SimCity (DS)

Once you have established where you want each zone, you will need to create the cities travel network, whilst being extremely careful not to paint yourself into a corner. You basically have a choice of roads and trains, with a hybrid of both being the best option. When you create these networks you allow for expansion. However, at the same time you create pollution, so you need to get some green in the area to fight this – costing you more money. And because you are rapidly expanding; waste, power usage, fire risk, theft, and illnesses will start to increase- giving you yet more things to spend money on. It’s the Mayor’s duty to combat these effects by establishing land fills, emergency services, power plants and prisons. But by doing this you will increase the monthly government spending, so taxes will most probably have to rise. And of course, you will have to ensure that your population has sufficient education and entertainment…

Nintendo Life – SimCity DS review

As if these weren’t already big enough problems, there’s also the fact that SimCity DS feels dumbed-down. Waterpipes no longer have to be laid, it’s enough to simply build a watertower; power will travel across any zoned or developed land, even roads, so very few power lines have to be laid. Careful civic planning is normally the key to success in SimCity games, yet this DS iteration seems to require little more than an ability to build plenty of residential zones well away from industry and other sources of pollution in order to be successful. The majority of the statistical information, even the budget screen, can simply be ignored with very little apparent detriment. The tutorials, of which there are plenty, tell you how to do things, but provide little insight into why you might want to do something. Similarly, the onscreen advisor, always available whilst building a city, will offer you hints and tips which seem to bear absolutely no relevance to what’s happening on screen. In addition, irrelevant, cash earning mini-games have been squeezed into the title. At Christmas you can expect to poke Santa with you stylus in order to put a few extra dollars in they city treasury. Whilst SimCity has always had its tongue firmly in its cheek, Gamestyle wonders if this isn’t a step too far.

GameStyle – SimCity DS review

There is a lot of information to sift through as mayor, and the handheld’s relatively tiny display could have made this game a disaster worthy of a Godzilla film. Yet an extremely well designed interface makes the DS version a snap to play. The bottom screen provides a color-coded, top-down view of the city, allowing players to quickly scroll across the landscape to find a particular point of interest. Tapping a specific location switches the overhead view to a grid-based isometric display, where players can create buildings, roads, and so forth by using the stylus to draw or position them directly on the grid.

The results of your construction or demolition efforts appear on the top screen, while a series of charts, graphs, and other helpful information is a mere a tap away on the bottom display. A meter continuously tracks the percentage of residential, commercial, and industrial zones in your city, so you always know what’s needed to balance development for utmost efficiency. In short, the design team took a potentially complicated interface and simplified it to the point where you’ll only worry about managing your city, not the controls.

G4 – SimCity DS review

The game is full of moments like this, moments that seem cute the first few times but repeat so often, and with so little variation, that the shallow nature of the conversion is revealed sooner rather than later. The actual city building is much as it always was, though obviously simplified for handheld play, but once your city is spreading and thriving it’s all too easy to run out of things to do. Plumbing is now just a case of placing water towers rather than pipe networks. Electricity automatically crosses roads and incomplete zones, so it’s entirely possible to fill a quarter of the sizeable game area without ever using power lines. Taxation and funding options are tucked away deep inside the information sheets, where you only need to venture if you’ve opted for one of the hardcore maps that start you off with just ten thousand simoleons. The emphasis is instead on balancing out the three types of zone – industrial, commercial and residential – and the use of status-changing civic buildings to keep Sim moods high, or crime and disasters low. In this slimmed down DS version it’s more of a puzzle game than anything – build as many yellow zones as you can, but keep them away from red zones. Repeat until rich.

EuroGamer – SimCity DS review

As you’d expect, SimCity DS finds you elected as mayor of a fictitious city, charged with planning its growth from the ground up. Equally predictable (and welcome) are the intuitive touch controls, and the ability to exchange unlocked buildings with other players across a local wireless connection.

But you’ll first need to unlock them, by bringing in cash and citizens via the Build-A-City mode, which serves as the game’s main attraction. It’s akin to a sandbox city simulation where you build a city to your own design.

The core city building elements from the PC games are intact in SimCity DS, but much of the complexity has been left behind. Clearly this has been done in order to tailor the experience to a more mainstream audience who have smaller pockets of time to kill, but it also refreshes the game by ridding it of needless elements.

Gone then are water pipes and sewers, as well as power lines, for the most part; you can still lay lines to conduct electricity to remote regions of a city, but power automatically flows to adjacent buildings.

PocketGamer – SimCity DS reviewed

That sense of size getting in the way particularly becomes an issue when you dig in to laying out your city. Both of the camera zoom levels used for the building screen mishandle the scale. At the zoomed-out height you get a decent sense of the geography, and can see the relationships between areas. At this level, though, selection becomes a headache because it makes the grid too small to really use. The individual squares come out just about exactly the size of the stylus tip, which means being just a little bit off highlights the wrong square. The severity of the problem prompted the inclusion of a freebie do-over button to wipe away the frequent mistakes. Frustratingly, the one thing that this function doesn’t work on is the bulldozer — demolish something by a slip and you’re stuck. This alone will make you want to throw up your hands trying to play the game on the go. Bouncing around on the bus or train kills any chance of having a hand steady enough to be that accurate — a shame because transit rides are one on the best places for handheld gaming.

Zooming-in trades away that big picture view for an easier selection process. The camera comes in just enough that you can’t see the spatial relationships for the area you’re working in. Even just laying out zones becomes a chore as you have to go into scroll mode, move the screen a little, zone a few squares, and repeat. So, in the end you wind up having to plan things at the top level, pick some landmarks for reference, and then start jumping back and forth to do the actual layout. It may sound workable, but over the course of building a big city, it gets painfully tedious.

1UP – SimCity DS reviewed

If you don’t think city planning sounds like a good time, you probably haven’t played the Sim City series, the simulation devoted not to destruction, but construction. Though it lacks guns and swords, it has never lacked for innovation, playability, or fans. But where Will Wright was able to build the games into an empire on PCs, EA will have to settle for a hamlet with its handheld update, SimCity DS. Even though you can spend several enjoyable hours placing parks, building roads, and crafting a sprawling city, a few structural flaws make this version feel relatively small town.

Small isn’t necessarily bad though, especially when it comes to handheld gaming. When you start, the first thing you’ll want to do is study the tutorial content. There are 15 distinct lessons, but as you’ll quickly discover, these are just the tip of the burg.

GameSpot – SimCity DS reviewed

My first impressions of the game were mixed. The controls are solid, and made it easy to manage my city. The graphics are poor, however, and detracted from the overall presentation. The amount of menus and information I had to manage was also daunting. It was a good thing that there is a 15 part tutorial to help walk you through the basics of the game. Soon the menus start making a lot of sense, and you’ll refer to them constantly to help you decide how to spend your precious funds. As you become savvier with the tools at your disposal and the effect that each municipal building, zone, or park has on the formation of your city, the more fun you will have and the more rewarding the experience will be. It’s very important to keep the appropriate balance between residential, commercial, and industrial zones. A mini-bar will help you with this balance by showing you the demand for each zone. Some of the other indicators at your disposal are data overlays and graphics that help you to assess which areas have the highest crime rate, or are prone to fires, or are suffering from water shortages. By constantly referring to this data, you will know exactly where to place your next police station, firehouse, or water tower. Also, if you really want to be a good mayor, it’s important to master the placement of flora, parks, stadiums, libraries, museums, and so forth in order to increase the quality of life your citizens have. The more desirable the city is, the more likely Sims are to flock to your town. You’ve also got to keep your Sims happy once they’ve moved there. In order to achieve this, you need to manage and fund a healthcare system, a transportation system, a school system, and a fair and lucrative system of taxation. As you can see, there are a ton of facets to this game for you to master. If you like strategy games, then this will definitely be a good game for you. There are many challenges at every level of difficulty. The game will provide just about anyone with hours of addictive and rewarding gameplay.

Cheat Code Central – SimCity DS review

SimCity DS is here to buck that trend, with EA bringing what many people consider to be the seminal god game to the DS for the first time. For those of you who haven’t yet enjoyed a SimCity game, it is worth knowing that despite concentrating on the likes of taxes, public transport efficiency and of course construction, the SimCity games have always been instinctive, exciting and strangely addictive.

This is largely because of the way they translate the confounding world of governing a city from a quagmire of numbers and data into representational graphs and symbols with an immediacy that lets a complete novice dive quickly into the role of being Mayor of a fledgling metropolis. Thankfully SimCity DS keeps up this tradition, and despite a well-crafted and sizeable tutorial, there is no doubt that even without instruction you would quickly discover the intricacies of this improbably involving game.

The other secret of SimCity DS’ success is the way that the city you create unfolds around you. As it heaves and grows, ebbing and flowing through periods of prosperity and destitution, it blossoms from a grotty wasteland into a thriving urban paradise. And, just as with the game’s forefathers, you get to watch over every moment, giving you the feeling that you are raising a pet.

VideoGamer – SimCity DS reviewed

The game is based on the SimCity 3000 engine, and therefore inherits certain visual and gameplay elements. This version, which is one of the more advanced versions of the simulation, plays with a more environmental edge than previous outings; waste management becomes a key factor in a successful city. It also introduces agriculture as a new form of industry and provides three different densities of each type of zoning: residential, commercial and industrial. Land value of each of these zones is also taken more seriously and is reflected by the different styles of buildings that are constructed in a particular area. Finally, it introduces varying land heights and slopes that also affect the buildings that can appear on a particular tile. With all this in mind it is pretty clear that EA have had their sights set high with the DS title, opting for the more complex and challenging implementation of SimCity 3k over the simpler 2k edition.

The transition to a handheld medium, although lusted after by many, is not without its ups and downs. The two screens lend themselves nicely to displaying both the town and statistics simultaneously, something that was always a problem with SimCity where you had to fight for screen space to display all those stats alongside your developing world. On the DS it not only makes more sense to separate the two, but it also makes progress and problems a bit easier to follow and identify.

Play.tm – SimCity DS reviewed

Along with the main “Create a City” mode, there’s “Save a City”, where you must bring the town back from the depths of bankruptcy and other problems. It’s a nice addition, but you can finish it fast and never look at it again. Multiplayer wise, you can send mail to other people with the game along with a landmark that your friends can put in their own town. The game will keep you entertained for many hours, whether it’s because you want to make a bigger city or to try out different difficulty settings and terrains, so expect to put lots of effort and time into Sim City if you want to build a prosperous Metropolis.

The game makes fairly good use of DS’ capabilities- the bottom screen displays a map of city, the data sheets and graphs, and schematics for construction. The stylus use is intuitive and very useful, but sometimes creating precise buildings is hard, because there are only two levels of zoom: very far away and too close. This makes the construction of roads and power lines a difficult chore at times, but luckily, everything (except demolitions) can be undone. Navigating through menus and maps is pretty easy and makes the game easy to pick up. The top screen shows an almost static model of the town, but although it is detailed and somewhat realistic it’s very dull and you won’t be looking at it very often. The music is acceptable and relaxing and doesn’t annoy or distract you from your mayoral duties.

N-Europe – SimCity DS review

After you choose your adviser, its time to build a city. All of the features of the previous games remain intact, at least in some way, and the controls are fairly strong. While earlier versions of building simulations on the DS have suffered from mediocre control schemes, EA seems to have hit the nail on the head with Sim City DS. The controls allow the player to build the city they desire by simply dragging the stylus wherever they wish. Dropping schools, monuments, and police stations are easier than I’ve ever seen on a handheld.

Sadly though, the world of Sim City DS is not all flowers and roses. Remaining are the disasters that can plague a players city. Monsters, aliens, fires, and other catastrophes are waiting around each bend and a player can stop some of them using the touch screen. Some disasters, namely fires, are more luck based. Praying that the firemen placed in the city put out the fire is about all of the influence the mayor can have.

Gamervision – SimCity DS review

The first stop for new mayors (especially those new to SimCity in general) should be the tutorials. These take the form of look and listen lessons, where your advisor guides you through the basics, occasionally requiring you to take up the stylus and place buildings and roads exactly where you are told. Informative? Yes. Effective? Not really. Surely this is not the best way to disseminate the vast amount of knowledge required to reasonably play the game. With this wonderful new interactive entertainment media of ours a two-way street of information would be better, where the player learns each small aspect of the whole by doing and building a city under the watchful eye of your advisor. In other words, more like a game instead of a classroom. Ah well.

Upon graduation then and the next stop is either the free-form Build A City mode or the task based Save The City. The former will allow you to select from basic, easy, normal or hard starting conditions containing varying amounts of land and money. The latter pits you as mayor of a failing city charged with turning around its fortunes and rescuing it from crisis. These are invariably more enjoyable than the former as the majority of the city is in place plus there is a pre-defined end condition. Although of course, the joy of building a city from scratch and planning every minute detail is not to be underestimated.

Video Games Daily – SimCity DS review

There has been two distinctly separate series of SimCity games – the popular Maxis series on PCs, and the Nintendo version on consoles. When SimCity was announced for the DS, quite a few people thought it would return under Nintendo’s guise, but SimCity DS is very much Maxis’ version of the game. Developed by Japanese studio syn Sophia (who N64 wrestling fans may remember better as AKI Entertainment), SimCity DS comes across as something of a mix of SimCity 2000 and 3000, compressed for play on the DS. While it sounds like a neat prospect, SimCity DS’ execution is less than perfect, which is bound to leave some SimCity fans disappointed.

SimCity DS does not depart from the core premise of the franchise – players take on the role of mayor, and need to build a city from the ground up. You will need to build residential land for people to live, commercial land for people to shop and entertain themselves, and industrial land for work. As boss of city hall, players will also be responsible for power, water, schools, police, fire and other emergency services, transport, and the list goes on. The key to the game is balancing all of these elements along with the demands of the council and your citizens while keeping the city’s financials in the black. It’s not an easy job, but someone has to do it.

PALGN – SimCity DS review

SimCity DS is a heavily modified update of SimCity 3000, the Will Wright classic about building, maintaining and successfully running a city. You begin by selecting a chunk of land upon which you will build your metropolis, and from there, you select an adviser, sign the town charter and get to building.

For the few who’ve never played a SimCity title before, I’ll include a brief gameplay overview. As the city’s mayor, you have to balance the zoning of the land between residential, commercial and industrial zones. On top of that, you have to build roads, maintain transportation, adjust the tax base and decide how to spend the money you have. (If this seems complicated, you may want to take a few Advil because it’s just getting started.) From there, you want people to actually live in your town, so you try to make it appealing by juggling issues like water, power, pollution, garbage, health and crime. Just when you think you’re getting the hang of it, an earthquake comes along and destroys half of your city. It’s this sort of complexity and detail that has kept the SimCity series near the top of the lists of greatest games of all time, and SimCity DS is no exception. The title makes a wonderful transition to the handheld console and makes excellent use of the touch-screen to enhance the gameplay. Newcomers to the SimCity franchise would do well to take advantage of the game’s tutorials.

WorthPlaying – SimCity DS review

If you haven’t already tasted the delights of town planning and city building, then this is a real treat. If you have played Sim City on another platform, then there is not a lot more for you here. That said, there is quite a buzz by being able to carry your city around with you in your pocket. It not only makes for more convenient play, but it also lets you implement those new planning ideas when you have the, which at the end of the day means that you get an awful lot more playing done. All in all this is a sturdy conversion of Sim City to the DS. Like many of these games, it could have been so much more. Perhaps with the upcoming MySims on Wii, we will see a Wii styled Sim City release as a follow up to this title. At least we have plenty of City sandbox play to keep us busy in the meantime.

DS-x2 – SimCity DS reviewed

The premise for SimCity DS is simple enough. Players take the role of mayor, and build a city from scratch. As mayor it is the player’s job to build residential communities for the citizens to live in, industrial areas for work, and commercial sections for shopping and entertainment. The trick to the game is balancing these three areas, while at the same time making sure the city as a whole has the basic necessities like power plants, roads, water towers, police and fire stations, hospitals, schools etc. There’s a lot to take into account when building the city, including density of areas, how far to space buildings, and of course, money management. SimCity DS is definitely not a game that is easily beaten, since it technically is never really beaten. But building a large, thriving city will take hours upon hours of work, and probably a few tries.

For anyone that has played a SimCity game, especially some of the later PC ones, this should all be familiar. In fact it’s a bit simpler than the PC versions. However, for players that are brand new to metropolis building sims, SimCity DS offers an extensive tutorial that teaches the player how to use nearly every building and option. It even offers a basic mode of gameplay that gives the player extra money and starts with a city that’s already had the basics placed. It’s a nice touch for people that may be new to the series, since the game can seem daunting.

IGN – SimCity DS review

The core task in SimCity is playing the role of the mayor in a newly-created city and balancing the residential, industrial and commercial areas in a profitable but still environmentally sustainable way. If you manage to do this, good for you; if you don’t, welcome to the real world and have a seat next to many well-known mayors. Managing a city is not an easy task and right when players think they’ve mastered it, new challenges are faced: should the taxes be increased to get more money for improvements, or lowered to attract more residents and businesses? Is it worth investing in parks and universities in order to encourage residents not to leave, or is it better to save money and buy a new environmentally friendly electrical plant whose benefits will show up in a few decades? There are deals to sign with neighboring cities, natural disasters to keep under control, funds to be invested in R&D and many, many other factors to keep in mind. Ending the fiscal year with surplus money is easy at the beginning, but it becomes harder as players choose more challenging stages with natural obstacles such as mountains and water.

GameSpy – SimCity DS review

I asked about recreating SimCity 3000 for the two screens of the DS, and one of the game designers explained the transition. With the 3D view of SimCity 3000, players can lose track of the 2D roads and other objects they’re trying to place. While slightly redundant, one DS screen shows the 3D perspective of the city, while the other shows a flat map. I drew roads on the flat area, easily placing them into the corresponding city. The 2D map can also show color-coded points of interest for easy identification and maintenance of a city.

While SimCity DS should have the depth of a modern SimCity title, the complexities in running a city are divided by mini-games. About every ten minutes, an event will occur unlike previous versions of the game. One example was a Santa Claus character that quickly flew across the screen several times; the more gamers tap the screen, the more presents he drops. The presents then become new buildings or other ways to improve the city.

Joystiq – SimCity DS impressions

At first glance, SimCity DS looks like SimCity 3000 on PC, but the only similarities it really shares are the isometric perspective and the city graphics. Other than that, the game is a “custom” edition of SimCity made to take advantage of the DS dual screens and touch controls. And for the most part, it seems to work out. The top screen shows the main city view (what you usually see in a SimCity game), while the bottom screen shows the city as color-coded panels — this is where you place buildings and roads, and lay out zones.

You can quickly access any of your city’s stats simply by tapping on the appropriate icon and tab to track crime zones, your funds, and so on, while a news ticker (that scrolls a little too slowly for our tastes) on the top screen relays your progress. The stylus is used to control everything in the game, but you can use the D-pad to scroll around the map instead of tapping the appropriate icon and then manipulating the map with the stylus, if you like.

1UP previews SimCity DS

The two main gameplay options in SimCity DS will be “build a city,” which challenges you to create and maintain a city from scratch, and “save the city,” in which you’ll be tasked with rescuing one of several cities from around the world from such disasters as UFO invasions and attacks from giant monsters. Before attempting either of those, you’ll also have the option to play through any of 15 tutorials dealing with such mayoral concerns as transportation, waste disposal, crime prevention, and demolition. We saw a couple of the aforementioned tutorials being played through, and we’re pleased to report that both the construction of roads and railways and the designation of zones as residential, industrial, or commercial appear to be no more complicated than using the stylus to draw lines and drag boxes on a grid respectively.

Later in the presentation we were treated to a look at a relatively well-established city, and we noticed that you’ll be able to scroll around the upper screen’s isometric view of it simply by dragging the stylus across the touch screen. Although the upper screen is the one most commonly used to display your city (along with a news ticker detailing current events), the touch screen is where most of the gameplay will be happening since it’s used to show other “layers” of your city, such as transport routes and power grids. The touch screen is also where you’ll be able to track aspects of your performance via a series of charts and diagrams and where you’ll be playing most of this SimCity game’s unique minigames. We’re told that there will be around seven minigames in total, such as blowing into the microphone to put out fires and using the stylus to search the city for thieves. The minigame that we were shown on this occasion focused on Santa’s annual visit to your city, during which you’ll be required to tap his flying sleigh with the stylus to make him drop presents.

GameSpot – SimCity DS first look

It’s event time here in San Francisco, and EA’s gamer day is first on the list. With a mixture of sports, racing, and Sim titles, the event houses over a dozen upcoming titles spanning nearly every system in circulation. Tucked away in rafters of the warehouse balcony, however, is a title that may in fact become one of the more entertaining sleeper hits of this year for the DS crowd, as SimCity DS makes its event (and US) debut. We had a chance to go hands-on with the game briefly, and from what we’ve played it may very well be the best Sim title to hit consoles since the days of Super NES.

Taking a ton of inspiration from the original (and famous) SimCity design, SimCity DS is all about creating and exploring a virtual world, and acting as the newfound city’s mayor in an attempt to build a bustling metropolis of your dreams. Specifically for DS the game features gameplay on both screens, using the top viewing area as the overall “city view”, while the bottom touch screen is used for managing the city, building, and changing view modes to constantly monitor pollution, fire, water, energy, and environmental levels of the dream city.

IGN – Hands on with SimCity DS

Sims vets will be able to pick out the skeleton of the excellent SimCity 3000 here, although they’ll also notice the missing improvements from SimCity 4. The game uses the top screen to display an overview of the city in color, while the bottom screen is where you’ll find the various menus that let you build and manage a city. Divided into categories including Civics, Transport, Power, Water and Waste, Rewards (such as the unlockable post office and various landmarks), and Demolition, the core building menus give you the tools to make your city into whatever you like (and then wipe the slate clean and start again, if you like).

You’ll also have access to five different advisors, each of whom will offer a slightly different viewpoint when they dispense their wisdom. During our demo, the advisor looked like a big-head version of Sarah Jessica Parker; sadly, Will Wright has been removed from the Japanese version to insure no one gets confused and thinks he developed the title.

GameSpy – SimCity DS preview

EA ships SimCity for DS

Electronic Arts (Nasdaq: ERTS) ships SimCity DS, the first highly anticipated SimCity game developed exclusively for the Nintendo DS platform, to stores worldwide today. With all-new controls and game modes leveraging unique functionalities of the Nintendo DS system, SimCity DS realizes the most accessible SimCity gameplay to date. The product will be available in stores throughout North America, Europe and Asia this week.

SimCity DS brings all the excitement of building and managing your own city into the palm of your hands. From the highly intuitive city-building experience of using the stylus on the touch screen like a drawing board to exciting mini-games occurring every few minutes, the game is perfectly suited for gameplay on-the-go. For those players who are new to the franchise, the newly introduced advisor characters will guide them throughout the game, offering helpful tips on how to keep citizens happy or manage tax rates, while entertaining players along the way. The game is also open-ended enough for the hardcore fans of the franchise to test their creativity, freely building unique cities with the stylus.

“The game offers everything that consumer’s love about the SimCity franchise in the most light-hearted and easy to pick-up-and-play manner,” said Takahiro Murakami, Producer at Electronic Arts. “Our goal is to create a SimCity game on the Nintendo DS platform that offers quick gameplay, satisfies players on-the-go and is engaging enough to keep playing in bed all night… SimCity DS offers just that!”

SimCity DS on Nintendo DS is rated “E” (Everyone) by the ESRB and has an MSRP of $29.99.

Product Features:

• It’s Your City – Take charge of one of eight fictional cities or build your own, exactly the way you want. Varied townscapes, beautiful international landmarks and entertaining characters create a truly individual flavor for each location.
• Stay in Control – Enjoy city management made simple, with user-friendly designs and intuitive control. View your city in the top screen as it grows and develops, then get to work with the Nintendo DS stylus and Touch Screen.
• Help is at Hand – Even the most gifted Mayor needs a little guidance sometimes. Luckily your trusty Advisors are on hand to instruct and advise, as you learn the basics. No matter what events or problems unfold, you can count on them for tips and training throughout, all mixed with a little humor.
• Do it Your Way – Choose from two gameplay styles to customize your SimCity™ DS experience. Select objective based gameplay to tackle tricky challenges, or opt for more open-ended fun, enjoying the everyday ups and downs of being a city boss.
• Save Our City! – Jump to the rescue to protect your town from disaster. From blowing out fires with the microphone to fighting off monster attacks with the Nintendo DS stylus, it’s up to you to defend your citizens when calamity strikes. Can you be the hero of the hour?
• Only in SimCity DS – Exclusive features take the fun even further with ingenious gameplay innovations. Use DS wireless communications to swap letters with fellow Mayors and unlock international landmarks, and sign your latest decree with a flourish using the Nintendo DS stylus.

EA BRINGS SIMCITY TO Nintendo DS PLATFORM
SIMCITY DS OFFERS CITY BUILDING EXPERIENCE ON THE GO TO FANS AROUND THE WORLD

CHERTSEY, Surrey, – February 28, 2007 – Electronic Arts (Nasdaq: ERTS) announced today that the SimCity™ franchise is returning with SimCity™ DS, developed especially for the Nintendo DS™ platform. In addition to creating and growing their very own pocket sized city while being on-the-go, players will be able to leverage the unique action features of the Nintendo DS system, discovering an entirely new way to play this internationally acclaimed franchise. The product will make its debut to consumers worldwide in summer of this year.

True to the SimCity series, players will be able to create and control their city in the palm of their hands…and much more. Maximizing the stylus and built-in microphone controls of the Nintendo DS, SimCity DS brings to the franchise like never before the feeling of personal involvement with your city—from blowing into the microphone to put out fires in the city to signing off on mayoral proclamations with your stylus. By enabling the players to communicate with each other, the “wireless data exchange” feature brings additional interactivity into the game. As an added bonus to SimCity fans around the world, the game also offers a wide array of recognizable international landmarks to spice up your city.

“We are very excited to bring the SimCity experience to the Nintendo DS platform,” said Takahiro Murakami, Producer of SimCity DS. “The unique Nintendo DS functionalities inspired us to incorporate many new features to delight the most dedicated SimCity fans. The game is filled with fun surprises that will appeal to new and existing fans of the franchise.”

Guides for SimCity for DS from GameFAQS

• Sorry, no guides exist for this game
  

Unlockable Landmarks
Input the following in the museum password menu:

• kipling …. Anglican Cathedral (UK)
• gaugin …. Arc de Triomphe (France)
• kawabata …. Atomic Dome (Japan)
• orwell …. Big Ben (UK)
• hanafuda …. Bowser Castle (Nintendo)
• gropius …. Brandenburg Gate (Germany)
• kerouac …. Coit Tower (San Francisco)
• rodin …. Conciergerie (France)
• mishima …. Daibutsu (Japan)
• shonagon …. Edo Castle (Japan)
• camus …. Eiffel Tower (France)
• twain …. Gateway Arch (USA)
• f.scott …. Grand Central Station (USA)
• mahfouz …. Great Pyramids (Egypt)
• ataturk …. Hagia Sofia (Turkey)
• kivi …. Helsinki Cathedral (Finland)
• hokusai …. Himeji Castle (Japan)
• durer …. Holstentor (Germany)
• mlkingjr …. Independence Hall (USA)
• thompson …. Jefferson Memorial (USA)
• soseki …. Kokkai (Japan)
• hemingway …. LA Landmark
• melville …. Lincoln Memorial (Washington DC)
• dickens …. Liver Building (UK)
• damemelba …. Melbourne Cricket Ground (Australia)
• austen …. Metropolitan Cath. (UK)
• allende …. Moai (Chile)
• hiroshige …. Mt. Fuji (Japan)
• yuantlee …. National Museum (Taiwan)
• beethoven …. Neuschwanstein Castle (Germany)
• hugo …. Notre Dame (France)
• bunche …. Palace of Fine Arts (USA)
• cervantes …. Palacio Real (Spain)
• daumier …. Paris Opera (France)
• callas …. Parthenon (Greece)
• zewail …. Pharos of Alexandria (Egypt)
• phu …. Rama IX Royal Park (Thailand)
• goethe …. Reichstag (Germany)
• dali …. Sagrada Familia (Spain)
• basho …. Shuri Castle (Japan)
• pauling …. Smithsonian Castle (USA)
• haykal …. Sphinx (Egypt)
• defoe …. St Paul’s Cathedral (UK)
• tolstoy …. St. Basil’s Cathedral (Russia)
• mozart …. St. Stephen’s Cathedral (Austria)
• pollack …. Statue of Liberty (USA)
• bergman …. Stockholm Palace (Sweden)
• tagore …. Taj Mahal (India)
• maugham …. Tower of London (UK)
• joyce …. Trafalgar Square (UK)
• amnesty …. United Nations (UN)
• poe …. United States Capitol
• capote / copote …. Washington Monument
• greene …. Westminster Abbey (UK)
• steinbeck …. White House (Washington DC)

Unlockable Buildings From Population Growth
If your city reached a certain amount of people, Dr. Simtown will reward you with a building which may help your city.

• Center for the Arts —– Reach a population of 100,000
• Court House —– Reach a population of 25,000
• Mayor’s Manor ———- Reach a population of 5,000
• Medical Research Lab Have a population of 80,000 when you reach the year 1999
• Museum —– Reach a population of 3,000
• Post Office —– Reach a population of 100

Easy Money
At the end of the month, with only a day or two to go, raise the residential tax to 22%. After the money rolls in, change the rate to 0% for the rest of the month. You can repeat this to gain money and you won’t lose population.