Number 9: Sim City

If there was one game that could be attributed in getting me into gaming it would be this one or rather a combination of this and Sim City 2000. The original Sim City was a flawed masterpiece; I don’t deny it wasn’t perfect.

I could and often did build a city that relied on rail alone. The maps tended to be extremely small, not big enough to really make you feel you had built and managed a bustling metropolis. The placing of buildings was horribly rigid, with the blocks of residential, commercial and industrial.

It wasn't the prettiest, but it was a first love so I'll forgive it.

It also occurred to me that the game was not designed for someone who has no knowledge of economics and city budgeting (In my defence I was 10 years old). I would often blow through my starting budget within the first 12 months of my tenure. For this very reason Sim City gave rise to my love of cheats in my earlier gaming days.

There wasn’t much more satisfying than building a big town to have an earthquake destroy it almost completely and then trying to rebuild from scratch.

I probably missed a lot by never making a profitable city, but this type of game that really doesn’t have a goal, the game is what you make of it. My friends and I often just took turns trying to build the biggest and most populous city we could, or destroying their city and watch the exodus.

There is no denying that there have been better Sim Cities released, the pinnacle probably at Sim City 2000, with the introduction of mass transit and border connections. For its impact on my life I really can’t go past the original Sim City.