the series, you'll know your way around. The game plays like it always has. You set up your residential zones, which you keep not too close and not too far from your commercial and industrial zones, and tie everything together with roads, power lines, and plumbing, and maybe rail- and subway. With three zone densities to choose from, you can create suburbs or jam-packed urban jungles as you see fit, though high-density zones are more expensive. In a nice, new touch, you can even create farmland with large plots of low industrial zone along the outskirts of town. As your city grows, you need to provide it with police and fire protection, and with schools and colleges as well as recreational and educational diversions like museums, libraries, and zoos. Of course you need to generate revenue in order to fund growth, and there's no good way to do that without taxes. High tax rates are tempting since they'll leave you with plenty of money to spend, but then again your long-term vision may be for naught if no one's going to stick around to tolerate your exorbitant tax demands. But all that's SimCity standard fare. In 3000, you'll face decisions previously taken for granted. For one thing, you need to worry about garbage. You need to zone for landfill, a necessary evil if you hope to keep your city clean. Just don't expect anybody to live anywhere near your dump. Zone landfill with room to spare, and you'll hear from the mayors of adjacent cities asking you to take some of their share for a fee. You can al