Building a Micropolis: SimCity in 1989

Will Wright‘s SimCity was originally a map developing feature within the game Raid on Bungeling Bay. Born of Wright’s love for the intricacies of urban planning and of his interest in Jay Wright Forrester‘s System Dynamics, the city-building simulator was later developed as a spin-off program because Wright was more interested in building the city’s maps than playing the actual game. Another inspiration came from a short story written by Stanisław Lem and entitled “The Seventh Sally”, in which an engineer lets a dethroned king he just met, to oppress artificial citizens in a micropolis he creates for him. (More infos here)

Although developed in 1985 for the Commodore 64 platform, SimCity was released in its first version only in 1989. The Mac Os port was the only one featuring glorious black and white axonometric projections.

Here’s some screenshots.