Amiga

SimEarth: The Living Planet

Sim City is generally regarded as one of the best products ever released on a 16-bit machine. On paper the game might sound deathly dull. I mean, the chance to build your own city from scratch, complete with roads, power cables and nuclear reactors doesn't sound very interesting, doesn't it?! Maybe it would appeal to sad anorak cases, but who else? In practice, though, the game was a revelation and became an instant classic.

Dank der Konvertierer von Maxis läuft die Evolution am Amiga rückwärts: Während die Ameisen aus "Sim Ant" praktisch zeitgleich mit ihren PC-Kollegen loskrabbelten, darf unsereins die Erde erst hinterher bewohnbar machen! Da hat also der Vorgänger den Nachfolger glatt um anderthalb Jahre überholt. Aber was sind schon 18 Monate im Vergleich mit Zehn Milliarden Jahren? So lang ist hier nämlich die maximale Spielzeit – nicht zu verwechseln mit der tatsächlich investieren Echtzeit, die aber ebenfalls reichlich bemessen werden sollte. Denn Sim Earth ist so ziemlich das genaue Gegenteil eines flotten Spielchens für Zwischendurch!

After a long, long wait, Sim Earth has finally arrived for the Amiga. Touted as the next best thing to being a divine intelligence, Sim Earth has something of a reputation – but so do most Maxis programs. This reputation isn't necessarily always good, though. Often the 'Maxis problem' is that of slowly updating screens, mice which don't react for what feels like days, and a slightly detached, mildly irrational feeling that you're not really involved with what seems to be going on. Sound familiar? It was certainly the case with Sim Ant (especially in high-res mode) and even Sim City had a few, shall we say, user interface idiosyncrasies.