Tag: Sim

TBT^16: SimEarth

The Portly Politico2 Comments

The big news in the gaming world right now is the incredible The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion Remastered.  It came as a total shock to the gaming world (yeah, there were rumors swirling that it was in the works, but no one knew it was coming so soon), and managed to update the game’s graphics and fix some bugs while also maintaining the legendary “jank” for which the game is so fondly remembered.

Yours portly has not yet taken the dive back into Cyrodiil (although, goodness, I am desperate to do so), but I am looking forward to the rapidly-approaching summer for a chance to dig into some classic games.  It’s been so long since I’ve really been able to sit down and lose myself for hours into a good game.  I haven’t even been able to touch Civilization VII in almost two months!

Gaming always comes to my mind during the hot, lazy days of summer, when it’s so unbearable outside, I l basically live like my home is a life support pod on Venus, only venturing out when absolutely necessary.  So it was that I booted up old SimEarth some years ago, and took a rose-tinted, nostalgia-fueled walk back to my past, when I first played a copy of the game my Indian friend copied onto a 3.5″ floppy disk for me.  Those were the days!

With that, join me on this extended walk through the past; here is 16 May 2024’s “TBT^4: SimEarth“:

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TBT^4: SimEarth

The Portly Politico27 Comments

May.  It’s the superfluous final month of school.  There’s not enough time to cover any new content, but too much time to launch right into exam review.  The result:  an odd limbo in which neither students or teachers wish to dwell.  It’s the time of year when everyone is in on the game of modern education—we’d all be better off doing and being somewhere else, but we’re still going through the rituals of an industrial-era factory.

Naturally, with summer looming, I’m getting the itch to do some gaming again.  Since finishing Disco Elysium a few weeks ago, I have not played any game deeply.  I did purchase Planescape: Torment, the spiritual ancestor of DE, but only managed to get in about an hour of playtime.  One of my students asked me earlier this week about Stardew Valley, which I played religiously for about two weeks in probably 2013.  That’s a modern classic I want to dust off soon.

As for the ostensible subject of this post, my forays into SimEarth have been nonexistent since those halcyon days of May 2020, when America’s love affair with The Virus was in full swing.  Being cooped up in the house got me nostalgic for the classics, but I need to revisit the planet simulator soon.

Big plans for the summer.  If I play all these games as planned, my eyeballs might fall out.

With that, here is 11 May 2023’s “TBT^2: SimEarth“:

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TBT: SimEarth

The Portly Politico4 Comments

I’ve been on a video game kick lately, diving back into the Civilization games and listening to a lot of the Gaming Historian on YouTube.  As such, it seemed like a good time to look back at another video game post, one about the planet simulator SimEarth.

SimEarth was one of those games that I found instantly appealing—a massive simulator of an entire planet, going through all its geological, biological, and civilizational phases.  Even growing up in a household that rejected the theory of Darwinian evolution (a theory I still don’t accept, although I acknowledge that adaptation and mutation are both possible and happen frequently), the prevailing scientific understanding of our world made for a fun video game.

The possibilities were endless.  Want to be a Deistic god and let the world run on its own?  Go for it.  Want to interfere frequently in your planet’s development?  Do it!  Want to make starfish or Venus fly traps sentient beings capable of forging an advanced civilization?  Why not!

I used to be able to make pretty compelling planets in this game, with rich histories and multiple species in succession rising to sentience, before heading off an intergalactic journey of the stars.  Apparently, I lost any skills I had, as my last game a couple of years ago (detailed below) ended in nuclear winter.  Oops.

With that, here is 27 May 2020’s “SimEarth“:

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SimEverything

The Portly Politico6 Comments

Summer Break is approaching, which means unstructured time, our most precious resource.  I plan on using that time to work on some long-delayed eBooks—including one on Christmas carols—and to teach my History of Conservative Thought course.  I’m also hoping to rebuild my music lesson empire after The Virus sacked the imperial capital.  There will also be lot of family time built in.

In addition to all of those wholesome and productive activities, there is also the siren song of video games.  Video games can become a major time sink (I’m learning that with Stellaris), but they’re a good way to unwind, and require a bit more focus and decision-making than passively consuming television.

One of the major video games meta-series of my youth were the various Sim games from Maxis—SimCity, SimEarth, SimAnt, etc. (I had a particular fondness for the scope and breadth of SimEarth, which I obtained on a bootlegged 3.5″ floppy disk from my buddy Arun in high school, back before I knew about or respected intellectual property rights).  The sandbox style in play, which encouraged experimentation and open-ended decision-making, really made those Maxis games fun (not unlike Minecraft, which also encourages exploration and free play).

So it was with great interest—and a heavy dose of nostalgia—that I read “When SimCity got serious:  the story of Maxis Business Simulations and SimRefinery” on The Obscuritory, a website dedicated to exploring games lost, forgotten, and never played.

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