Sim City - Infogrames RRP œ29.95
               (Mouse-controlled simulation)

When I first got my ST, one of the games I bought was Little
Computer People. The child in me quite fancied the idea of having
someone "living" in my computer and being able to talk to him,
get him to write me letters, play his piano, feed his dog and so
on.  Now I've grown up (...???...), my ideas have got bigger too;
I'm not content with having ONE person in my computer - now I
want a whole city teeming with life, complete with roads, shops,
railways, shipping, industry and everything else that entails.

When I first read about Sim City it was only out for the PC. A
while later the Amiga version came out. Finally, it's available
for the ST, and if you haven't yet joined Official Secrets I'd
advise you to do what I did - join it now and get Sim City as
your free game. But, beware ... this game is very addictive so
make sure you have a lot of free time before you start to play.
The disk is double-sided and I can't think of a better reason to
upgrade to a 1 meg drive than to be able to play this game.

As well as designing your own city from scratch, there are eight
scenarios to load in from disk. Each of these is a ready-made
city with certain problems that you, as mayor, must overcome.
They include Dullsville, USA which needs livening up, traffic
congestion in Bern, a crime wave in Detroit and nuclear meltdown
in Boston in 2010. Each has its own difficulty level (from easy
to very difficult) and also its own time limit (5 to 30 years)
depending on the scenario chosen.

When you start a new city, the inhabitants (known as Sims) will
tell you what they need most. At the start this will mean houses,
commercial zones and industry, either linked by roads (cheap but
they can cause pollution and, later, will get congested by heavy
traffic) or rail. Later on, the ungrateful so-and-sos will start
requesting a stadium, an airport, sea port and so on. Meanwhile
you'll have to link all these areas with power lines, ensure
they have adequate police and fire protection and make sure your
budget allows you to keep everything well-maintained so that more
Sims move into your city rather than leave by the truckload!
The disk isn't protected so "well done, Infogrames" for putting
your copy-protection in the packaging rather than the disk 
because, like lots of other people, I like to use a back-up disk
to play and keep my original disk safe. The main booklet with the
game is almost 60 pages long but very easy to follow apart from the
fact that some aspects of the game have been altered since the
booklet was written and though some of them have been documented
in a supplementary booklet, others haven't eg the zone evolution
chart.

One thing I haven't mentioned which can mess up your city even
quicker than traffic congestion, disgruntled Sims or a crime wave
is a disaster. This can be a fire, flood, tornado, earthquake, an
air disaster, shipwreck, meltdown in a nuclear power station if
you have one or - if the pollution level gets dangerously high -
a monster attack which will cause terrible devastation. You can
disable disasters if you want but it's more fun to just let 'em
happen. Evidently, disasters are more likely to happen if you
pick a harder lever game. I'm still on "easy" and seeing quite
enough of them to keep me busy, thank you.

The fact that the whole game is mouse-controlled using pull-down
menus, windows and scroll bars so you can move quickly to any part
of your city means it is very easy to control. The Sim City Terrain
Editor should be out before the end of the year and with Sim Earth
in the pipeline too, there's plenty more to look forward to.

There is a budding megalomaniac hidden within each of us and Sim
City gives us the chance to realise our dreams. Unfortunately, it
is easier to build a ghetto than a Utopia. But when everything
goes wrong, you can just sit back, like Nero, and fiddle while
Sim City burns ..... and then try again.

                                          Sue