46
SimTower
- System: Mac
- Year: 1994
- Rank last year: 48 (^ 2)
This simulation game is micromanagment in it's purest form. Sim Tower is basically SimCity in a single building. The objective of the game is to build and manage a large skyscraper. Within this skyscraper, the player must build everything from office-space to condoes to retail space and a subway station. The crowning achievement, literally, is the construction of the 'Cathedral' on the top of the tower when it reaches 100 stories. Building this basically counts as 'beating the game', even though it's essentially open ended. Easier said than done, it can take quite a while to reach this high, as it can be quite challenging to balance the needs of the occupants of the building and make enough money to continue building.
I got this game not long after my first computer game, Rebel Assault II (47), which makes this the second personal computer game I ever played. This makes it quite influental in my life, and is probably a very big reason why I went on to study architecture over a decade later. It also has the shady distinction of being the first game here in my house that was subject to illegal activities, or the primitive form of digital pirating. Back in the day, it was so easy to copy a game (literally, copy/paste the floppy), that we traded it in for SimCity 2000 a week later to get two games for the price of one. The game does belong on the list though, and some 'towers' I made I can be proud of. So proud of even, that I still have the saves. Decade old saves, yet the most important one, where I actually had the Cathedral on top, was sadly lost to the ages.
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