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events , such as an alien monster destroying Hollywood .
Coverage on life in your city was provided to you in the form of pre-written newspapers , including relevant stories about new technology , your aging power infrastructure , local disasters , opinion polls that highlighted
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problems with your city management , and joke headlines advertising |
bald radios and frog conventions . This feature is unique to Sim- City 2000 , and isn ’ t included in the sequels , replaced by an inferior news ticker . Another unique feature was the manual , which was filled with essays on the concept of a “ city ” and basically acted as a Will Wright style treatise
on urban planning . Though Maxis didn ’ t provide a specific depiction
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of the event in its box art of the game , the artwork hints towards a utopian future city scape of gleaming towers spanning a riverside . And in a corner , an indicator towards the possible otherworldly future of our planet when we immediately discover that interstellar travel is possible , or that we are not alone in the universe . Maxis had a very business-like style to their later game boxes , and SimCity 2000 is the best ( the re-release of SimCity , on the other hand , is dull ).
Much like its predecessor , SimCity 2000 was lauded on its release , and sold into the millions , and is consistently
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placed in “ Best Games of all Time Lists ”, most recently at 13th in Time ’ s “ 50 Best Video Games .” It is one of 21 games on permanent display at the New York Metropolitan Museum of Art , alongside another Maxis classic The Sims . What still makes it the best title in the SimCity series is that it struck just the right balance of difficulty and complexity , something that was lost in subsequent games that increased the realism . The game would teach you how to play the game through prompts , and your advisors would give you advice , but the smaller mechanics never overwhelmed you . Often , a |
little abstraction , in the case of the fabled city on the box , makes for a better gaming experience . |
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