My love for Simcity began in the early 90’s with Simcity Classic. My family had just moved to Colorado from Omaha and we were staying with my uncle while they finished work on the house. I was first introduced to it when my uncle let me use his super fast 486 PC. I would sit for hours playing, and then let the game run by itself while my budget went up. I engrossed myself in every aspect trying to figure out the perfect measure of industrial, residential, and commercial lots. When Simcity 2000 came out my family’s PC was too slow to run it. I saved up every penny from babysitting and mowing lawns so I could buy a Sega Saturn, then I bought Simcity 2000. What followed were more countless hours building massive cities and trying to populate them with the Arcologies which were cities within cities. All this was followed by Simcity 3000, Simcity 4, then Simcity 4 with the Rush Hour expansion pack. A game I still play today more than any other. In fact you can now download hundreds of custom buildings and add-ons making the game even more incredible and realistic.I even have Simcity on my iphone.
Custom mods, add-ons, buildings, and maps for Simcity 4 Rush Hour / Deluxe can be found on these sites.
But I’m not writing about the newer version of Simcity today. Because I recently fell back in love with Simcity 2000 and I can still play it on Mac OS X, Windows Vista, or Windows 7 with DOSBox. (Even in Win7 x64!)
Anyone who hasn’t used DOS before are going to need to know a few commands first. DOSbox is a DOS emulator so all the commands work just the same but DOSbox also comes with some new ones for mounting CD’s, folders, etc. DOSbox for me has worked great with SC2k out of the box, so to speak. I haven’t had to change anything with the settings or setup a config file. Here are some simple instructions.
1. Download DOSbox for whatever OS you are using (http://www.dosbox.com/download.php?main=1) and install it.
2. Downloads Simcity 2000 (http://www.abandonia.com/en/games/82/SimCity+2000.html its free!) After you have downloaded it extract the files into a folder called SC2000 and put that on the root of your C: drive.
3. Run DOSbox and type int he following command at the Z:\ prompt. “mount c c:\sc2000” (without the “”). This will mount the sc2000 folder as the C: drive so you can navigate to it in dosbox. Another option is to create a folder on C: called DOSgames and put all your games in there within separate directories. I currently have one with Simcity Classic, Simcity 2000, and Simant.
4. After the game folder is mounted you can navigate into it by typing “c:” at the z:\ prompt. This will automatically move you into the c mount. You can then type “dir” to get a directory listing and find the exe you need to run. Or just type “sc2000” to run the game.
A few other commands for browsing DOS:
cd is change directory. Example would be “cd C:\sc2000”
cd \ will take you to the root.
cd.. will go up one directory
I leave you with some wonderful images of Simcity 2000 in action.
But what about Mac? Follow the instructions above, download DOSbox?Download Boxer for Mac OS. Simply follow the really easy instructions that come with Boxer.
Put the sc2000 folder in your user directory. For example \users\mkauspe\sc2000. (Above the doucments and downloads folder).
Use the command “mount c ~/sc2000” instead, it will mount that sc2000 folder in the users directory as C:\.
Game plays the same with music and sound!
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