Recovering Nintendo’s Lost SimCity for the NES | Hacker News Reader

Recovering Nintendo’s Lost SimCity for the NES

gamehistory.org

225 pointsem3rgent0rdr38 comments

It is sad not having the original SimCity on something like the iPad. The version they offer is some abomination trying to be FarmVille begging for cash at every turn.

Same for Tetris, I just want a simple version for my kids to play.

Agreed. The best substitute I’ve been able to find for iOS is ”1010!”. It’s quite nice IMO.

https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/1010/id911793120

For a good experience may I suggest one of these adapters [1], a genuine NES controller [2], a good NES emulator for your platform, the original Tetris NES ROM, a PC that plugs into a TV, and a TV that has "game mode" to minimise latency (critical for any serious Tetrissing).

[1] http://ebay.co.uk/itm/202526513876

[2] https://www.ebay.co.uk/sch/i.html?_from=R40&_nkw=nes+control...

The Game Boy version is the only "true" Tetris. NES version screwed it up by replacing Korobeiniki with Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy.

Excepting the music (which may be authentic, I don't know, I just don't like the choices), Tetris DX on the GameBoy Color is the definitive version, to me. It is basically the GameBoy 4-shades of green version with color, and slightly tweaked control responsiveness.

I know it’s not quite the original, but SimCity 3000 (what I grew up on) was available a couple years back on iOS but now sadly gone.

> I know it’s not quite the original, but SimCity 3000 (what I grew up on)

Oh god... I'm old... =)

I feel the same way. I played SimCity, but SimCity 2000 is the version that feels like "home" to me; I like the grid constraint, and I love the art.

I bought the edition that came with the Sim City Urban Renewal Kit, which was a way to create your own buildings using the graphic editor. It even had support for animations using palettes! I had a grand ol' time creating gawdy, neon-brutalist monstrocities to shove into my cities.

It would be theoretically and easily possible, but legally impossible to port the original C version of SimCity released under GPLv3 (called "Micropolis") to the iPad, because of the anti-Tivoization clause, it's a violation of the GPLv3 to put it on the Apple app store.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tivoization

https://apple.stackexchange.com/questions/6109/is-it-possibl...

https://github.com/SimHacker/micropolis

However there's nothing stopping you from running one of the versions of Micropolis that's been rewritten in JavaScript to run in the web browser (because it's distributed via the web instead of on the App store), or contributing to those projects to make it run well on the iPad.

http://micropolis.mostka.com/

https://www.graememcc.co.uk/micropolisJS/

"something like the iPad" - since an Android tablet is not subject to the same draconian and silly restrictions on installing software, so it would be possible there. It looks like there are a few versions already.

Side note: I went to college with one of the people that ported the original version to the Amiga in the late 80s. He told me the cheat codes, which was handy.

> because of the anti-Tivoization clause, it's a violation of the GPLv3 to put it on the Apple app store

Ah, I always knew there was some anti-Tivoization in there, but didn't really dig into what it truly covered. So in other words, you could have a highly successful iOS app you sell, that you release under the GPLv3, and nobody should be legally allowed to publish it under the official App Store. They could only potentially contribute bug fixes, and licensing their commits back to you sounds a bit like it would need another license from their code.

That kind of sucks that the App Store is not technically compatible, I would of thought due to JailBreaking it would of been technically allowed.

The App Store's incompatibility is by Apple Policy, enforced via digital restrictions management. See the license says that after Apple distributes it to you, they have to permit you to change out libraries and code and still have it be runnable. As this would permit you to run custom code on the iDevice without Apple strictly controlling what computing you are permitted to perform on an iDevice, Apple cannot allow this.

So Apple bans GPLv3, because they do not permit you to do what you want with your device, the device does what Apple wants and permits you to do with it.

”They could only potentially contribute bug fixes, and licensing their commits back to you sounds a bit like it would need another license from their code.”

They could also port it to Android and release it there for free, or even sell it there (while offering all buyers the source code, to comply with the GPL)

This is true although might be somewhat tedious. I forget that translating code is also covered by the license.

It isn’t SimCity, but I’ve found Pocket City to be a well done city building game on iOS. Similar feel to SimCity 2000.

https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/pocket-city/id1330451888?mt=...

I agree, and it has microtransactions or ads or other free-to-play annoying mechanisms. You pay once up front and that's all.

Just to clarify:

It has NO microtransactions or ads or other annoying mechanisms.

Yes, that was what I meant. Thank you!

Thanks. Trying that.

If there's any downside, it might be a little too easy. Of course, going back as an adult I've found SC2K to be much easier than I remembered, probably because I know how to balance a budget.

Oh, thank FSM. The private collector allowed them to dump a ROM.

https://archive.org/details/simcity-nes

I had inherited my big brothers C64, along with a couple of paper notes on how to start games. I was very young, around 6 years old.

This article finally revealed to me that weird helicopter game I had played on the C64. The memory of flying over an ocean with a helicopter had stuck with me but not the title. I can't believe I played that title, and it was the inspiration to Sim City! Which I later in life played a lot of.

I think I remember playing that in Russia, too - we had friends who had imported video game consoles, and that helicopter game looks very familiar.

In 1990 I was a kid, and there was a Japanese kid across the street with a Super Famicom. In addition to being floored by Super Mario World shortly before it came to the US I had a strong impression of SimCity and Dr. Wright with Japanese speech bubbles I could not understand.

Interesting, never thought to dig for non english versions of the game

https://duckduckgo.com/?q=simcity+superfamicom&t=ffab&atb=v1...

https://proxy.duckduckgo.com/iu/?u=http%3A%2F%2Farcticsunbur...

ps: crazy, while looking at these, my nose started remembering smells of that era..

As much as I love this article and the work CaH4e3 has done disassembling, documenting and improving SimCity, and the work and mission of the Video Game History Foundation and the Internet Archive, I have to question what the article means by the section header "The SimCity Open Source Project".

Is there an actual project calling itself that, or is that just a figure of speech that the writer of the article used (inaccurately)? Because abandonware, unpublished or reverse engineered software is not automatically open source, which has a very specific legal definition.

And SimCity is a trademark that is very much still in use and aggressively protected.

https://www.konitono.com/ea-kills-open-source-version-of-sim...

The original SimCity source code, based on the Mac version that I ported to Unix using TCL/Tk, was relicensed by Electronic Arts under GPLv3 for the OLPC project, and EA had some very specific conditions for using their trademark "SimCity" (for example, it had to be reviewed and approved by EA's QA department to protect their brand name "SimCity", or else released under another name like "Micropolis").

https://medium.com/@donhopkins/open-sourcing-simcity-58470a2...

https://medium.com/@donhopkins/har-2009-lightning-talk-trans...

Also the GPLv3 license itself has some very specific conditions about the use of the code. (For example, the Anti-Tivoization clause forbids publishing an app based on the code on the Apple app store.)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tivoization

The full license and a simpler explanation is shown here:

http://wiki.laptop.org/go/SimCity

>In case this confuses you, here is a simpler explanation. The code is free software. But the code as released by EA uses EA trademarks. You cannot modify the code and distribute it unless you (1) make it clear to the player that you have modified it, and (2) remove all the EA trademarks from the game. (You also have to follow all the other rules in the GPLv3, the EA additional terms, and the copyrights of other contributors. This was just a very brief summary.)

The "Micropolis" project is based on that original code, which has been cleaned up, documented, and translated to other languages, but it uses the name "Micropolis" (SimCity's original working title) instead of "SimCity" because of that trademark restriction.

There was one official version of GPLv3 "SimCity" released for the OLPC, based on the TCL/Tk version I developed for DUX Software, which went through EA's QA process and was approved for release by EA to be shipped with the OLPC. But all subsequent versions and derivatives were called "Micropolis", to avoid the need to go through that complicated approval process again.

https://donhopkins.com/home/olpc-ea-contract.pdf

EXHIBIT B

EA TRADEMARK AND LEGAL NOTICE:

RESTRICTIONS ON USE:

OLPC shall not reproduce or use (or authorize the reproduction or use of) the EA Trademark, or any other trademark, service mark, service name, trade name, designation or logo of EA, in any manner whatsoever other than as expressly authorized by this Agreement. Furthermore, except as authorized hereunder, OLPC shall not reproduce or use any service mark, service name, trade name, trademark, designation or logo confusingly similar to the EA Trademark or any other trademark, service mark, service name, trade name, designation or logo of EA.

OLPC shall mark each use of the EA Trademark with either the superscript ® symbol or the superscript ™ symbol as set forth above adjacent to such EA Trademark. EA may at any time, and from time to time, amend this Exhibit B.

OLPC shall also take such other steps as may reasonably be requested by EA to evidence EA’s ownership and license to OLPC of any of the EA Trademark, including, without limitation, execution of registered user agreements if required by applicable law.

The archive.org project is just titled "SimCity NES Prototype Archive" and the archive itself makes no reference to "open source project" so I assume it's just another misguided journalistic edit as well.

The archive does include a directory with disassembled ASM of the original NES ROM (with some added comments) but disassembly falls into a different legal realm than GPL/actual source code/open source remakes. Between that and The Internet Archive being excepted from DCMA, being excepted from copyright protection removal law, and having a long legal history of preserving copyrighted works I'd wager there is nothing to be worried about for that archive.

Also cool work on the original port and particularly Micropolis. I remember having a lot of fun with the code when it first released.

> Is there an actual project calling itself that, or is that just a figure of speech that the writer of the article used (inaccurately)? Because abandonware, unpublished or reverse engineered software is not automatically open source, which has a very specific legal definition.

Open source does not have a "very specific legal definition". Many different people use that term to mean many different things, the chief commonality tending to be "can you read the source code". Yes, OSI has a specific definition that goes beyond that, but OSI is not a legislative or judicial body, nor do they have authority from any such body to be involved in regulatory activities (contrasted with, say, the Amateur Relay Radio League, or Civilian Marksmanship Program). And personally I hew more towards the FSF's views on the matter than OSI's.

Anyway, it's pretty common in the open source world for a specific name to be trademarked, or assets to be copyrighted, while still making the source itself open. Some examples include SimCity vs Micropolis, Chrome vs Chromium, and Firefox vs IceCat. I'd argue that such projects still count as open source, because the source itself is open, even if you can't use the name or non-code assets. Non-code assets like names, graphics, audio, and documentation are commonly available under different terms or licenses anyway, e.g.: https://wiki.wesnoth.org/Wesnoth:Copyrights Pretty much everyone (OSI, FSF, etc.) agree that code-specific licenses like GPL, MIT, BSD, and Apache don't make so much sense when talking about things that aren't software, hence the existence of things like GFDL, CC, etc.

>I'd argue that such projects still count as open source, because the source itself is open, even if you can't use the name or non-code assets.

They're open source because of the specific licenses they use, not because "you can read the source code". And the NES SimCity code definitely isn't licensed under anything resembling an "open source" license, even in the most vague least technical sense of the term, "you can read it". It was never sold as a product or meant to be distributed.

My question was whether "The SimCity Open Source Project" is an actual "thing" with a specific open source compatible license, or if it was just vague hand waving like "the source is open because somebody disassembled and commented it" that the article author meant as a metaphor.

Yeah, I was talking about the open sourced SimCity for PCs, definitely not the NES one.

I loved the analysis of the soundtrack embedded as a YouTube video [1] about halfway through the article. The composer, Soyo Oka, only brought one song from the NES version into the SNES version. The author of the video walks you through each track and explains what channels were used, what can be learned about the waveforms, how it compares to other NES music of the period, etc.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=791&v=HmJP5EFUEp...

Here's some more information on the design of SimCity:

Will Wright on Designing User Interfaces to Simulation Games (1996)

A summary of Will Wright’s talk to Terry Winnograd’s User Interface Class at Stanford, written in 1996 by Don Hopkins, before they worked together on The Sims at Maxis.

https://medium.com/@donhopkins/designing-user-interfaces-to-...

>SimCity Classic:

>Unfortunately I didn’t type the notes from this part of the talk in, but it’s been well covered elsewhere. Chaim Gingold’s PdD dissertation on “Play Design” has some excellent in-depth analysis of SimCity as a cultural artifact, its code, algorithms and design, the story of open sourcing SimCity, his SimCity Reverse Diagrams, and many interesting quotes from interviews with Will Wright and other game designers. It includes a fascinating chapter about Doreen Nelson (who wrote the original SimCity Teacher’s Guide) and her lifelong work on Design Based Learning (formerly City Building Education):

Gingold, Chaim. “Play Design.” Ph.D. thesis, University of California Santa Cruz, 2016.

https://search.proquest.com/docview/1806122688

>I did my Ph.D. research on play and the history of computing. My thesis argues that it is productive to consider playthings, playmates, playgrounds, and play practices as constituting a set with shared design characteristics. SimCity, a software plaything that confounds game-centric approaches (e.g. game studies and game design), is the keystone in an arch of case studies that takes us from some of the earliest examples of computer simulation all the way to model cities enacted with children, cardboard, and costumes, and unusual playgrounds made of junk.

Chaim Gingold: http://chaim.io/

Open Sourcing SimCity, by Chaim Gingold

Excerpt from page 289–293 of “Play Design”, a dissertation submitted in partial satisfaction of the requirements for the degree of Doctor in Philosophy in Computer Science by Chaim Gingold.

https://medium.com/@donhopkins/open-sourcing-simcity-58470a2...

SimCity reverse diagrams. Chaim Gingold (2016):

https://lively-web.org/users/Dan/uploads/SimCityReverseDiagr...

Doreen Nelson: https://www.cpp.edu/~dnelson/aboutdoreen.html

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Design-based_learning

http://www.oac.cdlib.org/findaid/ark:/13030/c8p55t3m/entire_...

I thought I remember seeing this at the Game On exhibition https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Game_On_(exhibition) but it must have been the SNES version.

What's with their mobile layout? The URL bar doesn't disappear as I scroll. They must be doing something anonying.

Other than that, cool project. Just wish I could read more than 10 lines without scrolling and a quarter of my screen wasn't being wasted.

Same on desktop, appears to be a deliberate design choice to make the bottom, non-header, part as an overflow:auto div so it gets it's own scrollbar.

I remember having that. I loved SimCity on the desktop but honestly the NES version was a complete piece of shit. I don't comprehend why any would want to save it. It had an incredibly poor interface, terrible controls for that sort of game. It was just plain bad. I question the author claiming it was unreleased. Or I somehow managed to score a copy as a kid.

Is it possible you're thinking of the SNES, rather than the NES?

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