LGR - SimCity on the BBC Micro - First Impressions

My first experience with the BBC version of SimCity by Superior Software. This is not a walkthrough, review, playthrough, anything like that, just me playing the game badly and trying my darndest not to rip off Master Benway :D

[SevCaswell]

This was the first version of SimCity I ever played, my father was a broadcast engineer for the BBC and he rescued and fixed several BBC computers that were thrown in the skip at work. We had this game and a bumper selection of arcade games, including pacman, frogger, space invaders and galactica.

[LGR]

@charles9655 As I mentioned in the video, I will be reviewing SimCity and its other versions in a full-length special at some point. C64 included :)

[desther]

That color scheme... It looks like SimCity in Hell.

[LGR]

@Chromeize Thanks. Although I'm not sure what you mean, since I didn't show my keyboard in this video... unless you mean the BBC Micro computer on my desk?

[LGR]

@Feenicks01 Thanks! It hasn't left my face for 8 years now so it's around for the foreseeable future.

[LGR]

@VTS1337 Yup, as long as your motherboard and BIOS support your floppy drive, Win7 is just fine with it and even command line programs can access it.

[LGR]

@farcher3 You know you can just type in a simple search on my channel or look in my "Hardware Reviews" playlist... but no, I have not yet made a BBC Micro review.

[cheerio]

Oh my gosh, I have just figured out that the BBC micro was what I used to love playing on in school! We had this awesome maze game on it that I was addicted to playing in Primary 1! Thank you LGR, for brining back that awesome memory.

[Djndo]

Something soothing about the static and your voice combined with the button presses haha. Cool to see this old video. Crazy how many ports SimCity has!

[LGR]

@Ownederd13 Thank you. It's a very useful mix, actually, allowing to create disks for many of my DOS machines directly from disk images on my hard drive. Windows 7 having 5.25" floppy support is freaking awesome.

[LGR]

Yes, a majority of both 48k and 128k games should be compatible.

[ILikeStyx]

It'd be cool to see some of these old videos re-recorded... 11 years later I suspect we could see quite the "upgrade" - not to say the old videos aren't any good ;)

[LGR]

@kargaroc386 That's the question I was asking repeatedly in the video. I assume they either didn't have the ability to include time-specific inventions or just forgot.

[LGR]

@Monstoday I actually have it hooked in to a USB video capture device, which is then hooked into my Windows PC. It's currently the only display I have for the Beeb, and although it's not the clearest of pictures it certainly works!

[LGR]

@thatguyontheright1 Eventually. If not on its own then in the SimCity review.

[LGR]

@Zontar82 Got mine on eBay, it was only a few bucks.

[LGR]

@nybiker1 You have the option to save to disk from the game menu.

[eddiehimself]

Funnily enough, we were actually the first country to have a full-scale nuclear power plant, but that wasn't until the 1950s.

[LGR]

@Drakortha Well, for starters I wouldn't call it a SimCity clone. Felt a bit more like the Caesar games than SC. It's more of an experiment in social integration simulation mixed in with urban urban theory and planning. Not really my cup of tea, but an interesting title nonetheless. The sequels, the Cities XL games, are also quite interesting with beautiful graphics, but I never got into them to any true extent. I really wanted to though and I'll try again someday!

[LGR]

@farcher3 It's cool. I plan on doing the BBC Micro review sometime over this summer!