You still have the usual instruments in city building. The commercial, industry and residential zones are the core of the game as well as the budget. However you can’t build light, medium and dense areas as can in the later versions of Sim City. There is also limitations when marking zones, the zones can only be marked in larger squares. When marking zones you must know exactly how you want the zones to be located in relation to roads otherwise you get a strange city architecture.

The game still creates the same feeling as the later versions do, the feeling of that your city is alive. When building a harbor ships enter the waters around your city, you see the traffic down on the streets and your advisory ticker tells you that highway shootings are on the rise. So the feeling of being the center of attention is very well created. However not as well created as in Sim City 2000. You still have to take into account that computers those days didn’t have the capacity to make the game more advanced, so it’s pretty advanced for the era.

Another interesting aspect is that you can’t build any hospitals in Sim City. Themselves create the hospitals in the residential areas. This feature was removed in Sim City 2000 and beyond. Also there are not many extra buildings and opportunities, you simply have to go with the zones given and the police stations, firehouse and stadiums.

Music fans would probably not be satisfied with Sim City. The tunes are some sort of jazzy cocktail tracks, which creates an increasing tiredness and feeling of despair. After a while you might want to turn the music off. Despite that the game didn’t age that good it’s still an interesting piece of gaming history, however if you are buying a game for the fun of it I would recommend the later versions of Sim City.