For Thursday, February 4, 1998 Drummer Column, Gibbs, 717 words
It is with itchy fingers that I type this message. My eagerness almost overwhelms my ability to find the proper keys on my new ergonomic keyboard.
Today, Monday, at 4 p.m., I received in the mail a birthday present to myself. It is a computer game that I have been waiting years for -- the release, finally, of SimCity 3000 by Maxis. Woohoo!
The game actually came out on my birthday -- January 27. I put in an immediate Internet order by credit card and began watching my front porch. Today, courtesy of UPS, SimCity 3000 was at my door.
I haven't opened the box yet. It's beside me. I thought I'd pull up a typing screen first, in case you wanted to be there for the real-time unveiling.
I must say first that I am a big fan of computer games. I collect them avidly. However, I never play them. I do not find the time. I've only beaten two computer games in my life without using the cheat codes -- MegaRace and solitaire.
I've turned on games and fiddled through the first couple of screens, trying to learn what the buttons did. I soon died and figured I didn't have the time to develop the skills needed to beat the game and turned it off. I own Doom, Quake and Duke Nukem, the shoot-'em-ups. I'm stuck on the first level in all three of them.
However, however, however…SimCity is different. In SimCity, players don't have to duck and roll, or shoot seven snipers while backflipping over a boiling cauldron. SimCity lets people sit and think. It doesn't require winning. It only requires playing. Gamers turn a landscape of lakes and forests into a thriving community of any size. As mayor the solitary player is responsible for everything -- power, water, highways, schools, police, fire, hospitals, parks, city ordinances, and the like. The goal is simply to earn more than you spend. You can stop anytime and call a city finished, then start a new one.
Old SimCity2000 has extremely realistic looking buildings. You can zoom in and admire the details. When you make a city thrive, little Sim people, actually elongated black dots, fill the sidewalks, and motor vehicles, little blue squares, travel across your highways.
Maxis promised in this new 3000 release to heighten the realism by allowing another level of zoom, one so close you could see individual people, dressed differently, walking about, and specific cars and trucks instead of dots. Maxis showed off screen shots on their web page that looked too unbelievably real. How could they animate that much detail? They promised us great things. And now it's here.
I can't wait any longer. I have to see it. I'm picking up the box. OK, I'm reading the box. "System requirements." Holy Moley, it wants 230 megs of free hard disk space. I have that. OK, hold on. I'm going to install the CD. Here it goes. So far, so good.
Now it's Tuesday, 4 p.m. -- 24 hours later. The installation was a success. I started up a practice game to check out the fine details and got carried away. Eight hours later I looked at the clock. It was midnight. I had 59,000 overtaxed Sim-ians and a partially completed industrial complex. How could I go to bed and leave all these people in the lurch?
Wow. What a game. The animated details of the bustling cityscape at full zoom is an electronic marvel. I see why it took years to program. Individual people, specific cars, airplanes, helicopters, trains, subways, boats are all scurrying about living and building in Gibbstown. My advisors are monitoring pollution, recycling, investments, social programs, and such. It's just like SimCity2000, except a whole lot better.
My favorite improvement is in the sound. Excellent music and sound effects pour out of my speakers. The saxophone jazz I'd like to record and play in my car.
I just checked in on Gibbstown. It's clean, crime free, and making money. Once I finished the industrial complex, with a loan, things stabilized and I could lower taxes. It is now 10:10 p.m.
I'd like to say more, but I have to give my teachers a raise and then go to bed.