For my 30th birthday post, I thought it would be great to post about my favorite computer game of the early 00s, The Sims. (I still play today) I have memories of playing this on my Windows 98 computer, after school, with the sun shining, on my terrible Ikea desk, while listening to Play, the girl group (who will be the subject of another blog soon). Ahh, memories. It was a game I could play with my friends when they came over.
History:
The Sims is a life simulation game released in 2000 by Maxis and Electronic Arts. Will Wright developed the game. He also developed the Sim City games. Wright wanted to create a game that was a life simulation but included a design element. The game itself would marry interior and home design with a real-life simulation that included storylines. The Sims was a critical success.
The game started as “Project X”, because Wright’s idea of the game was not well received. While working on Sim City 2000, he also worked on “Project X” which would be The Sims. The game started as a game that was based on character behavior but turned into a more social game, having Sims interact with each other.
The Sims was one of the few games in the late 90s and early 00s that didn’t have sexual orientation determined for characters. The player could decide by interaction who they were into, which was revolutionary.
There were seven expansion packs that were added after the initial game release in 2000. These added elements to the game, including pets, additional towns, dating, vacation spots, and magic. The public and critics love the game and Wright was praised for bringing in female users to play games because that was less popular. As of 2015, The Sims has sold 11.24 million copies of the game for PC, which makes it one of the best-selling PC games of all time.
Since 2000, there have been four iterations of The Sims franchise, and it is one of the most popular PC games of all time.
Review:
This game is amazing! You start with the soundtrack. It is a bunch of bops that are way too loud, so you have to actually turn it down. You take to the screen above, which is Old Town. This is the base game version of this game, with no expansions. There are a few different houses you can purchase, and there are different lots without houses where you can make houses.
The beauty of this game is that if you love design, great you can design houses. If you love the gameplay, great you can play with a family. This screen is the edit town mode. You can demolish or add houses where there are lots available. Eventually, there would be more towns and other buildings you could add with expansions.
There are different families that have their own lore within the game. The most popular ones that go across the franchise are the Goth Family. This family includes Mortimer and Bella Goth. They live in a large home that is gothic style. They have a daughter named Cassandra. This family is across all four games of the Sims and has a crazy story.
Next, you can create a family. It was 2000, so you could only make adults and children. Children were around the age of 10. No one aged up, so you were the same age forever. You could have up to 8 sims in each household. This game is hard though, so it having over 2-3 people would be difficult to play. When you create a sim, you can pick a pre-made outfit, a name, and a profile and give them traits. These traits would determine how they are. You can’t add or subtract traits after you start the game. Traits were very important because if a sim was messy, they were MESSY! It was difficult.
The gameplay is great but is hard. It is difficult to keep sims alive because the autonomy of the characters at the time was not great. Also, it was hard to keep everyone in a good mood. Also, if sims don’t have certain skills, things can go wrong. For example, if you cook with an oven and you don’t have cooking skills, you could start a fire. This could kill your sim. Actually, it would kill your sim about 80 percent of the time because they were dumb and wouldn’t move outside of the fire. If you want traumatic memories as a child, think about the first time you killed a sim.
You could only have a baby by kissing. The sims themselves had a hard time creating relationships because you needed to slowly cultivate them like life. The only way to lose was to kill your sim (hunger, fire, insanity, drowning etc.). There really isn’t a way to win because you can’t age up and there aren’t goals unless you make personal goals. This is great because you can be as creative as you want to be .
Overall, this game is wonderful, despite how hard it is. I enjoy the fact that it got easier as the franchises went on, but kept some spontaneity.
Final Thoughts:
Does it hold up?
⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
This game is amazing. The problem is, it is really hard to get this specific game to work on a PC now. Even if you get it to work, it will probably crash eventually. I love it though!
Nostalgia Rating?
⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
There are so many memories that go with this game. If you read the first paragraph, I have very specific memories of this game. It was amazing!
Post your thoughts in the comments below!
Check out: 90s Video Games You Probably Forgot About
Favorite YouTube Video that Features The Sims: Plumbella Plays Expert Mode
As always, Creating Nostalgia Millennial Style!
