Game of the week: SimCity for SNES

Since its original release in 1989, SimCity has been one of the most popular video games of all time. It first was created for the Commodore 64 computer, but since it has been ported to other home computers, PCs, Macintoshes and all kinds of home and handheld video game systems. There also have been numerous sequels to the original SimCity game, as well as many other games similar to or based upon SimCity.

It's easy to see why the game is so popular and down-right infectious. You work as an architect of sorts, building a city from scratch. You put down the power plants, the roads, the parks, the residential districts, industrial areas, just about everything you can think of for a city.

Over the years I've played multiple versions of SimCity, but my favorite version always has been the one for the Super Nintendo Entertainment System.

I think it has to do with the control scheme and the ease of use of those controls. You don't have to jump all over a keyboard or click a billion times on a mouse like you have to do with computer versions of many games. It's just you and the SNES controller. Click a button or two, move around on the screen, and you can do everything you need to do.

And maybe I always just got lucky or maybe I always had a good television screen, but for some reason the SimCity colors seemed brighter and sharper to me when I played the SNES version hooked up to my TV than when I played computer versions.

Another great thing about SimCity was it could last seemingly forever. I know there were nights back in the day when I would turn off my TV but leave my SNES on, then I'd go to bed and wake up the next day with SimCity still playing away by itself (in truth the game didn't technically play by itself, but the turns within the game would continue while I collected money and my city would grow or decline). That way, I could play the same city within the game for days and days, sometimes week.

SimCity for the SNES. Truly a classic game.