The Gadget Helpline: RETRO REPLAY feature will bring you a regular throwback to the days of old school gaming and will present a little history on the new wave of classic titles currently getting a revival on our modern gaming gadgets.
Many of us remember a time long before Angry Birds became the gaming craze and believe-it-or-not there was no home internet as our sole reason for PC ownership. We had to pass the time somehow and many of us played a game called SimCity – and it’s coming back next year, published by EA Games!
Not attached to the popular Sims franchise which came much later, SimCity came along originally in 1989 as one of the earliest game to allow us to indulge in a God complex. Players were given a set budget (unless they use the cheat!) to build themselves a city out of the set structures such as housing, industrial and commercial zones, populate the city and entice others to come live there. All the while making sure hell doesn’t break lose, with fires, nuclear reactors explosions and natural disasters kicking off periodically. If a player felt particularly malevolent they could unleash a tornado to run ruin over their creation – or even release a Godzilla-like beast that would stomp across the landscape leaving a trail of destruction!
The SimCity game also featured a series of pre-set cities and scenarios with objectives such as controlling a traffic problem or rebuilding after an earthquake and a range of locations and settings were available to play with from Berlin to Japan and from the years of historical 1910 to a futuristic 2097.
A new trailer for the rebooted SimCity has been launched showing us that we’ll be able to get closer than ever to our creation and all new animated features will be included, such as a destruction derby with mechanical dinosaur and.. another mechanical dinosaur.. We see a city in trouble come 2013!
Surprisingly the new game’s developer Maxis is remaking the title as a completely new stand-alone entity and not restricted to an app or mobile based game, although we do expect this will be the next logical step following the games release on the EA Origin platform next year.
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