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SimCity is a city building simulator, originally developed by Will Wright of Maxis. Originally developed as a PC game, a new version was developed by Nintendo and released on the SNES in August 1991. It was later released on the Wii Virtual Console. It was a US Virtual Console launch title as well, on November 19, 2006. Interestingly, it was the first Virtual Console release, despite Super Mario World being the SNES launch title. (Super Mario World would, strangely, be left unreleased until several months later.) Due to Electronic Arts buying out the franchise, Sim City was de-listed from the Virtual Console.

The NES port was announced in the September–October 1990 issue of Nintendo Power magazine. It was playable during the Winter International Consumer Electronics Show of 1991, but was later cancelled before release.

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The objective of SimCity, as the name of the game suggests, is to build and design a city, without specific goals to achieve (except in the scenarios, see below). The player can mark land as being zoned as commercial, industrial, or residential, add buildings, change the tax rate, build a power grid, build transportation systems and many other actions, in order to enhance the city.

Also, the player may face disasters including: flooding, tornadoes, fires (often from air disasters or even shipwrecks) , earthquakes, etc.

Nintendo took the original idea for SimCity and started adding their own touches to the game, adding prizes and new buildings. They added casinos, amusement parks, and the mayor's mansion. Casinos and Amusement parks actually paid the player $100 annually as well. Many of the bonuses and concepts that Nintendo added were eventually added to future versions of SimCity.

Nintendo also added cameos from their own stars. Mario could be found as an unlockable statue that was awarded once the player's city achieved Megalopolis status, which meant the city had over 500,000 inhabitants. Mario's face could also be found made up with forest in the SNES exclusive scenario, Freeland.

Mario's rival, Bowser, could be found as a new take on the monster disaster. He shows up and Godzilla-like starts stomping around the city, destroying everything he walks over.

In honor of the creator of SimCity, Will Wright, a new character was created for the game. Named Dr. Wright, he was a very energetic green-haired advisory to the player, giving advice on just about everything about the city, including mentioning when the "citizens" thought taxes were too high, etc. Dr. Wright would also make an appearance in the Japan-only SimCity 64 for the Nintendo 64.

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