Prerelease:The Sims 2 (Windows)/Pre-E3 2004

This is a sub-page of Prerelease:The Sims 2 (Windows).

April

04/01/04 Chat

Held on April 1, 2004, with Lucy Bradshaw. (No joke!)

• It is confirmed that Alien Abductions and Alien Pregnancy will appear.
• Neighborhood indexes are confirmed.
• It is confirmed in the UI, that playable Sims are displayed on the left.
• It was stated that foliage can be customized with Design Mode, but no such feature appears in the final.
• Olive and Ophelia Specter are confirmed to be in the game.
• It was stated that Teen Sims can move out, but they cannot do so in the final game without a guardian.
• The Aspiration feature is confirmed to appear in the game, along with the respective unlockable items.
• It's confirmed that Children Sims cannot put on make-up, but in the final they can wear face paints.
• Party Scenarios, with the whole scoring system are confirmed, along with the Limo appearing after having a Good Wedding Party.
• When asked about weather glitches (in response to a previous chat), they were trying to find a workaround in the form of a simple implementation plan.
• When asked about Blind dates, Lucy responded with talking to Sims over the computer. The feature would come to fruition in Nightlife.
• Asking if there would be NPCs like "Aliens and elves", Lucy responded with a "maybe". Alien NPCs were confirmed for the game, but no elf NPCs ever make an appearance in later expansions.
• When asked about development status, Lucy explained that half of the team spent their time fixing bugs and overall polish, while the other spent time adding special stuff and flair in other places.
• Sims could originally have scars and tattoos, but scars don't appear in the final. Tattoos would appear on several outfits for Sims in the base game and were even planned to be in Nightlife separately. Customizable Tattoos would appear in The Sims 3: Ambitions.

(Source: https://web.archive.org/web/20040405145431/http://thesims2.ea.com/chat_04_01_04.php)

Early-Mid April Build

Welcome to The Sims 2! Part 23

On April 10, 2004, new images were posted.

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• A car and a driveway can be seen, where ownable vehicles were originally going to appear in the basegame, before eventually being moved to the Nightlife and Freetime expansions.

Press Kit Images

Images from a later press kit, dated April 17-19, 2004. The second image, though dated on April 22, matches up with the first. They all notably represent Aspirations.

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Videos

Oddly enough, the first two videos released at E3 2004 appears to compile gameplay footage from the images above, implying it was originally made at that time.

E3 2004 Trailer 1	E3 2004 Trailer 2	Micromania Coverage

Late April Build

Images from April 22, 2004, where the rest except for the first was uploaded later on as usual.

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Late April Images

Images dated April 22-24, 2004. The second and fourth one is uploaded later, but matches the build of the previous images.

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Welcome to The Sims 2! Part 25

Posted on April 24, 2004. Veronaville is also shown off for the very first time.

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Late April Build

Images uploaded on April 28 and 29, 2004 respectively that clearly aren't unsorted images from earlier builds.

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• The Lot from Strangetown is oddly inhabited in this build.
• The fabled driveway and car can be seen.

Sneaky Single Sim

To do: This was mirrored from vk.com, in semi-compressed quality. Replace with a better one.

Teased on April 29, 2004 but would later be officially uploaded on May 8, 2004.

May

Welcome to The Sims 2! Part 26

A musical montage of the in-game Radio Music was uploaded on May 1, 2004.. The songs in order are DJ Funktronic, Dance the Dawn, Shicka Zhicka Soom, Shun Me Out, Show Me the Way and an unidentified song that may have been intended for the scrapped Bluegrass Station.

Early May Builds

Five new images were uploaded on May 8, 2004, on IGN. Notably a huge chunk of these images would not be released until later on, despite having the old Sims 2 logo watermark at the bottom-right.

Screenshots

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Exclusive Outfit Reveal

Six exclusive screenshots were posted to FilePlanet and GameSpot, showing off exclusive downloadable outfits, on May 11, 2004.

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Other

The first two images are from the SimInsider Newsletter, released on May 11, 2004, while the third was officially released on May 13, 2004. Four of the images are taken from this article

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• The third image shows the Curious household for the first time, confirming that four-story houses have been implemented at this point.

Early May Blooper Image

A blooper image that dates to early May, as briefly seen by the "multi-age" Live Mode icon on the bottom left.