I have been playing a lot of the DOS version of Simcity 2000 recently. I grew up with it on my windows 98 pc, so revisiting it was nice. There were a few thing I picked up on that I never realized when I was young.
1: The game, especially the soundtrack, reminds me of Blade Runner. It has the synthy jazz instrumentals that are melancholic, but also has that classic simcity cheer.
2: The game kind of has a dystopian feel to it, at least visually. The ground is brown, with only sparse trees filling the world, buildings are fairly realistic, with not many colors, outside of the luxury homes and the Arcos are very intimidating structures, like something out of Judge Dredd or, again, Blade Runner.
3: Omg, water sucks in this game xD.
Why does this game feel so moody, at least to me? It’s also intensly funny, and I will never not laugh when 1700 llamas die in a plane crash.
Did you ever play SimCopter? Fly around your simcity 2000 city in a helicopter doing jobs? It was my favourite game for a long time.
SimCopter has a very special place in my heart as possibly the prank that led to the formation of the Yes Men.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SimCopter#Easter_egg
The game gained controversy when it was discovered that designer Jacques Servin inserted an Easter egg that generated shirtless men in Speedo trunks who hugged and kissed each other and appear in great numbers on certain dates, such as Friday the 13th. The egg was caught shortly after release and removed from future copies of the game. He cited his actions as a response to the intolerable working conditions he allegedly suffered at Maxis, particularly working 60-hour weeks and being denied time off. He also reported that he added the “studs”, as he called them, after a heterosexual programmer programmed “bimbo” female characters into the game, and that he wanted to highlight the “implicit heterosexuality” of many games.
Based “Andy Bichlbaum.”
Servin presents Exxon’s new human flesh-derived “Vivoleum” future fuel at a Keynote Luncheon at the GO-Expo 2007 (Oil and Gas Exposition) in Calgary, Alberta.
Ah geez, what a ride his Wikipedia page is.
What, and I can’t stress this enough, THE FUCK
Lol, it’s actually pretty funny.
On June 14, 2007, the Yes Men acted during Canada’s largest oil conference in Calgary, Alberta, posing as ExxonMobil and National Petroleum Council (NPC) representatives. In front of more than 300 oilmen, the NPC was expected to deliver the long-awaited conclusions of a study commissioned by U.S. Energy Secretary Samuel Bodman. The NPC is headed by former ExxonMobil CEO Lee Raymond, who is also the chair of the study. When the Yes Men arrived at the conference they said that Lee Raymond (the promised speaker) was unable to make it due to a pressing situation with the president. The Yes Men then went on to give a presentation in place of Lee Raymond.
In the actual speech, the “NPC rep” announced that current U.S. and Canadian energy policies (notably the massive, carbon-intensive processing of Alberta’s oil sands, and the development of liquid coal) are increasing the chances of huge global calamities. But he reassured the audience that in the worst-case scenario, the oil industry could “keep fuel flowing” by transforming the billions of people who would die into oil.
The project, called Vivoleum, would work in perfect synergy with the continued expansion of fossil fuel production. The oilmen listened to the lecture with attention, and then lit “commemorative candles”. At this point, event security recognized the Yes Men and forced them off stage, and the ‘punchline’ — that the candles were made of Vivoleum obtained from the flesh of an “Exxon janitor” who died as a result of cleaning up a toxic spill — was not delivered to the audience, but only to reporters.
Love these kinds of protests. The fact that no one even bothered to verify anything and still listened without much resistance says a lot about these corpos. The candle thing is just the delicious cherry on top.
These kind of protests are almost exclusively what the Yes Men do! They got their start when they were making a parody website of the WTO (Then GATT) and suddenly had a bunch of serious industry people mistaking their parody site for the real one and sending them emails inviting them to conferences. Thus Andy Bichlbaum and the Yes Men were born! They always go way beyond absurd to try to capture people’s attention, but most often with groups of “experts” everyone takes them all to seriously.
Thank you so much for introducing me to them! I wish I’d known about them sooner.
Some of this stuff is hilarious and the fact that they’ve been consistently doing this for so long is impressive.
I also love that he claimed it was a “hacker group” that added the code, and then it was “revealed” that he was “the leader” of the group.
The sheer creativity in fucking with people like that is admirable.
Oh my god that is hilarious! Thank you for explaining it
LOL, I actually went looking for more about this specific prank and it gets better. The “janitor” was fucking Reggie Watts and they played this tribute during their “presentation” while people were confusingly looking at these strange candles.
I really need to check out the rest of their work. I’m very glad I learned about this group today.
Apparently there’s a free documentary on their exploits https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Yes_Men_Fix_the_World
I had SimCopter and Streets of SimCity just to get up close looks at my cities.
It’d be sweet if City Skylines had stuff like that… I mean, you can drive cars in it, it just doesn’t change the camera to first person while doing so.
I never got the chance! That sounds very cool though! Do the Arcos show up in sim copter?
Yep! Every building has a 3d representation in sim copter.
A bit off topic but certainly related, I just heard about this:
Thanks to the efforts of those continuing simmaster07’s line of work, namely Null 45 and memo, these sorts of revolutions are about to become more commonplace, bringing with them everything from improved game stability on modern systems, to long-requested new features and quality-of-life (QoL) improvements. Null 45 has already released over a dozen DLL mods on the STEX since November, one of the most recent of which allows more Building Styles. While I can’t reveal too much at this point in time, I will note that DLL files will become important components of major SC4 mods in the very near future. Suffice to say, we’re entering a very exciting time in the SC4 modding community.
Edit: the caveat being, these will only work on the digital release windows version of SC4
I think it’s hilarious that people are still using DOS in 2024!
Sim City 2k was the first time I used Windows 95. One of the teachers in my sixth grade class had it on their computer, and they let us take turns playing it. It seemed really amazing to those of us who grew up with more primitive computers, like Apple IIs, even Macs, various x86 clones running DOS, or occasionally Windows 3.1.
My first PC in 1998 even had Sim City 2k “Network Edition” pre-installed. Played the shit outta that game!
Nobody’s using DOS, but emulators exist
If you think about it, DOS still would do pretty much all you need. Everyone’s friggin too lazy anymore though, and enjoys being bombarded with bloat.
Anyone remember Sim island?? That was great
