SimCity (SNES) - Angry Video Game Nerd (AVGN)

[Music] [Music] the summer is here and with it comes a slew of new potential Blockbusters to see while there's plenty that are only in the theaters some movies are coming to streaming like Beverly Hills Cop 4 yeah but what if something's not available in your country thankfully expressvpn's got your back expressvpn is an app that knocks down the barriers surrounding the streaming content that apps like Disney plus and Netflix hide from you based on your geolocation using expressvpn simply switch your location to another country like Canada and at the snap of a finger the movies and shows you've been hunting for shall reveal themselves and with over a 100 countries worldwide to choose from whether you're looking for over-the-top action movies like The Expendables for only streaming in the Netherlands or stuff like Nicholas Cage's take on Dracula in Renfield only showing in Australia expressvpn will always help you find exactly what you're looking for and all in Crystal Clear high definition without any buffering I use it all the time and I think you're going to love it too find out how you can get yourself an extra 3 months of expressvpn for free by going to expressvpn / Cinemassacre or by clicking the link in my description below what is a video game what purpose does it serve well I think a video game is meant to Grant you a certain type of control and power over a makeb believe situation perhaps to compensate for the control and power that you lack in your daily life okay maybe they got too philosophical too soon but the game I'm talking about here is a bit more intellectual than what I normally review but if you've seen my reviews of Earthbound in Final Fantasy 6 you'll know that the Super Nintendo Classics are something that I hold sacred and are a prime era of nostalgia for me the first time I saw Sim City was in the Holy pages of that gaming Bible we call Nintendo Power the scripture of volume 28 page 74 the power of creation is yours saith Nintendo you are bestowed the ability to construct your very own City from the ground up and populate it with people I had never yet heard of such a game before where instead of playing the role of a space cadet a marine a Vampire Slayer a sword wielding hero or a Koopa stomping plumber you are the mayor of a city of course Sim City was originally on PC published by Maxis but then it got Nintendo 5ed and that's when I took notice the Super Nintendo version to me is one of the greatest 16bit games and it was also one of the North American launch titles along with Super Mario World F0 pilot wings and gradius 3 what an amazing variety to Kickstart a new era of gaming Sim City has its origins in strategy based based games like Utopia on the in television yeah it's come a long way and even to this day with the amount of Sim games that exist Sim City might seem a bit Antiquated however I don't think its simple charm has ever been surpassed the reason may have something to do with the intuitive friendly nature of it the cartoonish Aesthetics the green-haired Don King guy Dr Wright who acts as your personal adviser and the relaxing music which puts you in a meditational thinking mood [Music] the music goes through several changes as your city builds up and the population increases the music progresses toward a more urgent industrial Workforce get [ __ ] done kind of [Music] feel it starts as a village then a town a city a capital and a metropolis which is the furthest I've ever made it but if your population reaches half million you advance to something even greater a megalopolis only in the pages of Nintendo power and the Super Nintendo players guide had I ever seen images of that fabled Mario statue which would become your prize that would be the ultimate achievement something to brag about all the ladies would want to [ __ ] you you got the goddamn Mario statue in Sim City but it ain't happening yeah I've always wanted that statue ever since the magazine taunted me oh my life have been nothing but I'll show what a nerd is really worth I will raise my population and create a civilization that will rival the world the first thing you need to do is select a land form if you really want to maximize that population you don't want there to be too much water because obviously you can only build on the ground those Rivers cut through your city and mess up your whole strategy so you need to tell that water to go [ __ ] off but finding the right land form is a chore in itself because there's a thousand of them to choose from I'm not kidding you can see right there counting landform zero there are a thousand you think that's enough and each one takes about 10 seconds to load you'll never have time to see all the choices let alone remember and compare them imagine if you started up Mario Kart and there were so many courses to pick you couldn't even look through them all no sane person in the world has ever laid eyes on every land form in Sim City well at least one about 10 years ago someone who was a real Trooper actually did it a YouTuber named 316 whatups thank you again for your service we now know it takes 3 hours and 14 minutes to click through every landform in Sim City and that's if you're not stopping to look at any of them what were they thinking when you start building you have a budget to work with so you need to spend wisely anyone would expect you're going to need houses roadways a power source police and fire departments all the Necessities that would seem like common sense and though it kind of functions like a real City it is of course only a video game some things don't make sense like how come there's a population count when all I've built so far are commercial and Industrial zones where are those people living not to mention when the game starts the year is supposed to be 1900 and the first thing I build is a nuclear power plant certain logic doesn't apply because logic is for [ __ ] you have to tie all the land with a proper balance of three different zoning districts residential commercial and Industrial these areas develop on their own the residential zones for example become neighborhoods and then grow into skyscrapers other times they become schools or hospitals which happens automatically at random all zones need to be connected to a power plan either by electrical lines or by touching each other in a chain Effect one of the main problems is pollution which generally comes from the power plants and Industrial zones you can buy a nuclear power plant for cleaner energy but that costs more money there also needs to be some kind of transit system like roads but that causes traffic and more pollution so you can build Railways instead but again more expensive another big problem is crime so you need to put police stations all over why does the police radius need to be so extreme the amount of crime in Sim City Rivals RoboCop's Detroit one way to gauge the issues is to look at the public poll the citizens will tell you how well they think you're doing as mayor and what they think the biggest problems are then you can decide how you want to aot your funds to address those problems for example they say traffic is bad so I build more roads then they demand a stadium so I build a stadium which makes more traffic so I demolish the roads and replace them with Railways and then they find something else to complain about every now and then Dr Wright appears who by the way is named after Sim City Creator Will Wright he gives you advice and sometimes just comes in to compliment you that everything's going all right he congratulates you on reaching a new population level Awards you with fun little zoning districts like an amusement park a zoo and even your very own house as mayor but if things are going wrong he'll let you know that pollution is high crime is rampant or if there's a disaster this could be fire flood plane crash tornado earthquake or Bowser attack in the original PC version it was a Godzilla type monster but Nintendo just couldn't resist it had to be Bowser you have the option of playing entire scenarios where you have to solve these disasters they're based on real cities like San Francisco Boston Rio de Janeiro Etc and of course the problem in Tokyo is the monster if you beat all six scenarios you'll have to handle UFO attacks in Las Vegas but back to the task at hand I want to raise the population to half a million and get that Mario statue you're going to need money not just to build stuff but to maintain roadways and stuff so where does that money come from from taxing the citizens but if you raise the taxes too high they get upset so you lower them but then the roads start crumbling you're stuck between a rock and a hard place either you run out of money or people leave your city so that's where the cheat code comes in ever since I saw it in that player's guide it became mandatory at the end of the year when the tax screen pops up hold L leave the screen come back make sure funding levels are at 100% And then if you release L at the right time now you have $999,999 yeah that'll be enough to keep keep you going now you can build almost infinitely all the nuclear plants airports sea ports and as many stadiums as the citizens want nothing can stop you now however it still doesn't get you the megalopolis of half a million people that you're going to have to earn by building strategically so if I'm going to do this I just have to do it there's three methods I'd say to build your city the first is the noob method which is just to place your zones and draw a line of roads and power lines it's fine you'll still have fun but the growth potential is very limited the second way is the Smart method this is where you pack all your zones together so everything's touching you group them together in these blocks with your transit system going around and alternative to this method is leaving a space in the middle of the blocks some call this the dut strategy where you fill in the holes with all those special properties like the banks casinos Etc this promotes growth and in no time you'll see those zones develop into skyscrapers except when they become schools and hospitals but hey what can you do but the third method is to play like an insane person defying all logic and basically trying to hack the game for example do you need a transit system yes but just a little strip of Railway every now and then is enough can you imagine getting on a train that only goes one block that'd be some shitty itinerary the most tedious part of the game is waiting for tax season it's the only way to progress when funds run out but the years drag on pretty slow you can select different speeds but even at the highest speed it's not enough what it needs is one extra speed a Road Runner icon that ought to do it but the best you can do is just sit around and wait [Music] [Applause] [Music] you know I can review a whole other game in the time this takes any game kung fu food on Atari Links what can you say about this it's a food beat him up game it opens with a cut scene but without any text or explanation I see what looks like two security guards who get knocked over as some guy runs out the door goes into a pickup truck and speeds away then he shows up at some house and then level one the freezer okay now you're some green dude beating the [ __ ] out of food I guess there's a lot of potential here but I don't know what kind of food these enemies are supposed to look like I do see tomatoes and carrots I guess but are those typically what you put in the freezer could they have popsicles ice cubes frozen pizzas ice cream sandwiches well the good thing about tomato enemies is that when you destroy them it looks like blood by the way I got some more money in Sim City but I'm going to keep saving up Kung food sounds like a fun concept but it's unplayable due to the clunky controls and awful hit detection you can spend close to a minute trying to chase down one enemy you have to precisely line yourself up Toe to Toe in order to hit anybody come on come on you [ __ ] you see this [ __ ] this is the most rotten food game I've ever played though it's pretty awesome seeing your character melt down to a skeleton that's totally unexpected I thought he was made of broccoli or something but it's cool also how many games have you ever played where you can pause the game over screen [Music] so my City's doing well but in order to get that megalopolis I need to reserve as much space as possible even if I need to build one little power line that's going to erase my Parks those are the little grassy areas they raise the property value to help the buildings developed but you can put the power lines over the railways without affecting them see it's little tricks like that you need to fully utilize the land you can't afford to waste a single Pixel anywhere if you want to win at Sim City you can't [ __ ] around you got to be more aggressive you got to demolish anything that's not necessary H what do the schools and hospitals do nah I can't do that that's morbid but they're taking up space and it's not required to have all those they don't count as population the residential areas can't grow to their full potential and combine together to form high-rise buildings not with those schools and hospitals in the way [Music] I had to do it that's how you win the game you have to send bulldozers through schools and hospitals that is some dark [ __ ] there's no schools or hospitals but there's police departments on every block this is a whole police City it's like Escape from New York in this town the police say say [ __ ] you you thought Sim City was a utopian dream it starts with that twinkling music that sounds so charming and invokes the feeling of aspirations and Fantasies toward a hopeful future but really it's a deep dark dive into a dystopian nightmare in this city profit and Corruption reign supreme you're not just building a [ __ ] Town you're building a monument to Mankind's Folly an Unholy Labyrinth of concrete and steel strangling a fractured Society it's a place where the smog Smothers the sky extinguishing any Ray of sunlight just like the Rays of Humanity's optimism the blind Obedience of the citizens keeps the elite in power as they cower in the shadow of the wealthy you're not a mayor you're a dictator now you know the true dark nature of Sim City the game even gives you the power to call upon natural disasters as it says in Nintendo Power your powers even extend to the control of natural forces why not send a tornado ripping through town and if you feel like obliterating a major metropolitan area no problem there are six funfilled disasters to choose from the game encourages you to spread death and destruction anyway the citizens complain about unemployment so I add more industrial zones so they have places to work but they complain about pollution so I make sure all my polluting facilities are on the edge of the gaming boundaries that means the pollution radius is cut off by the screen does that mean the smog is is drifting into another city yeah it's somebody else's problem now [ __ ] him maybe Nintendo wants the pollution to go into a Sega game like populace then they complain about housing costs what am I supposed to do about that you can never win you fix one thing then they get pissed off about something else oh you want lower taxes okay I lowered the [ __ ] taxes oh what is it now unemployment okay here's some commercial industrial zones oh you're still not happy what's the problem now crime pollution you want another Stadium you know what you can all go [ __ ] yourselves [Music] yeah you [ __ ] how do you like that want some tornadoes earthquakes I'll give you the works Bowser's going to take you to hell and if I haven't already made it clear let me spell it out [ __ ] you let's see what the citizens think of me now oh [ __ ] my approval rating went up they're Cooperative they learn look what I've got here A whole civilization of tiny people who will gravel at my [Laughter] feet aha good likeness look what they did and they did it overnight who needs a Mario statue when I have my very own an impressive sight and in return I give them my smile I won't [ __ ] my feet down on their town all right now my little friends now comes the new age the age of the nerd there's going to be a lot of plans to make much work to be done no no you can't stay here don't you understand I'm the God I'm the god the case of Mr nerd a victim of delusion in this case the dream dies a little harder than the man a small exercise in simulated City development the you can try in first size on the Angry Video Game Nerd [Music]

Channel: Cinemassacre

Views: 1,538,781

Keywords: james rolfe, cinemassacre, angry video game nerd, avgn, avgn season 18, avgn simcity, avgn sim city, avgn snes, avgn nintendo, avgn sims, avgn kung food, avgn lynx, avgn atari lynx, james rolfe simcity, james rolfe sim city

Id: 5TRV2pcVcng

Length: 19min 17sec (1157 seconds)

Published: Tue Jun 25 2024