SimCopter

aka: SimCopter: Fly Missions in the Metropolis
Moby ID: 973
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Description official descriptions

SimCopter is a light helicopter flying simulator closely related to Sim City 2000. The player is a rookie helicopter pilot that must make his living by transporting passengers and help the city authority in several tasks, including rescuing sims from fires and boat accidents, divert cars from traffic jams, aid on putting out fires and arresting criminals, controlling riots and MEDEVAC injured sims to nearby hospitals.

The player starts with a basic helicopter, and by completing missions, earn money that can be used to buy larger and faster helicopters and equipment required to deal with more advanced problems (such as a water cannon to put out fires without having to fly directly over the fire and disperse a crowd, tear gas or a megaphone), as well as points to advance to the next level in career mode. The opposite also happens: if a player takes too long to solve a traffic jam, he gets penalized in points.

There are two game modes: Career makes the player jump from city to city, while the Free mode allows to play on any city, as well as any city created in Sim City 2000.

Included helicopters:* Sikorsky S-300

  • Bell 206 JetRanger
  • McDonnell/Douglas MD 500
  • McDonnell/Douglas MD 520N
  • Bell 212 Twin Huey
  • AgustaWestland AW109
  • Airbus Helicopters AS365 Dauphin
  • McDonnell/Douglas MD-900 Explorer
  • Boeing AH-64 Apache

Spellings

  • 模拟直升机 - Simplified Chinese spelling

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Credits (Windows version)

108 People (84 developers, 24 thanks) · View all

Reviews

Critics

Average score: 76% (based on 16 ratings)

Players

Average score: 3.4 out of 5 (based on 38 ratings with 4 reviews)

Review of review and trivia

The Good
Everything, i'm an addicted player. Nah, o.k. let's nail it down, i like the gameplay because it isn't to serious. It's a game and no Flight Simulator. It's relatively easy to learn to fly your Heli and you will have very soon success which will keep you playing the career. Early career levels can be boring after you gained some experience. The game is easy to modd which is a plus and certainly was meant by the devs, in those days some developers loved to kick the players in direction of developing (instead of "we are gods" .- "come and join us"). The career points, times, gains can be changed by use of the Tweak utility (works only for V1.0.1.3 and above).

The Bad
If it's not liked. Erm, no but there exists a version labeled as 1.0.1.4, "Weeds" stated that it is the last official release but this can't be it's a hacked executable and the career isn't to win because already in early levels your city will be flooded and destroyed by rioting sims you can't stop and which won't appear on your radar screen. Stay off of it it's broken.

But there is nothing i can mention about as bad, for sure i'm biased i love this game incl. all the flaws (flaws in a game are like wrinkles in the face, as older you get as more you will like them).

The Bottom Line
As an addicted player of SimCopter i have to add a few nit picking things to the reviews and especially to the trivia here. "Great Game - poor Graphics", true it is but one has to keep in mind that it needed some time to develop it and that 3D was in very early stage when they started out. It is stated in the Trivia and in a review that it is possible to play a demo city D3D accelerated this is a wrong statement, it's not D3D it's 3DFX which we have to separate 3DFX was leading and introducing the 3D acceleration, D3D is NVIDIA and Microsoft. V1.0.1.3 won't need a patch for this it's already patched for the 3DFX demo which is rather to see as a demo for 3DFX itself. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/3dfx_Interactive

Seen from this pov the graphics aren't that bad and no i didn't think the stupid 2D "walker" from "Streets of SimCity" looks better as the LEGO™ style Sims of SimCopter.

Practically it's this, there is no other Game similar except "Streets" which can use the assets of another game, in this case SimCity 2000. This already limits certain things but also opens some doors for the user to play in a different way (fiddle around with it and modify it). The lack of graphics is easy compensated by great gameplay and a lot of humor which you will miss in most recent games - they tend to be to serious for a game. Sure there are graphically better Heli and Rescue Simulations but none of them contains "Mr. Fluffy" or anything of that. The continuous advertising for water is recently more fitting and hits the spot ("Our water is the best water! Why? It's imported"). This game and Streets keep my busy since many years and there are not many games which are such long time runners as SimCopter. Even if you know this game by sleepwalk it's still fascinating to play it from year to year again.

What a young fellow (23) felt about it: "great i have to come over and play it" Usually he rants about the stupid old games with these rotten graphics i play but SimCopter seemed to fascinate him at first bite. He's one of the dudes who think it's common that a game has a volume of 100GB (trash i say, it has no effect on gameplay as you see, btw he played with great fun a inty demo together with another comrade of mine, 6kb of pure fun vs. boring 100gb of a game you will forget after a year, gameplay is neither bound to volume as it is bound to graphics - gameplay is gameplay and not emptying your wallet except it is a virtual wallet).

A point to the request for a remake, a dude started years ago to disassemble it and started an OSX project called "MisCopter" unfortunately he canceled this project and it's left unfinished. Sure as a 3D modeller and addicted player i would love to contribute to such a project. If you aren't certain about how good this could be refer to FFED3D which is still the original First Encounters just with enhanced graphics.

I heavily modded this game with stereo sounds, extra music from SimCity and Sims and a own set of career cities which are much harder to play as the original cities, each is designed especially for Copter (some for Copter and Streets). Some of the Cities are similar to the "starter towns" of SC3K, you can start the city and watch how it will grow to the city i used for SimCopter (shout if you would like that because them i didn't released yet).

Smacker movies, unfortunately it's not longer possible to implement smacker clips in SimCopter due to the fact that "Miles" changed the format and the previous release isn't compatible with the recent format of Smacker. Neither you can use a different version of "smack.dll" to playback recent smacker clips, SimCopter won't accept a different version of "smack.dll".

It's stated that Train Rescues are impossible to solve this is complete wrong they are hardest to solve but by far not impossible, in my own creations you will find very special railroads winding up and down mountains which will make the train rescues even harder but not impossible for an experienced player. In general my career cities are harder to play as the originals with exception of the early levels, they are meant for one who played the game very often.

Look out for YT clips of "Gernot" about SimCopter for additional stuff. Check also Rich "Weeds" Nagel SC2000 page.

Yes probably one day i will open a own page about SC2K, Copter and Streets, just because i created many things for them (and already lost a lot of it).

Windows · by Gernot Schrader (5) · 2019

Great Game. Poor Graphics.

The Good
This game is pretty amazing. The formula is simple. Take one SimCity 2000 city, make it into 3D and give the player the ability to fly around in it and then make it all "come to life" with people, traffic, radio stations, boats and airplanes that seamlessly integrate into the "city" feeling. All those gifts from SimCity 2000 show up too... the Mayor's House, the Arcologies (huge!), the Llama Dome... it's all here. And you don't need to view all this in daytime flight either, at the touch of a hotkey, you can be flying in the darker nighttime, where the city shines out.

As for the game itself, you play as an helicopter pilot under the city's employ. You fly around (or land and wait to save fuel ;) waiting for the city you're in to have some kind of emergency and then respond to the emergency ASAP for experience and $$$, having to land at the airport occasionally for repairs and refueling. Experience allows you to progress in campaign mode, and may activate more difficult emergencies in free flight mode. Accumulation of $$$ will allow you to buy additional rescue equipment for your helicopter (5 in all) as well as more advanced helicopters themselves which can handle better, achieve faster speeds and carry more passengers, depending on the model. Emergencies are varied... from a daring rooftop rescue to a simple traffic jam. From chasing down wanted criminals (by directing police cars to their location and/or carrying a police officer on board) to transporting individual Sims for medical attention (by directing an ambulance and/or carrying a doctor on board). From Taxi missions carrying VIPs to putting out fires (by directing fire dispatch to the proper location and/or carrying water in a bucket to drop on a fire or shooting it from a forward water hose). There's a lot of diversity in the old sim city and lots to do.

Additionally, persons aboard your helicopter respond negatively to excessive speed and G-Force. Quite simply, healthy passengers get sick and medical passengers get... well, their life signs grow more and more weak. Finally, Maxis has given SimCopter 5 radio stations including commercials to listen to on board your flight (with additional songs easily added by dropping them to the radio folders... WAV data only) and you can even choose your own movies (specific format of AVI) to play on the Drive-Ins. And it's not even all about Helicopters. You can get out of your helicopter at any time and go for a walk (or more likely, walk to an inaccessible-by-air area to rescue some injured person).

A lot of things happen in the old SimCity, many at once. It's quite often that you have to prioritize your missions to take care of the most life-threatening first. Letting Sims die or buildings burn down carries penalties to your money and your score.

The Bad
This game was created in 1996, the dawn of the 3D era. Unfortunately it has some fairly ugly 3D itself and does not support 3D acceleration (untrue... a patch from maxis does support Direct3D, but it's not done well and removes your cockpit HUD). For a game about flying, this game features some of the ugliest sky ever seen in a video game. The sky is a low-resolution texture which is placed "too high", directly above the city (i.e. 12 o'clock). What that means is that unless you're playing with the view controls to an obscure angle, you can't actually SEE this sky texture and so most of SimCity looks like it's perpetually stuck in a gray fog (daytime) or a starless nigh (nighttime). Continuing to bash the graphics, most "lights" that you see in the distance are block graphics... which means when a streetlight switches from red to green, you'll see one square block stop and another begin. Objects farther away tend to show off with bigger blocks.

The Sims in the city themselves are made up of a couple of polygons blocks which make every citizen of the city look like some kind of lego person. Additionally, it is all too easy for people (including your pilot character) to get stuck clipping inside of a building or simply end up in a place that is impossible to get to (a small roof for example). The AI for Sims is pretty stupid and will continually walk various Sims types into buildings while try to find the 'best route' to a location.

Also, due to limitations, emergency vehicles (ambulance, fire dept, police dept) can not access highways... which makes any "well thought out city" that uses them a pain to coordinate.... you must have an ample supply of roads. On the other hand, if one wanted to create a more difficult level, creating a SimCity with little to no road usage will do the trick. You'll be on your own.

Also Arcologies are a pain to fly around/over/near (and are the largest structures in the game)... but that's not a bad thing about this game, rather just a reason for a SimCity creator not to use too many =)

The Bottom Line
This is one of my favorite games. Quite simply it's a lot of fun despite it's flaws (which are mostly graphical in nature). Rushing from one emergency to another gets the adrenaline pumping! It's fun as a stand-alone game, but even better if you've worked on SimCity2000 cities and care about what happens to them.

Windows · by Shoddyan (15001) · 2003

Copter flying at its finest!

The Good
The concept: flying a copter and doing missions to earn money.

Graphics are OK.

The radio is a lot of fun to listen to, with it's humorous commercials, and the music is fantastic.

Sound effects are good

You can take a walk around through your city from a Sim's perspective.

The Bad
Like I said, the graphics are OK. Not good but OK. They are not exactly the best. It takes a while for things to get drawn out and a lot of things are in poor detail. They did improve greatly in Streets of Sim City

The Sims look weird. This was improved in Streets of Sim City too.



The Bottom Line
It is a fun game. It does have problems, but it is really fun!

Windows · by J W (103) · 2009

[ View all 4 player reviews ]

Trivia

Development history

SimCopter was planned to be much deeper and more realistic. Unfortunately, due to one of those "release four games this year or we'll shut you down" predicaments, many features had to be cut.

Easter eggs

  • An employee (Jacques Servin) made a statement about the portrayal of woman in games by doctoring a screen that was meant to show a brass band playing and instead a screen with kissing scantily-clad men popped up. The culprit was fired and a patch was released immediately. You can learn more about this incident from Maxis' Final Scene FAQ.
  • If you complete all the missions, you'll get to see two aliens in an UFO discussing your... potential. If you wait and wait and wait... They'll say something even funnier!
  • Using a cheat code, you can make the billboards and drive-ins in the city play custom Smacker movies.
  • By inputting the correct cheatcode or finding the "military base" on the map, you can actually fly the AH-64 Apache! It's even armed with missiles and a chain gun! Find the chopper, land next to it, jump out, then jump into the Apache and take off!
  • On some of the advanced level cities, UFOs may come by and cause havoc (just like SC2K and SC3K). If you are driving the Apache, you can actually try to shoot down the UFOs using the missiles! It'll take 10 missile hits to shoot down the UFO.
  • If you are driving the Apache chopper and you are tasked to chase down a suspect, you can actually shoot the suspect with the chopper and get points for it.
  • Got the Apache chopper? Is there a nuclear power plant in the city? Care to guess what happens if you fire missiles at the powerplant? Yep, you guessed it... you get a melt-down! And of course, in the explosion your chopper is destroyed.
  • Get the water cannon, spray some at the cars. You may make some money for a "car wash"!
  • This game contains quite a few date-related easter eggs. For instance, playing it on Friday the 13th will cause massive injuries, fires and accidents among the citizens of the city and will most likely keep you scrambling to try to save them all.

Patch

The first - and only - patch for the game added enhanced joystick support and preliminary Direct3D support. Unfortunately, you can only fly around in D3D - the mission text is not displayed.

Sound

The game borrows many sound effects from Klik & Play, a no-programming-required game development package that Maxis apparently contributed to.

Information also contributed by Kasey Chang, Matthew Bailey, WildKard, and Zack Green

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Contributors to this Entry

Game added by JubalHarshaw.

Additional contributors: Shoddyan, Alaka, CaesarZX, shakeyourbunny.

Game added March 5, 2000. Last modified February 19, 2024.