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SimCity 4, the greatest citybuilder of all time, was released 20 years agoWe may never see its like again
We may never see its like again
When it was released on January 14th 2003,SimCity 4had its problems. Its huge cities would chug on even decent PCs, for one, and its traffic simulation seemed outright broken.
Twenty years later - thanks to faster PCs, the Rush Hour expansion, and a huge modding community - SimCity 4 is the best of allSimCitygames. If what you care about is simulation, scale, variety, and the beauty of urban sprawl, it’s also the best citybuilder.
SimCity 4 PC Games Trailer - New SimCity 4 Gameplay TrailerWatch on YouTube
SimCity 4 PC Games Trailer - New SimCity 4 Gameplay Trailer
SimCity 4 did nothing to change this formula but continued its logical progression. It has 3D terrain and crisp, clear sprite-art buildings, which are one of the reasons it still looks great today. It lets you build enormous cities, and then trade resources with the neighbouring city you built previously. It has a day/night cycle, so you can see your skyscrapers twinkling in the dark. You can plop individual Sims into your city -The Sims1 released in 2000 - and then track their lives as they commute from your polluted suburbs to their awful job, then move out of town or die.
Perhaps most importantly, SimCity 4 included the BAT, the Building Architect Tool, which enabled modders to create their own buildings and place them in the game. Custom buildings, maps and mods have greatly extended the life of SimCity 4 and at the time of writing there are over 21,000 filesavailable from community site Simtropolis, including several new uploads in the past 24 hours.
Mods are why I’m confident calling SimCity 4 the best citybuilder of all time. More specifically, it’s thanks to the Network Addon Mod. NAM set out in 2004 to fix SimCity 4’s traffic issues, and as of its last update in September 2022 has expanded to include new UI tools, road types, light railand much more. Given that every modern-day citybuilder inevitably boils down to tinkering with road networks and mitigating traffic jams, NAM is essential.
To address the skyscraper in the room: I loveCities: Skylinesand if you’re new to this genre, Paradox’s SimCity milkshake-drinker is where you should start. If you have been playing Cities: Skylines and you’re tired of it, however, or if you don’t want to cough up for the next piece of DLC, then you should graduate to SimCity 4. The SimCity 4 Deluxe Edition (including the Rush Hour expansion, also released 2003) ison SteamandGOG. Given that 2013’s SimCity was a bomb, and Maxis’s original studio in Emeryville closed in 2015, we may never see its like again.
