Sim City 128k (1990) Kempston Mouse version "Walkthrough" + Review, ZX Spectrum

Huge playlist archive with Kempston Mouse games: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLxOanVBhqd3tM1Ov2sGHI177WdlY0wali
INTRODUCTION (From the manual):
Enter Sim City and take control. Be the undisputed ruler of a sophisticated real-time City Simulation. Create your own dream City (or dream slum) from the ground up. Whether you take over an existing City or build a new one, you are the Mayor and City Planner with complete authority.

Your city is populated by Sims - Simulated Citizens. Like their human counterparts, they build houses, condos, churches, stores and factories. And, also like humans, they complain about things like taxes, mayors, taxes, city planners and taxes. If they get too unhappy, they move out; you collect less taxes, the city deteriorates.

Sim City Is a SYSTEM SIMULATION. The challenge of playing a SYSTEM SIMULATION game is to figure out how the system works and take control of it. As master of the system you are free to use the TOOLS to create and control an unlimited number of systems (in this case dues) within the framework and limits provided by the RULES.

In Sim City, the RULES to learn are based on city planning and management, including: Human, economic and political factors, survival factors, the strategies in order to face disasters, unemployment, crime and pollution, and life quality in your city.
The TOOLS allow you to: plan, zone terrains, clear the city of trees, build roadways, airports and sea ports, set up and maintain a power grid, sow desolation and destruction creating natural disasters.

But the most important TOOL of all is the Simulator Itself. Test your plans and ideas as you watch the city grow or shrink through the immigration and emigration of industrious Simulated Citizens. Sims will move in and build homes, hospitals, churches, stores and factories in the zones you provide, or move out in search of jobs or a better life elsewhere. The success of the city is based on the quality of the city you design and manage.

REVIEW:
Taking the role as the Mayor you have to build up a city from scratch in this real-time simulation game. At the beginning you can choose between Easy (start with 20.000$), Medium (start with 10.000$) and Difficult (start with 5.000$). The big challenge is off course to start with only 5.000$, and this is what have been chosen for the gameplay in this video.

First you will need to build a power station so you can provide electricity to the other buildings you set up. You can choose between coal and nuclear, and a power station can only support a limited amount of buildings, so you will have to build more power stations as you proceed. When you add too much to a power station you will get unstable electricity and brownouts.

When you have the power station you will need to set up residential areas so people can have a place to live, and then you will need to set up commercial and industry areas. Power lines, roads and railroads will also be needed.

If the taxes is too high the people will move, and if you build too many residential areas compared to the amount of commercial and industry areas, people will also move because of unemployment. You can adjust fund level for transport system / roads, police and fire, but even though it is quite expensive to have those on 100% it is recommended, especially the roads will soon need a lot of repairs if the budget is lowered.

As the city gets bigger you will also need police stations and fire stations, and later on more expensive stuff such as a stadium, a seaport for the industry, and an airport will be needed.

Besides the normal playing map you can also use a special map where the city is split up into 9 parts, which you can change between by pressing Caps Shift + 1-9. This allows you to quickly move around in the city and see statistics for pollution, police, fire department, traffic, power, transport and crime.

The game was made by Antony R. Lill and Simon Butler from Probe Software Ltd. and published by Infogrames for the ZX Spectrum 48k in 1990.

Very impressive how they managed to cram all this into 48k of memory! The game is highly colorful, extremely playable and addictive – An evening will be gone in no time. The game in this video is the 128k version with AY music and Kempston Mouse support, and it is totally ace!

If you have a four button mouse you can control everything in the menus with the mouse.

There is no ending for this game, you keep playing forever, but this “walkthrough” shows the whole island covered with a big city that is rated as a Capital.

Rating = 98%

If you do not have a Kempston Mouse for your Spectrum you can play the game in an emulator that supports Kempston Mouse and play it with your PC mouse.

Original 48k tape version: http://www.worldofspectrum.org/pub/sinclair/games/s/SimCity.tap.zip
Unofficial 128k Kempston Mouse version: https://velesoft.speccy.cz/kmouse/kmvelesoft/simcity128-final-km.sna.zip

Видео Sim City 128k (1990) Kempston Mouse version "Walkthrough" + Review, ZX Spectrum канала Modern ZX-Retro Gaming