 Hi there, let's take a look at each sim game released for the Super Nintendo. And no, I don't mean each game in the simulation genre, just the games from the Sim series. Sim City, Sim City 2000, Sim Earth, and Sim Ant. And I'll start with one of the North American SNES launch titles, Sim City. The title is pretty self-explanatory here. You build and simulate a city, and for a PC port in the early 90s, this was as good as you could possibly hope for. There's very little lag or slowdown as you work in real time. I already did a video on this one a long while back, and yeah, I was kind of hard on it. And my main talking point was that a game this ambitious isn't always going to age well. Because later iterations of the same idea are going to be done on a bigger scale with a grander vision, and on a whole other level of detail. For example, you quickly run out of room to build your city, and then it's like, well, now what do I do? And your options in general are very limited. Especially since I've grown used to what's available in later Sim City games. Traffic is a problem? Oh, I'll just put down a few bus stations, build a subway, and... Oh, you can't do any of those things here. That may be the case, but the Sim City experience on Super Nintendo is still fine on its own. One thing this game nailed is how stress-free and relaxing it is. The music is absolutely perfect for a game like this. So you can sit back and either build a city from scratch, play out one of the scenarios, or just screw around and summon Bowser to wreck everything. I really like Sim City. It's one of my favorite games for my childhood. And while I wouldn't blame anyone for dismissing it because the series had moved on to much more advanced and more detailed aspects, I still think there's a lot of value in playing the SNES version in this day and age. The same, however, cannot be said for the SNES port of Sim City 2000. Well, they did the best they could, but that game is just too huge to cram on to a Super Nintendo cartridge. This is a very slow game with long load times, limited maps, limited scenarios, limited music, fewer disasters, and did I mention how slow everything is? Good God. I just want to get to the bottom of the map here. Jesus. This is especially disappointing for me personally because Sim City 2000 is one of my favorite games ever, for PC. It's a natural progression from the original game with a lot more functionality and a lot more possibilities available to the player. You can build a subway system, high schools, colleges, water towers, and pumps, marinas, prisons, libraries, museums, it's really cool. But the Super Nintendo version fails to execute the basic gameplay in a user-friendly manner. It's just way too slow. I will say they had the right idea with the music. It's perfect for this kind of game. And you'll be hearing a lot of it as you scroll and wait, and scroll and wait. Seriously, you're way better off with the original Sim City than this port. In fact, maybe it would have been a better idea to keep the graphical interface from the original game, but add Sim City 2000's additional options, plus, how about this, support for the Super Nintendo mouse. Now that would have been something. Let's move on to Sim Earth, and it's story time with SNES Drunk. Once upon a time in 6th grade, I lent my copy of Sim City to a classmate. In return he lent me Gradius 3. About a week later, when I went to give his game back, he wasn't at school that day, so I just left the game in my locker. Where it got stolen. Well, my friend's mom freaked and complained to my mom that it was only right that he got to keep my game since I was responsible for losing his game. What a bunch of bullshit. Well anyway, as a replacement, I asked for Sim Earth for Christmas that year. It seemed like a huge upgrade anyway. Sim City, but on an entire planet, hell yeah, but uh, yeah, that's not what this game is at all. In fact, I had no freaking clue what the hell was supposed to be going on in this game in the slightest. It turns out what you're supposed to do is manipulate the planet's atmosphere, weather, and climate in order to make the conditions just right for life to form and evolve into an advanced civilization. So yeah, needless to say, this went way over my head as a 10 year old. And to this day, it is still really confusing. I guess I just don't understand enough about earth science to know how to mess around with continental drifts or atmospheric pressure or the proper conditions for bacteria to grow and spread. Yes, that's right. It's a video game where you're manipulating bacteria and amoebas feel the excitement. Anyway, I guess the idea behind Sim Earth is noble enough. But even if this game were a little more intuitive and had a more user friendly interface, and if you know, you had any inkling as to what was going on or what you were doing, I still wouldn't be able to recommend it because it's targeted toward a specific audience. So all you Geoscience majors out there, this game is for you. Good luck. Last we have Sim Ant, and mercifully, this game is much better than Sim Earth because it's a lot more linear. Also, the scroll bar here makes it a lot easier to understand what you're supposed to do. How about that? You're an ant. Okay, that's easy enough. So what do I do? You dig. Okay, now what? You lay eggs. Okay, now go find food. Oh shit, there's other ants. I gotta defend my eggs. You see, Sim Earth, being straightforward and easy to understand isn't all that hard. It's still just really bitter about that game. The goal is to take over this guy's entire yard and drive this poor sap out of his house. Now that's funny. Sim Ant is also a better port than Sim City 2000 because it operates much better. There's not much lag or slowdown at the beginning anyway. The game runs smoothly for the most part. And hey, it actually uses the SNES mouse. Imagine that. Now, there's a lot less functionality here to say the least. I mean, you obviously have to be big time into ants or insects to get a lot of mileage out of this game. But just in case you're not, the game helpfully includes a tutorial that explains everything you've ever wanted to know about ants. I don't know about you, but I'm really amused that this is here. You can't fault the game's developers for trying. There's three different ants you can play as, and each have their own abilities and requirements. Like, you'll need soldier ants to defend the nest, but they need a lot of food to maintain. So yeah, there's a smidgen of strategy involved where you really have to decide how you want to split up your worker and soldier ants, but really the majority of the gameplay is just gathering food. Sim Ant is a fine game, and it's certainly better than Sim Earth, but it's probably not for everyone. So yeah, that's all for Sim Games for the Super Nintendo, and obviously the best game of the bunch is going to be the original Sim City. Sim Ant is fine for what it is, even if it is pretty repetitive, and it has kind of an oddball subject matter. Sim City 2000 is just a bad port, and Sim Earth is just bad in general. Anyway, that's it. Thanks for watching, and have a great rest of your day.