Simcity 2000 Windows 95 Iso

[Dawnell Sechler]

I never got very much into 2K because at the time I bought it, I wasn't very well literate on computer terminology and while we did have 4MB's of RAM on our 486 back in December of 93, that's ALL the system had. I did get 4MB's of RAM for an old 386 I was given, and it would run, but too slow to be playable. It would take literally 5 minutes to respond to a click! It's strange, because I remember a friend of mine had a Mac LC and it would run it much faster than my 386 would, but his father said the processor was only equivalent to a 286 or slow 386. My version of A-train ran much faster on our 486 than it did on his.

Here's something someone mentioned that could possibly help, though he was talking about using it with the version of simcity 2000 you can download from his (the site he works for/works with anyway) site which is:

I just tested this on my Windows 98 and Windows XP computers, and found that animations don't occur unless there is something moving on the screen (like trains, which you said you work, but also airplanes, boats, etc.). So it seems that the game needs something moving in order to refresh the screen so that animations will show. This was all in 32-bit colors. When I switched the color to 256 (by compatibility in XP and changing the settings in 98), animations worked all the time.

So the only compatibility setting that you should have to change is to make the game run in 256 colors. I left all the other settings alone, and the game worked as expected. It actually says this in the readme, in fact:

SimCity 2000 was originally written for a 256 color environment. Since people may be running in more or less than 256 colors, we have allowed SimCity 2000 to run in color resolutions other than 256. Obviously, trying to run a program with 256 color artwork in 16 colors is going to look downright yucky. Additionally, due to the way many high-color and true-color cards work, animations in SimCity 2000 will not work properly with systems running in more than 256 colors (animations that use color cycling, such as traffic, smoke, flashing power symbols, etc). However, in both cases, SimCity 2000 is still playable, so if you usually run in more or less than 256 colors and don't want to change video depth each time you run, you can still play SimCity 2000. For absolutely best results, we recommend that you run SimCity 2000 on a system configured for exactly 256 colors. To change your color depth under Windows 95, right-click on your desktop background and select Properties. From the Properties window, select the Settings tab. In this window, you can change the color depth and resolution of your video card. If installed properly, Windows will limit you to the resolutions and depths that your video card supports.

I've got the special edition as well, and have run this game in Windows 3.1, 95, 98, XP, and Vista, and never really noticed this issue (I didn't really find it very important to have animations). I've also got it sort of running on my 64-bit Windows 7 system, but I can't do anything that opens a load/save dialog, since the libraries that SC2K uses for that don't seem to exist in 64-bit OS's, so the game crashes.

Well, it's working fine now. I don't know what changed, but the animations are working the way they should. Only thing is, it warps the desktop colors when it starts, probably a color issue like you were saying. Other than that it's working fine.

Besides graphical glitches, the setup.exe for most versions of Simcity 2000 is also 16 bit. But the game files are all 32 bit. Copy the installed game files and fake the registry key from another PC and maybe it would work?

But we still need your support to stay online. If you're able to, please consider a donation to help us stay up and running. This helps sustain a platform where we can share our community creations for years to come.

By way of a "Thank You" gift, we'd like to send you our STEX Collector's DVD. It's some of the best buildings, lots, maps and mods collected for you over the years. Check out the STEX Collections for more info.

SimCity 2000 is a city-building simulation video game jointly developed by Will Wright and Fred Haslam of Maxis. It is the successor to SimCity Classic and was released for Apple Macintosh and MS-DOS personal computers in 1993,[7] after which it was released on many other platforms over the following years, such as the Sega Saturn and SNES game consoles in 1995 and the PlayStation in 1996.[8]

SimCity 2000 is played from an isometric perspective as opposed to the previous title, which was played from a top-down perspective. The objective of the game is to create a city, develop residential and industrial areas, build infrastructure such as power and water facilities and collect taxes for further development of the city. Importance is put on increasing the standard of living of the population, maintaining a balance between the different sectors, and monitoring the region's environmental situation to prevent the settlement from declining and going bankrupt, as extreme deficit spending gets a game over.[9]

SimCity 2000 was critically praised for its vibrant and detailed graphics, improved control menu, gameplay and music. An approximate total of 4.23 million copies of SimCity 2000 have been sold, mainly in the United States, Europe and Japan. While its predecessor pioneered the city-building genre of video games, SimCity 2000 would become the model upon which subsequent urban simulators would be based over the course of the next decades.

The unexpected and enduring success of the original SimCity, combined with the relative lack of success with other "Sim" titles, finally motivated the development of a sequel. SimCity 2000 was a major extension of the concept. It had a near-isometric dimetric view (similar to the earlier Maxis-published A-Train)[10] instead of overhead, land could have different elevations, and underground layers were introduced for water pipes, subways and road tunnels.

New types of facilities include prisons, schools, libraries, museums, marinas, hospitals and arcologies. Players can build highways, roads, bus depots, railway tracks, subways, train depots and zone land for seaports and airports. There are a total of nine varieties of power plants in SimCity 2000, including coal, oil, natural gas, nuclear, wind turbines, hydroelectric dams (which can only be placed on waterfall tiles), solar and the futuristic fusion power and satellite microwave plants. Most types of power plants have a limited life span and must be rebuilt periodically. Players can build highways to neighboring cities to increase trade and the population.

Another new addition in SimCity 2000 is the query tool. Using the query tool on tiles reveals information such as structure name and type, altitude, and land value. Certain tiles also display additional information; power plants, for example, display the percentage of power being consumed when queried, and querying roads displays the amount of traffic on that tile. Querying a library and selecting "Ruminate" displays an essay written by Neil Gaiman.[11]

News comes in the form of several pre-written newspaper articles with variable names that could either be called up immediately or could be subscribed to on a yearly basis. The newspaper option provided many humorous stories as well as relevant ones, such as new technology, warnings about aging power plants, recent disasters and opinion polls (highlighting city problems). SimCity 2000 is the only game in the entire series to have this feature (besides the discontinued children's version, SimTown), though newer versions have a news ticker. The newspapers had random titles (Times, Post, Herald, etc.), and prices based on the simulated year. Certain newspapers have a special monthly humor advice column by "Miss Sim". Some headlines have no purpose whatsoever in the game, such as "Bald Radio Found" or "Frog Convention".

Though there is no "true" victory sequence in SimCity 2000, the "exodus" is a close parallel. An "exodus" occurs during the year 2051 or later, when 300 or more Launch Arcologies are constructed; the following January each one "takes off" into space so that their inhabitants can form new civilizations on distant worlds.[12] This reduces the city's population to those who are not living in the Launch Arcologies, but it also opens wide areas for redevelopment and returns their construction cost to the city treasury. This is related to the event in SimEarth where all cities are moved into rocket-propelled domes that then leave to "found new worlds" (leaving no sentient life behind).

Fred Haslam recalled being pitched on a sequel for SimCity at a Maxis company dinner in December 1990, just as he and Will Wright had finished SimEarth. Wright had spent five years working on the original game and did not want to work on the sequel, delegating the task to Haslam. Haslam spent the first 8 months of 1991 working on a top-down two-dimensional game. At that point, Maxis had contracted to work on the game A-Train, which used near-isometric dimetric projection to represent the landscape. Maxis decided that the SimCity sequel should also use this graphical style. Haslam spent the next year trying to accomplish this task without success, at which point Will Wright joined the team.[13]

Haslam and Wright worked together to complete the game, and each found their input complemented the other's. Haslam gives examples such as including the square grid from A-Train, which Wright then removed for the underground view. Haslam also describes how Wright wanted to add labels for locations, which Haslam also used to signify neighbour connections. Wright's other additions were arcologies, microsimulations, and the underground view. Haslam's additions included the city newspaper (in place of the 'score' from SimCity), free-size zoning, and the ability to issue bonds. Haslam coded the lists of variable terms in the newspaper headlines, with Debra Larson writing the actual newspaper articles. Other features were removed during the production process, such as zones for mining, farming and lumbering, one-way streets, and tidal waves.[13]

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