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Comment by nodesocket | Hacker News Reader

Somewhat of a competitor, but any Sim Tower fans here? I was obsessed with everything Sim* but especially loved Sim Tower. Maxis was an amazing gaming company and actually my first entry into Macs. My friends dad had a Macintosh II, then classic, then LC, and I would spend hours playing games on them.

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Interestingly, SimTower was published by Maxis but developed by OpenBook (later Vivarium), the Japanese developer that would later make Seaman for the Dreamcast.

Yoot Saito just presented a classic game postmortem of "Seaman" [1] at the recent GDC.

[1] http://schedule.gdconf.com/session/classic-game-postmortem-s...

Unfortunately I wasn't there to see it, but I saw him talk earlier about Seaman at GDC 2000, and it was fascinating to learn how he was able to pull off such an unprecedented original design, even supporting speech recognition on the Dreamcast!

Announcement: Yoot Saito is coming to GDC 2017 to present a Classic Game Postmortem of Seaman! [2]

[2] http://www.gdconf.com/news/yoot-saito-coming-gdc-2017-presen...

"Yutaka "Yoot" Saito, the talented game designer known for his idiosyncratic approach to game development, will be delivering a Classic Game Postmortem on his remarkable Dreamcast game 'Seaman' at GDC 2017! Saito's game development career took off in the early '90s when he created the game that was published by Maxis as 'SimTower', but it was after he founded his own studio Vivarium that he really came into his own. Under the Vivarium banner, Saito developed the groundbreaking virtual pet game 'Seaman' (lending his own face to the titular Seaman), its striking sequel 'Seaman 2', the pinball strategy game 'Odama', and the airport baggage management puzzle game 'Aero Porter'. Now, Saito is coming to GDC 2017 to speak at length about his work creating 'Seaman', a game that left an indelible mark on the fabric of both the game industry and pop culture at large. Don't miss it!"

I just found the video of his GDC 2017 talk: Classic Game Postmortem: 'Seaman'! [3]

[3] http://www.gdcvault.com/play/1024327/Classic-Game-Postmortem...

And here's a review and summary of his talk. [4]

[4] http://www.seganerds.com/2017/03/02/yoot-saito-gives-gdc-pre...

I haven't played it, but Vivarium has a version for iOS: http://tower.tv

Give Project Highrise a try: http://store.steampowered.com/app/423580/

I loved SimTower, although there were times it felt more like Elevator Simulator.

(Also, tip for those starting a new game: 2x3 grid of fast food in the basement at the start of the game. You're welcome.)

Lol, the express, service, and tuning the tweaking them to prevent angry guests and employees. I feel like Elevator Sim 2017 would still sell today.

I read somewhere that it was originally an elevator simulator that they built the game around.

Hah, memories of angry people waiting for the elevator are flooding back to me right now.

Yikes, here comes the VIP!

You guys are forgetting SimAnt!

This was my favorite sim. Black and White back in the day. So good.

From all Peter Molyneux games, my favorite was Magic Carpet.

If you liked Magic Carpet, you might enjoy "Arcane Worlds"[1], which is like an unofficial modern remake.

[1] http://store.steampowered.com/app/269610/

Bullfrog should never have died.

Molyneux's new game Godus and Godus Wars wasn't as fun.

if i was ever losing, i'd use my nuclear weapon: putting rocks in all the enemy ant's nest holes

I could never figure out how to play it. Of course, it didn't help that I only had the disc, not the manual

The game had a very sharp difficulty curve, but in kind of a bad way. It was very tough to get started and to get a decent colony going, but once you did you could snowball through the rest of the yard. I could take on giant spiders and harvest food from them, and of course any other colony.

I shudder at imagining a lot of the earlier Sim* games without a manual and largely pre-web. Without the space or time to create digital help content, there was so much that was only mentioned in the manuals!

I remember the SimEarth one being a pretty hefty tome.

I was obsessed with 2002's SimGolf for a while, but not sure if anyone else really played it.

It was surprisingly fun! One of the best games where you try to build stuff for little virtual people, figure out how to make them happy, how to push their buttons, etc. (Also: the Sims, Theme Park / Hospital, Dungeon Keeper, etc :) )

The goal was to make a course that "looked hard but played easy."

I can't help but wonder if that was a hint at their larger philosophy of game development too...

Still play it. Still love it.

Loved that game!

/me raises hand :) Maxis games were classic. And quite complementary to Meier's work - the former being very open simulation sandboxes, and the latter more strategic and goal-oriented but with a lot of flex and slack in the rules for the player to experiment with.

But they definitely shared a similar spirit: giving the player a box full of building blocks and see what they do with it! :)

Check out Software, Inc. [0] for a actively-developed interpretation of a similar sim. It includes building and infrastructure elements in addition to markets and resources.

[0] http://store.steampowered.com/app/362620/

There was an iOS game called Game Studio Tycoon that I played for a bit, but lost interest.

There's a lot of games that would be interesting to build with this engine I think :) just building your office is a game in itself.

Indeed!

http://i.imgur.com/fUYLPFB.png http://i.imgur.com/WwUXZMd.png

I love software inc but I kinda feel ashamed of getting back home and play a 'my life simulation'

I loved the first industry giant as well, best logistic and production game ever made.

Simairport is quite nice as well but beware, bugs.

Love that game. There was a harder to find sequel by the same creator called Yoot Tower, it's pretty much the same game with a few additions.

You should also give Project Highrise a shot, very similar to Sim Tower and I have found it to be enjoyable.

Project Highrise looks fun, though mixed reviews about it being initially fun, but losing luster. 20 bucks. I'll give it a shot.

I loved SimCopter. I had so much fun playing it as a kid

Gosh yes. And SimIsle!

I'm a big fan of SimTower! But Windows 10 x64 doesn't have XP Mode, so I can't run SimTower easily. There goes my childhood...

People are still selling Windows XP machines around me secondhand for peanuts.

Now might be a good time to pick up a few on the cheap for preservation proposes.

Wine?

As it doesn't use 3D acceleration it should work fine in a Windows XP VM.

I liked SimTower, but it was very hard to lose. You could have unhappy people, but there was little impact to it. I recall it being described once as the most computationally-intensive screen saver available at the time.

SimTower FTW!

I was even briefly involved with one of the efforts to make a modern clone of it (in particular, I've partially reversed some of the file format in a text document... somewhere).

SimAnt was my favorite sim. Underrated, and quite unique.

Pizza tycoon was probably my favourite

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