These were the creepiest family albums we've seen in quite a while! Check them out in SimDay Events.
News
Please note I'm currently working on the new site. I didn't want to take the site offline though, so you can still visit it. However me working on the site while it's still online means a lot of the pages will appear wonky. But not to worry, it won't take too long. 
2 Nov 2000 - 22:00
1 Nov 2000 - 22:00
We have updated the Hall Of Fame page with a great number of Architects who have made considerable contributions to the Building Exchange. Please do not view this as a complete list of worthy Hall of Famer's, but it is a good place to start.
31 Oct 2000 - 22:00
Thank you to everyone who entered the "Spooky Halloween" contest. These ghoulish and scary buildings will bring a new after-life to any part of your city. Check out the winners on the contest winners page and download your favorites now.
26 Oct 2000 - 23:10
The Spooky Story contest ends tonight at -- you guessed it -- midnight. Look for the winners next SimDay!
26 Oct 2000 - 23:00
ESCmag's reviewer got a real kick out of Livin' Large. "The new items are very well designed, and the Grim Reaper alone is worth the price of admission." Check it out!
Review by Erich Becker
October 12, 2000
[Note: This review directly ties into my review for The Sims]
Coming around the last corner before my house, I still have the images of last night in my head. What really did happen? Images are flashing through my mind and showing me abstract memories, or are they suppressed urges? I see a zombie of Bob walking around his front yard. I know this can’t be true; he died a few days ago after locking himself in his tool-shed and having the door disappear. I walk into my house and there is my Servo cleaning up this morning’s mess from breakfast. Upon entering my room I see my magical lamp on the nightstand. Giving it a little rub, my genie, called Herb, tries to grant my wish only, to my surprise, my kitchen explodes into a fiery ball of consumables. Oh what have I done to deserve this … oh wait, my voodoo doll collection. Problem solved!
Welcome back to The Sims. The residents have been waiting for you to return. They have added more lots for you to build on, brought in hundreds upon hundreds of new items for you to spend your hard-earned cash on, and new technological advancements are being made all the time. Plus, as always, new jobs await.
I won’t sit here and tell you about all the details of how to play The Sims, or what makes it one of this year’s best games. We have a review for that. I will tell you why you must own this expansion pack, and why you need to find the nearest retailer and drive there immediately after reading this piece.
Livin’ Large starts just where you left off with The Sims. The add-on installation went without a hitch, and I was off to explore what was new in my virtual world. Upon entering the neighborhood screen, you notice all of your previous houses are intact, except there is now a way for you to switch between Livin’ Large’s five different neighborhoods. Yes, now you can have up to five unique neighborhoods with different houses and people in each. This really expands the replayability of the game by giving you the chance to create tons and tons of different families to interact with.
In all, there are more than 125 new items added to The Sims to enhance your game playing experience. Here are some of the most popular:
- Your Sims can now be abducted by aliens.
- Leaving your house dirty can now cause roaches to appear and infest your home.
- Sims now have access to a personality-altering chemistry set, and can also create an evil twin of themselves (think Army of Darkness).
- Need to see the future? What could be a better tool than a fortune-telling crystal ball?
- "I’m a genie in a bottle baby, come and rub me the right way!" No, a pretty pop singer does not appear in the middle of your living room — a real live Genie straight from fairytales appears and can grant your wishes. The only catch is the Genie must still be in "Wishing School" because more times than I can count, my stove exploded.
- Holiday decorations are now available to show that special Hallmark-inspired spirit.
- Finally, the best addition to the game would have to be the Grim Reaper. If more than one Sim inhabits your house, and one dies, the Grim Reaper appears and the living Sim must plead for the others life. The Sim could live, die or be reincarnated as a zombie to make things more interesting. This gives some of the more "macabre" players a little something extra to fool around with.
The new items are very well designed, and the Grim Reaper alone is worth the price of admission. Now, it’s time for your Sim to earn the money to buy these crazy gifts for his/her self. How do five new career tracks sound? For a total of 50 new jobs, there are now five new tracks to explore:
- Musician — subway musician, piano tuner, wedding singer (!), rock star.
- Slacker — golf caddy, convenience store clerk, lifeguard.
- Paranormal — tarot card reader, UFO investigator.
- Journalism — game reviewer (a personal favorite), weatherman, talk show host.
- Hacker — beta tester, game designer, programmer.
As you can see, the new career tracks can hit close to home, or on another planet. Speaking of closer to home, what can be done to your pad in the expansion pack? A lot.
- The castle building set lets you create a house of stonewalls, arrow slotted windows, and a giant, pointy fence guarding your property from outsiders as you explore the depths of your chemistry set.
- The Ladies’ Man Pad will have your carpet decked out in leopard skin, your furniture and other fixtures screaming unmarried, hopeless bachelor.
- The Retro Home takes its cues from what people in the ‘50s thought the world would look like. Complete with boomerang windows, and automatic sliding doors, the retro home has it all.
For someone who rated the original game a perfect 10 here at ESCmag, I feel that the add-on is worth the money. The Sims should have a Surgeon General’s warning on the front of the box (and a warning about that loser clown). Some people see this game as a cash-in on Maxis’ part because 2 million owners of the game can’t be wrong. In the end, it is a little of both. There is nothing dramatically different in Livin’ Large that you might not be able to find on the Internet in a few months, or already can. Still, not everyone has an Internet connection capable of downloading almost 250 MB of enhancements. Fans of the original will be impressed, but this isn’t the game to introduce someone to the Sims. Play the original, then play Livin’ Large.
In the end, The Sims: Livin’ Large, has the right to bear the name of Sim on the box, and is a worthy successor to the original game
Minimum Requirements:
PC: Original install of The Sims; Pentium 233 MHz; 32 MB RAM; quad-speed CD-ROM; 175 MB hard drive space.
MAC: Original install of The Sims; Mac OS 8.1 or higher; G3 233 MHz or higher (incl. iMac and PowerBook G3); 2 to 4 MB VRAM; 175 MB hard drive space; 8X or faster CD-ROM; 64 MB RAM; 800x600 at Thousands of Colors; QuickTime 4.0 or higher (included)
25 Oct 2000 - 23:00
MaxisWaylon has written a help file for those of you making scenarios. It addresses some of the major problems users have when making a scenario. This very helpful file is available in the Tips and Tricks section.
24 Oct 2000 - 23:10
MaxisJoseph has dug into his bag of tricks again and released a treat for all of you!
24 Oct 2000 - 23:00
The Spooky Halloween Contest has ended, winners will be posted next week! Just in time for Halloween!
19 Oct 2000 - 23:20
For Halloween, we created a special new object for your Sims. Download the Jack-O-Lantern and set the stage for one killer of a party.
Jack-O-Lantern
We carved you a pumpkin for Halloween! Download it and add just the right touch to your Sims' Halloween night.
Download Jack-O-Lantern (215 Kb)
19 Oct 2000 - 23:10
The Miami Herald just caught on to The Sims. Check out this story from Friday's issue!
Published Friday, October 13, 2000, in the Miami Herald
Living with the Sims
Addictive game lets players raise a family, direct the soap opera they create
MADELINE BARO DIAZ
mbaro@herald.com
The trimmed trees, manicured lawns and picket fences cover up the seedy underbelly of the neighborhood.
Take Evert Torres, a single dad and aspiring politician who persuaded housewife Bella Goth to leave her husband and daughter and move in with him and his daughter, Reese. Bella, who got a chilly reception from Reese, embarked on a medical career. Evert took advantage of Bella's night job to cozy up to single neighbor Gigi Rodriguez, who turned down several of his marriage proposals and ended up marrying Mortimer Goth, Bella's original husband.
They're not real people. They're not even TV characters. Evert, Bella and the rest are Sims who live in a made-up neighborhood in a computer game.
The Sims is an addictive and popular game by the creator of SimCity, in which players create characters, move them into homes and spend hour after hour, day after day, trying to keep them happy -- controlling everything from how they decorate their homes to when they use the toilet.
The original game was released in February and has consistently been on the Top 10 list of bestselling games. An expansion pack, Livin' Large, which allows characters to bargain with the Grim Reaper, be abducted by aliens and concoct Jekyll-and-Hyde type potions, hit stores last month.
Where predecessors like city-building simulator Sim City were akin to model train sets, The Sims is like a dollhouse, according to Will Wright, designer of the Sim series of games.
In The Sims, players create families (choosing gender, skin tone, head, clothes and personality) to populate their neighborhoods.
Family is a loose term meant to describe a household. A family can be a bachelor living alone, parents and kids, or any combination players invented. . In fact, family relationships are partially in the players' imaginations since it's up to them to determine how the Sims interact.
The game was deliberately designed that way, Wright said. When the Sims talk to each other, for example, they speak their own language and players must fill in the blanks.
"We're simulating these people kind of halfway on the computer and halfway in the player's mind," Wright said.
SIMS' NEEDS
Playing the game means filling your Sims' needs, which are measured by hygiene, hunger, fun, energy and other categories. (There's a meter, or gauge, for each of those categories that you have to update regularly; for example, making sure they're fed daily.)
Socializing is a big part of the game, too. Sims have to make friends with the neighbors in order to get some job promotions, and can marry neighbors or ask them to move in.
As in real life, the suburbanite Sims get to pick careers and if they miss too many days at their jobs they get fired.
The Sims pursue the American dream, wanting bigger and better stuff to place in their homes. The more expensive the item, the more pleasure the Sims get out of it.
Jason Ocampo, a news editor for CNet Gamecenter.com, who logged about 100 hours of Sims time before going cold turkey, says the materialistic undertone of the game might be the one negative, though he points out it's a reflection of society. "It does present the materialistic side of life... but is that the game's fault or our fault?" he said.
Wright says the game is actually a parody of materialism, since Sims who stock their homes full of top-of-the-line Sim gadgets will find that the gadgets break down and they'll be constantly fixing them or calling a repairs shop.
"The whole materialistic side and the way the relationships work are exaggerated on purpose to a ridiculous extreme," he said.
WHY IT'S ADDICTIVE
As with SimCity and Wright's other games, SimEarth, SimTower, etc., there's no way to win at The Sims and Wright says it's the open-ended aspect that keeps people playing.
"It's a platform for your creativity, unlike a lot of games, which are a string of puzzles to be solved," Wright said.
Creative is a mild term when describing Sims fans. Players have set up their own websites dedicated to The Sims, many of them with player-created "skins" that make the Sims look like celebrities and comic book characters, or will add to their wardrobes and decorating choices. PG-rated sites are on the official site of Maxis, the game's developer.
Randy Hillman, 19, a sophomore at Villanova University, and fellow student Rebecca Settle, have a site, www.geocities.com/siskelandsimbert, where their alter egos Sims, Siskel and Simbert, review Sims fan sites with a thumbs up/thumbs down rating system.
Hillman got the game in March and stayed up two or three days straight, skipping some classes, when he first played it.
VICARIOUS PLEASURE
"It's the God factor," he said. "I can control every little thing. I can totally screw them up or I can help them do really well."
Some fans, like Chyrel McWilliams, a Web designer in Philadelphia, say the game is like no-strings-attached parenthood. Her boyfriend, Mike Rudy, gave her the game for her birthday and their Sims now hawk clothes, homes and other items for download on their Sims Stuff website http://63.238.78.1/horizon-nmcom/html/simsstuff/
index.asp.
"I guess it's just the challenge of taking care of someone else," McWilliams said. On "The Diary of a Sim" website, www.thediaryofasim.net, players have posted first-person accounts of their Sims' daily lives. "The non-Sim fans think it is odd that I spend time working on my website so much and love a game where I can control little people," said Kristian Evensen, a 16-year-old in Norway who created the site.
Of course, the Sim universe isn't complete yet. Next up is SimsVille, scheduled for release in 2001, which combines elements of SimCity and The Sims. Wright is also working on an online version of The Sims where players will control one Sim who interacts with neighbors controlled by other players.
But Ocampo believes The Sims could end up in the same league as SimCity, which is considered one of the best computer games ever.
"I think it's going to be one of the great games," he said.