MAXIS GAMES
...besides SimCity 2000, of course.
SimCity (1989)
The very first SimCity game Maxis ever made (but not the first game they made, that's SkyChase). I did write a review here. SimCity I've found was outdated already by the early 1990s. I do enjoy the top-down perspective, though.
Mysterium (1991)
This Game Boy game was developed by Maxis, surprisingly, and released by Asmik Ace Entertainment in 1991. It remains a Game Boy exclusive. (I've never played it.)
RoboSport (1991)
I've never played this game. It was still listed in Maxis catalogs in the mid-1990s.
SimAnt (1991)
I wrote an article about SimAnt back in 2014. I don't think I ever released those sound files, sorry!
A-Train (1992)
One of the few Western releases of the complex A-Train series, with this game in particular being Take the A-Train III. It sold poorly, which dampened the series' localization.
SimFarm (1993)
SimFarm was one of the early games I covered for this site (see review here), you know it's outdated because I talk about Farmville.
SimLife (1993)
I'm pretty sure I remember playing with SimLife years ago on a real Mac, but I never got into it. I don't think I'm missing much.
SimHealth (1993)
SimHealth was never released for the Mac, so I never played it, nor do I have an interest in it. Of note, it was released in traditional channels anyway. It was developed by Thinking Tools, which spun off from a group from within Maxis. (More info here).
SimTower (1994)
SimTower was a favorite of mine and I wrote a review back in 2016. There's a lot more to say about its sequel, Yoot Tower. It is a rebadged version of The Tower, a Japanese title by OpenBooK.
Marty and the Trouble with Cheese (1995)
One of the first games in the Maxis Software Toys for Kids line. I know almost nothing about it, other than you can find it here and used a microphone.
SimTown (1995)
While I've played SimTown before, I can't say much for it. The closer down-to-earth scale with placing ponds and sidewalks was interesting, though, but at the end of the day it's just a REALLY downscaled version of SimCity. Because it was a Maxis Software Toys for Kids game, there was more of an educational aspect to it as you balanced out resources.
Full Tilt! Pinball (1995)
This is where the "3D Space Cadet Pinball" game on older Windows games comes from, and it even had a Mac release. I remember trying it years ago on a Mac from the Macintosh Garden but apparently it was buggy on my machine and I couldn't actually see the ball.
Widget Workshop (1995)
This is another one I thought I review for, but I didn't, only mentioning it in passing with The Incredible Machine. At one time I thought about doing something bigger for Widget Workshop explaining the machines in more detail (essentially, signals are sent as numbers, often in integers or numbers), allowing you to make extremely simple circuits. It is a fascinating game, even if it's made for kids.
Zaark and the Night Team (1995)
This was in the Maxis Software Toys catalog and was one of the Maxis Software Toys for Kids games, and has been basically forgotten.
SimCity 2000: Network Edition (1996)
SimCity 2000 with some changes to make it multiplayer, including introducing the concept of trading power, but never played it.
SimCopter (1996)
Game that built off SimCity 2000, but it never got a Mac release.
SimGolf (1996)
Not to be confused with Sid Meier's SimGolf, this golf game didn't receive much love upon release. With its create-your-own-course features, it was likely intended to be compatible with other products but isn't. I mention this game in The Sims review (below).
SimTunes (1996)
A strange game that was built on ideas from a cancelled Super NES game, Sound Fantasy. Never played it.
Kick Off 97 (1997)
One of two games in the games in the short-lived Maxis Sports label (developed by someone else). Tony La Russa Baseball 4 (see bottom of page) was the other.
Streets of SimCity (1997)
This game looked awesome and had you drive around your city in a fully-3D environment. Now that it's patched for modern systems I might use it for a spin in my SimCity 2000 cities, so watch this section.
SimSafari (1998)
I actually did play SimSafari, the last game published under the Maxis Software Toys for Kids line, but have forgotten all of it.
SimCity 3000 (1999)
The next-generation of SimCity has some major problems, even after its updated re-release just a year later, SimCity 3000 Unlimited. Check out my review here. It is the first game since SkyChase that Maxis developed, but didn't publish.
The Sims (2000)
I wrote this review originally in 2020. Overall, I thought that it was amusing but ran out its novelty early on. I think that the idea of a game that was 100% compatible with SimCity 2000 was a more interesting idea, even if it was not really a marketable product in the mid-1990s or one that ran well.
SimCity 4 (2003)
I have a lot of things to say about SimCity 4 and there's a few extras if you check out the page here. Overall, I think it's tragically unfinished and deserved more expansion packs. The last good SimCity game, or any city simulator, really (and least traditional city sims).
The Sims 2 (2004)
I played this a bit (just a bit) in May 2024, and I wrote a small piece about it, which I've tried to patch up here as I would've written it. I might've had to more to say if I played with it more, but I didn't.
I must admit I had more fun with the spin-offs of The Sims (Bustin' Out, The Urbz) than the original game. I did play the original title but never really got into it and got bored with it following the demise of several families when I played it around 2019-2020.
Besides, The Sims is, or was, a spin-off of the SimCity series, and I always enjoyed the SimCity series (the first four, anyway, in varying capacities).
Because I had a lot of problems with my families getting killed off in The Sims (1), I didn't want to get too attached to my Sims, so I made a dude that looked a bit like the dad from Inside Out, his wife with a massive nose and a clown outfit as her normal clothing, a teenage daughter who wears a ballet outfit all the time, and a little kid with eyes just wide enough part that looks like he has fetal alcohol syndrome and not some sort of alien. (You can make your Sims quite grotesque). You can take a look at the gang here. While I love the idea of additional buildings in SimCity 4, I felt like there was a problem with not enough options and too much options, in which the best way to explain it would be that I wanted something relatively "normal". Maybe I might be trying to find something SPECIFIC, but those cases are fairly rare in games like this. Most in-game character creators are pretty hideous anyway.
Then you get into the mod dilemma, where there's a lot of different things but never the sort of thing you want, even it should seem common. (I learned this the hard way in my "SimCity 4 with mods" phase). Then, even if you should ACHIEVE finding such a mod, the novelty wears off quickly. (I mentioned in the review of the original title.
As by this time, EA had figured out that women were the primary demographic for The Sims series, when you moved in, the neighborhoods aren't just for show, there's whole backstories with the neighbors, ready for you to make stories with them. Not interested! It's a good thing I didn't too attached to the original game, as there's no way to import ANYTHING from The Sims to The Sims 2. I'm guessing it was the engine difference, and despite an expansion of personalities, there isn't a way to export The Sims 2 to The Sims 3. This seems like an oversight. According to the book High Score! by Rusel DeMaria mentions that an earlier product, Little Computer People (Activision, 1985), was able to "save" unique characters by copying the 2048-bit "personality parameter" to a new diskette. The only cross-compatibility The Sims 2 has with anything is with SimCity 4, importing regions to use as neighborhood maps.
Like with the original The Sims there were lots of expansion packs released (eight of them!) as well as about a dozen "stuff packs". Notably, two of these were tie-ins with retail chains (though to my knowledge were sold in neither), "H&M Fashion Stuff" and "IKEA Home Stuff". Still smarting from a lack of SimCity 4 expansion packs at the time, I had thought that branded items would've done perfectly in SimCity 4. However, judging by what came out of SimCity 2013, the content seemed to be angled FAR toward advertising than anything resembling realism, with Exhibit A and Exhibit B. While the stuff from H&M and IKEA was functional, because of mods, there's nothing stopping you from creating and sending out fashions from, say, the spring 1996 JCPenney catalog.
Maybe I just needed to get into it, but there didn't seem to be anything compelling enough for me to keep playing.
Spore (2008)
I might've written something for Spore as I definitely played it, but I sort of lost interest around midway through. The whole of Spore has a bunch of drama as it went from a science-based game (with the name of SimEverything in early development) to a goofy creature-building game, but...
Darkspore (2011)
Online game that shut down years ago. Can be used as an example of why owning physical media doesn't mean you can play the game indefinitely.
SimCity (2013)
The last true Maxis game. I haven't played this because I didn't want to install Origin, even after the game had offline. From what I've seen it incorporates a few interesting features but even without being hamstrung by the agent system, doesn't really move the franchise forward as it should've. Perhaps this was all cut in development.
OTHER GAMES
These ones I have not much to say about or no real interest to play (and in games like the case of Darkspore, can't play at all! It could be used as an example of why owning physical media doesn't mean you can play the game indefinitely).
* SimEarth (1990)
* Unnatural Selection (1993)
* SimIsle (1995)
* SimPark (1996)
* Full Tilt! Pinball 2 (1996)
* The Crystal Skull (1996)
* Marble Drop (1997)
* Tony La Russa Baseball 4 (1997)
* The Sims Online (2002)
* Darkspore (2011)