Steam has been a fairly decent service in terms of providing modern compatibility for older games. But there’s one curious exception to this trend- the classic game SimCity 2000. While SimCity 2000 is available on Steam, it’s only available as the DOS version. Though far from unplayable, the DOS version of SimCity 2000 is not the definitive one. That title goes to the 1996 Special Edition CD, which bundles the DOS, Windows 3.1, and Windows 95 versions of the game into a single neat package. The Windows 95 version on that CD is notable for having all the bugfixes, fewer limitations on the simulation itself, and most notably, no limitations in window scaling. Which is to say, you could play this version of SimCity 2000 in 4K right out of the box.
Key word there being “could” since, for various reasons, modern Windows operating systems can’t quite replicate the Windows 95 environment that well. But araxestroy has been tinkering with the programming, and has made some excellent progress, as their github page for the project can attest. The sc2kfix available for download there fixes all sorts of small issues with the games, allowing the installer to work on 64 bit Windows systems, and allowing proper support for 256 color mode so that all the power, water, and transportation images work correctly. All known save crashes are fixed, and even the Wine emulator on Linux now has an easier time allowing state of the art nineties PC gaming to look and feel as it should on superior hardware from thirty years in the future. Even the animations in the Sim City Urban Renewal Kit work right now.
For all this progress, with the fifth revision of this fix making its premierer today, araxestroy still thinks there are improvements to be made through the tedious process of reverse engineering just how the system works. One project in particular? Making the game’s music pause and resume instead of stopping and re-shuffling when the game window loses focus. Of course, that’s a Sim City 3000 and Sim City 4 problem too. Why this happens has long been a mystery, but there’s no denying its immersion breaking. Incidentally, depending on when you read this, a sixth version may already be available, as araxestroy has told me they’ve fixed the glitch preventing military bases from growing, which is another big one.
Sim City 2000 occupies an intriguing place as an intermediary point in PC gaming history. The animations of the game are two dimensional in a way that makes them look three dimensional. The nuances fixed by these bugs are very subtle, and only those who grew up specifically on the 1.2 version of the game are even likely to notice them at all. But they are noticeable nevertheless, and even if this authenticity to the era’s software may seem cosmetic, the fixes made to the bug crashes most certainly are not. The best version of Sim City 2000 is now playable again.
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