Nothing defines Maxis for me quite like the SimCity 2000 era of box art. With a similar style being used across a range of their titles around that time, such as SimAnt and SimFarm. Great box art for a great game, even if it did take a while for child me to grasp how to build a successful city without the use of money cheats or starter-city saves. Whilst SimCity 4 is arguably the peak of the series and SimCity 3000 pushed the gameplay systems of SimCity 2000 to the max, for me SimCity 2000 will probably always be my favourite game of the SimCity series due to both the box and in-game art style.
That game is still in my backlog. I still love the first Sim City, but Sim City 2000 adding the sewer system requirement was too much for me. But it canât be that hard. Itâs just a mental barrier of not wanting to deal with a sewage system, I think. I just need to get over it.
Great pick, Malkael! I agree that 2000 is the absolute peak of the series. I didnât need some of the complications of 3000, and the fact that you could reskin the whole game with the sprite editor was fun, too. (I redrew every building in a childrenâs scrawl and made the game look like a second-grade art project.) I agree, too, that the white-border boxes from that era at Maxis are a great design.
I like the actual art image of the cityscape. But I donât agree with you on that white border. It makes the whole thing feel like a productivity software or something. Maybe an antivirus software box or spreadsheet software.
There have been only three games in the Kid Icarus series in the last 34 years, and two of those were released 30 freaking years ago. But in 2012 Nintendo gave us a wonderful on-rails shooter for the 3DS in the form of Kid Icarus: Uprising. Itâs a great game if youâre into grinding and crafting loot and upgrades, and the on-rail shooty bits are supreme quality. If the game had one weakness it would be the control scheme, as playing for more than ten minutes would give me hand cramps and Iâd spend the rest of the day wishing it were actually on the Wii instead, but control scheme aside, the game was a great take on the otherwise Metroidy series.
On a genre/gameplay front, @Pod came super close with Panzer Dragoon.
