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SimTower

 
Games: SimTower
 
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Game Description

SimCity gave you the chance to build your own city, while SimTown let you build your own neighborhood. SimTower, also by Maxis, allows you to design and build your own high-rise tower, filling it with offices, restaurants, hotels, condos, and even a cathedral. Along the way, you will have to deal with terrorist-planted bombs, VIP visits, and noisy neighbors.

The game starts off with the placement of a lobby. You can build it as wide as you wish, but each section costs money. An elevator, escalator, or stairs connects you to the floor above, where you can place offices or condos. Your tower starts out with a one-star rating, which limits you to condos, offices, and restaurants. As time goes on, your building is awarded more stars, and you can build more types of rooms, such as hotel rooms, hotel suites, security offices, maid service laundries, and elevators, meeting rooms, movie theaters, and more. The choices seem endless.

In addition to placing rooms, you must also make it so that people can get around in your Tower. Express and local service elevators, stairs, and escalators will help you move your tenants around. But they will not take well to a Byzantine maze, so plan your building carefully.
~ Lisa Karen Savignano, All Game Guide

Review: Overall

Sim Tower, by Maxis is definitely a different breed of computer game from Sim City or Sim City 2000. For one thing, the animations are not of your tower growing, but of people moving about the building. You will see this most often as people arrive for work and wait for elevators to take them up and down your structure.

Sim Tower also uses a system of stars to give you more options when it comes to placing different types of businesses and homes in your high rise. At one star, you have access only to offices, condos, or fast-food restaurants. With two stars (which you gain by having at least 300 people residing in your tower), you get the option of placing security offices, single-bed hotel rooms, and places for the maids who clean the rooms and make the beds.

More stars lead to more choices, from two-bed hotel rooms and suites, to movie theaters, parking places, recycling centers, meeting rooms, and more. At the pinnacle of your success--five stars--you can place a cathedral, but only on floor 100.

Figuring out the rules using the included manual might be a little difficult, as the manual itself is not the thickest, and many of the details are thinly covered. Reading the entire manual before starting the game is advisable though. Otherwise, you will be very upset when the game keeps telling you that you cannot do something. This is not a game to charge into full-speed.

The game comes with three speeds, and there is a handy pause button if you wish to stop and examine something. However, while the game is paused, you cannot add to the building in any way. All you can do is examine things.

At the end of the fourth quarter of every year, in a charming bit of fun, Santa Claus and his reindeer fly over your tower. The manual says that something good is supposed to happen when he does this, but it doesn't say what that is.

Other events happen, such as having a VIP Visit your tower to stay in one of the hotel suites. While these events cannot be turned off, sometimes they lead to something good. If the VIP enjoys his visit, you will gain another star. If the VIP doesn't enjoy himself, you will get another chance to make the grade.

This game offers plenty of chances to make money to continue building, but you will often find yourself with nothing to do as the money runs out. Wait a while and continue building, and either read a book or do something else to keep yourself occupied in the meantime.
~ Lisa Karen Savignano, All Game Guide

Review: Enjoyment

This game will definitely keep your interest.
~ Lisa Karen Savignano, All Game Guide

Review: Graphics

While not as great and ground-breaking as the original SimCity graphics, these are enjoyable as well. They just won't keep your attention as much.
~ Lisa Karen Savignano, All Game Guide

Review: Sound

Sounds are sharp and clear, and you can easily distinguish the sound of office workers chatting from the swoosh-hum of the elevators and the electronic clatter of the cash registers in the fast-food court. They do grate on the nerves after a while.
~ Lisa Karen Savignano, All Game Guide

Review: Replay Value

Every Tower is a new tower with new challenges. No scenarios are included, unfortunately.
~ Lisa Karen Savignano, All Game Guide

Review: Documentation

The manual is merely adequate, but thin in many subjects, giving a brief description where a more lengthy one might be helpful. Whoever wrote this fell down on the job in that respect.
~ Lisa Karen Savignano, All Game Guide
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Wikipedia: SimTower
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Home > Library > Miscellaneous > Wikipedia
SimTower: The Vertical Empire
Image:SimTower Coverart.png
Developer(s) OPeNBooK Co., Ltd.
Publisher(s) Maxis Software
Platform(s) 68k-based Macs, Mac OS 9, Windows 3.x, Windows 95 and higher.
Release date(s) Windows and Macintosh version
USA 1994
JPN 1994
Genre(s) Construction and Management Simulation
Mode(s) Single
Rating(s) ELSPA: 3+

SimTower: The Vertical Empire is a construction and management simulation computer game (or "software toy") which was developed by OPeNBooK Co., Ltd. and published by Maxis in 1994 in the United States for Macintosh and Windows. Additionally, OPeNBooK released the game as simply The Tower in Japan that same year.

Contents

Gameplay

SimTower screenshot

As the name suggests, the objective is to construct and manage a towering skyscraper and keep its occupants happy. Offices, hotels, and condominiums give tenants places to live and work, while shops and restaurants provide commercial balance. Utilities such as hospitals and recycling centers become necessary as the tower grows in size. The player's progress is based on a star system, similar to how hotels are ranked, with new stars awarded for meeting population milestones and other conditions. Population is measured by the number of individuals currently in the tower; many hotel rooms will cause population to soar during the night. As the tower's rating improves, more facilities can be built by the player, such as a cinema.

Like other Maxis games, gameplay is not designed linearly, and SimTower does not have a specific end point; however, the primary goal is a population of 15,000, which rewards the player with 'Tower' status. Another goal is to build a cathedral at the top of the tower and have a marriage ceremony take place there. The game itself has 5 levels, which you complete by reaching a certain population level. New levels unlock new options to build such as security stations, but also create more hazards. How you handle these can change your tower drastically. For example, a fire can be dealt with using only security, which is free, but does not always work. On the other hand, a player can call the fire department and have the fire dealt with for a hefty sum.

One of the key activities of the game is effectively managing and building elevators in order to allow occupants to move between floors efficiently. Each elevator featured different modes, such as Express, Up, or Down, at different times, to account for the flow of traffic in and out of your building. In fact, the original game was a program to test effective elevator layouts.[1] Waiting for an elevator for too long would cause the residents stress (indicated by a black, pink or red colour as they become more stressed). Too much stress would cause them to permanently leave the tower. Another major issue with elevators was the fact that residential elevators could only go up a maximum of 30 stories, to minimize wait time. As such, lobbies can be placed every 15 floors for transfer. While these facilitate elevator transfers, they take up plenty of space in your building.

Fires, bomb threats/bombings and cockroach infestations in uncleaned hotel rooms were the main challenges besides the financial aspect. When a bomb threat occurs, the player can choose either to pay a hefty ransom or hope that the security officers can find the bomb before it goes off.

Development

SimTower was made shortly after the release of SimCity 2000. Although published by Maxis, the game was originally developed in Japan and its license was acquired by Maxis. In Japan, it was published under the name The Tower, and developed by Yoot Saito's company OPeNBooK Co., Ltd.

In 1996, a slightly updated version of The Tower was released for the Sega Saturn in Japan. A sequel to SimTower, Yoot Tower was also developed by OPeNBooK and was published by SEGA in the U.S. in 1998. A clone of SimTower for the PocketPC developed by eSoft Interactive was released in 2004 under the name of Tower Mogul.[2] In 2006, SimTower was ported and revised for the Game Boy Advance under the name The Tower SP. A Nintendo DS version (The Tower DS) was released in Japan on June 26th, 2008.[3]

Reception

SimTower received the Best Simulation Program CODiE Award in 1995.[4]

Notes

  1. ^ Bentley 1994
  2. ^ "eSoft Interactive - Tower Mogul". Esoftinteractive.com. http://www.esoftinteractive.com/ppc-tm.html. Retrieved on 2008-11-27. 
  3. ^ "DigiToys.TV". Digitoys.tv. http://www.digitoys.tv/tower/tower_game.html. Retrieved on 2008-11-27. 
  4. ^ "The 20th Annual SIIA CODiE Awards - 2005". Siia.net. http://www.siia.net/codies/2005/history_1995.asp. Retrieved on 2008-11-27. 

References

  • Bentley, Tom (1994). SimTower: The Vertical Empire, User's Manual. Maxis. ISBN 1-56754-132-1. 

External links


This entry is from Wikipedia, the leading user-contributed encyclopedia. It may not have been reviewed by professional editors (see full disclaimer)

 
 
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