The Sims

2025-01-29
Popping open my big box copy of The Sims and going through the various arcane rituals required to get it to run on a computer in 2025 I was first reminded by how gorgeous the game is. It's best served in 800x600 maybe 1024x786 and the pixellated 2D sprites are fucking scrumptious. Following up of course is that legendary soundtrack which I won't dwell on cause we all know Jerry Martin knocked it out of the park here. What I forgot however was the smaller things. The pleasing auditory feedback of the click. The nice visual feedback of the cursor over various items and the pop noise as the little bubble of actions appears. The delightfully simple but readable UI. There is just so much charm and love from the creators on display here. Something I absolutely would have missed as a 9 year old playing on my sister's copy back in the day.

After this it will quickly dawn on you that The Sims is fucking brutal. Your Sims start with fully maxed needs and in all likelihood that is the last time all their needs will ever be fully maxed unless you rail some pure cocaína beforehand. They all endlessly plunge forcing you to queue up an endless onslaught of tasks as you try to micromanage your Sim out of spiraling into the pits of despair. I chose to have my Sim live alone which it turns out is like playing the game on ultra hard difficulty. No matter how much time I spend juggling my sims needs, frantically clicking on the toilet, the shower, the fridge, the tv then finally the bed, their Social need is in the dumpster because they are Alone. I try to remedy this by phoning up trusty old Bob Newbie. Every day. Every day Bob comes on over and I force my Sim to chat with him, dance with him, hug him. But it's never enough. My Sim pulls away because his other needs gnaw at him endlessly. Bro please just stop using the toilet I NEED you to HUG Bob.

It makes sense then that all my interactions with the OG Sims back in the day were preceded by the routine of spamming "rosebud" in the console to generate infinite money. To start from nothing and try to move up the career ladder is unbelievably hard. Promotions require you have your needs maxed AND you need to have increased the required skill points which requires additional time on top of the clickfest that is keeping your Sim from dying. That's not even addressing some career tracks like Politics which requires a certain number of friends to get promoted and guess what? Friendships also decay. That is all to say that The Sims makes Battletoads look like a walk in the park. Only you can't walk in any parks until you get the Hot Date expansion.

I probably only played for a couple hours and remembered why the first Sims game I really spent a lot time playing was the sequel, The Sims 2, which improves almost everything laid down here in the original. But hey the trip down memory lane was certainly worth it if only to just listen to that music in its proper setting and see the original art which I think still holds up as the best the series has ever been.

PS: I have a special curse where if I buy an old game there's a solid chance a re-release of some form or another will be announced soon after. EA just announced they're re-releasing The Sims and The Sims 2 and who would have guessed I bought boxed copies of them along with most of their expansions last week. So anyway as you're all stumbling upon The Sims in the coming weeks you can thank me and my curse.