SimCity 2000 (Mac OS Classic)

SimCity 2000
Developer: Maxis Publisher: Maxis Platform: Mac OS Classic Released in US: November 1993 This game has debugging material. This game has revisional differences.

The second game in the SimCity series. In addition to improving on everything that was in the original, it adds an incredible number of new features and swaps the top-down perspective of the original for an isometric view.

Debug Display

While holding down the Command key and clicking on a cell with the Query Tool, some additional information is included in the description: "X/Y" cell coordinates and "Txt" that is updated based on what is placed in the cell (for example, by default it has value 0, with fire it has value 255).

Debug Menus

This needs some investigation. Discuss ideas and findings on the talk page. Specifically: Disassemble procedures for handling menus, check if there's any unused ones referencing IDs 30000 and 30001.

Among other things, the Debug menu allowed testers to invoke the special disasters not listed in the Disasters menu.

A separate, enormous menu was devoted to testing each type of newspaper article.

There's no apparent way to activate these in-game, since the relevant codes from the PC version do nothing on the Mac.

Using ResEdit, we can find these menus under the MENU resource, with IDs 30000 and 30001. It's possible to force them to be loaded by replacing two existing "Menu res ID" entries in the MBAR resource with the debug menu IDs. However, the menus don't appear to be functional in-game. Adding additional entries to the MBAR resource causes the game to crash.

These menus were removed altogether in version 1.2.

Revision History

Title Screen

• 

  Version 1.0.

• 

  Version 1.1 added a trademark symbol and copyright date. It also lengthened the picture by 20 pixels, revealing more of the buildings.

• 

  Version 1.2 traded ™ for ®, 1993 for 1995, and a clump of pixels on the first zero for a slightly darker clump of pixels.

Changes in Version 1.1

The 1.1 patch comes with a list of its improvements, which is reproduced below:

• The budget should work properly now, transit figures should be correct (and stay that way).
• The Bulldoze Tool should always default to Bulldoze instead of whatever tool was last used. This should prevent accidental mass destruction caused by forgetting that the last bulldoze tool being used was Raise/Lower/Level Terrain.
• Airports should build correctly now (the ratio of towers to runways should be better).
• Several problems that show up with more than 7 stadiums/teams should be gone.
• Figures in the Analysis window (from the City Hall query window) should stay correct.
• Sometimes, destroying bridges would leave an un-usable shoreline tile. This should be fixed.
• Querying on certain tiles of the Forest Arcology in certain situations would report bare land, this should not happen.
• Arcologies that do not have micro-simulators attached should now affect population (populations far greater than 9.1 million should be attainable).
• There is a new button when using the query tool on a library. [That would be the "Ruminate" button, which displays this essay by Neil Gaiman.]
• Placing highway and re-enforced bridges now charges the user correctly.
• Schools should work properly at population levels above 60,000.
• The date should now properly display above 9,999 years.
• The power graph should be more accurate.
• This Read Me file has been updated.

There's also a new quasi-ending: if the year is at least 2051, and your city has at least 301 launch arcologies, they'll take off into space and refund the money used to construct them, accompanied by a pop-up announcing that "the exodus has begun".

Changes in Version 1.2

The Read Me only cites three new features: PowerPC native code, support for the Urban Renewal Kit, and African Swallow Mode (which fast-forwards the game as fast as your computer can possibly go). Subtler changes included some modifications to the credits:

Versions 1.0 and 1.1	Version 1.2	Notes
SimCity 2000™ has been copyrighted by Maxis in 1993.	SimCity 2000® 1.2 has been copyrighted by Maxis, 1993-95.	The title was bumped up to registered trademark status throughout v1.2.
Mick Foley shot shapes and packed them into a city, while Justin McCormick went bug hunting and caught the big nasty ones.	Mick Foley shot shapes, packed them into a city, and moved SimCity 2000® to the Power Macintosh, while Justin McCormick went bug hunting and caught the big nasty ones. John “USPA87419” Lewis even helped a bit. (He’ll do anything for some free caffeine.)	Lewis' resume states that he "fixed over 100 bugs, including over 20 crash bugs". His work on this revision was honored with an easter egg: type uspa87419 (his US Parachute Association membership number) to watch a parachutist float over your city. This egg also appears in SimTown, on which Lewis was lead programmer.
Newspaper pics provided by Lori Reese & Archive Photos of New York City (an upcoming scenario).	Newspaper pics provided by Lori Reese & Archive Photos of New York City.	A Manhattan nuclear meltdown scenario was included in the Great Disasters expansion pack.
	Our good friends: "Big Al", Rose, Kurt, and the rest at Ottino's for lunch, dinner, dessert, TV, and popcorn.	Despite the curly quotes earlier, these ones are straight.
	The gang at MindVision software (makers of Developer Vice installation software) for service above and beyond the call of duty. All the great folks at SkyDance SkyDiving in Davis, CA who let John Lewis hurl himself out of their fine airplanes. (This may seem strange, but he says it helps him relax. Something about work not mattering much when hurtling towards the ground at 120+ MPH.)	"Vice" should be "VISE".
These credits were compiled by a team of one hundred during a ten minute break	These credits were compiled by a team of one hundred during a ten minute break.	The very last entry gained a concluding period.