The SimCity series and Nintendo have a bit of a history together. The original game was one of the first releases for the Super NES back in 1991. That same game was also one of the first releases on the Wii's Virtual Console when the system launched. That's why it's great to see this new, Nintendo-exclusive SimCity game, SimCity Creator.
Some would argue that the more recent SimCity games for the PC (SimCity 4, for example), have gotten a little too complex for their own good. The earlier entries could easily be enjoyed by just about anyone, but the newer, more complicated titles seem to be made for the most hardcore players. With Creator, the series is being brought back to the mass market, allowing it to be enjoyed by fans of all ages groups.
Spiffy:
Classic SimCity simulation gameplay; good use of the Wii Remote.
Iffy:
There's a chance that the action might be too simplified.
Vooks writes: "Who can honestly say that they've never heard of any of the Sim games? I remember when I was in primary school that heaps of kids used to play SimAnt, a game where you actually create an ant colony and watch it flourish. I thought the concept was bizarre but still pretty unique, and wondered where the series would go from there. Sim City Creator is the second Sim City game for the Nintendo DS, and is nothing like the Wii version of the same name. What Sim City Creator does, however, is put a very interesting twist on an already (very) well established formula."
GI writes: "As my fingers struggled with the unnecessarily confining plastic wrap that surrounded my copy of SimCity: Creator for the Wii, I felt a subtle shudder tremble through me. I was holding in my hands not just a mere video game; no ... I was holding in my hands digital godhood."
WorthPlaying writes: "In 2007, Electronic Arts sought to reclaim the legacy and money-making capabilities of its SimCity franchise by saying goodbye to the modern age of gaming and traveling back to 1999. SimCity DS was pretty much a port of SimCity 2003, which in turn was really only a slight update of SimCity 2000. The endless complication of the sprawling sandbox that is a SimCity game didn't hold up quite as well as it did back in 1993, and EA must have realized that the franchise was in need of a serious reboot.
Enter SimCity Creator for the NDS, a game that still holds onto all the relics of the early-'90scity simulator but adds something that the original creators never thought of: a learning curve. For the first time ever, your SimCity travels through time, and you have to build it up from a collection of huts by a river into a hunter-gatherer society, an agrarian monarchy, and then you have to work it up into the modern age and keep it thriving. Each new age you reach gradually introduces its own set of challenges, and with it, the game finally feels like it has a purpose other than frustrating you with minutiae."
