Fortune Builder - The Sim City Before Sim City

One of my favourite Colecovision games is Fortune Builder. It's a simple city-building program that is similar to Sim City - specifically the Dullsville scenario, where you have to earn money and build up the population within a certain amount of time. In Fortune Builder, there are no 'residential/commercial/industrial' areas, nor do you have to worry about power plants or havock-wreaking disasters. Instead, you have to deal with events that can either help raise your profits or send them plummeting.

The game even had a two-player mode where two people could actually sabotage each others' efforts to make a fortune. Methods included building structures that made a rival player's buildings less profitable, building toll booths on rival roads, or building in a place that the other player was planning on using. In two-player games, the game would only end if and when one player either made 250,000,000 dollars or went bankrupt. In single-player games, the game ended after five years.

The structures were mostly mono-coloured, but a few(including the oil rig) had at least two, and the area looked more like a map than Sim City's overhead view. Roads were solid gray blocks, and the buildings were shown with their front sides facing up, and the cars themselves were black dots on the roads. Most buildings could only be placed on grass, beach or mountain sides, while others(like the ski lift) were meant for the snowy slopes and there were some water-only structures including fishing boats. Power stations could go on the slopes or land, boosting profitability of nearby ski lifts, factories and coal mines.

The music, while repetative, is very good and not too simple unlike most Coleco music. It includes "The Four Seasons" and "Fur Elise" by Beethoven, and a fanfare for the winner.

I won't go too much into detail about the controls of the game; instead, I will direct you to a couple sites that will be most useful. I'd also recommend getting a Coleco emulator program and either downloading the ROM or subscribing to Console Classix. Emulator and ROM programs can be found in a search; won't be linking to them here as their legality is questionable at best.

Here are the links:

Fortune Builder Walkthru
Fortune Builder Manual
Console Classix


A note on controls for emulators: On most keyboards, especially ones like mine that have no separate 10-key sections, use the '=' key to place objects - the Console Classix emulator for the Coleco system recognizes the '=' as the '#' button. By default, the 'z' and 'x' keys function as the left and right buttons. I'm not sure if multiplayer games are possible in the Meka emulator that Console Classix uses; it might be possible to link online or via some other network and I will update on this when I find out how.

Sim City Classic PC - Still a Favourite

In the late 1980's, Will Wright was designing random maps for a video game and was inspired to use that style of mapping to make a game where the player could build a city from scratch. This idea became the world famous Sim City, soon to be followed by many newer versions.

The classic Sim City had pre-made zones, roads, rails, power lines, two kinds of power plants, parks, and a few other necessary buildings. Each game would start with a desired amount of money to build the city, and for every zone or other structure placed or bulldozed, the player would pay a certain amount. Taxes would earn the player, known as the 'mayor' some revenue, and maintenance fees for transportation, police, and fire departments would be deducted each fiscal year.

If the taxes were low, the city would attract more sims, but the revenue would also be low. High taxes would earn more revenue initially, but would also chase away the citizens. It's a trade-off and the correct approach would be looking for a happy medium.

Crime and polution are also something to think about in Sim City. Police stations were needed in order to lower crime, and industrial zones needed to be spread out to prevent the concentration of pollution. Roads had to be planned out carefully to prevent traffic and make sure the sims were able to get to work and shop, and to prevent noise pollution. The seaport and airport, as well as the stadium, had to be placed carefully because of crime, pollution and noise.

Land value is another problem - low values would mean high crime, but too many high value lots and the sims would complain about housing costs. Again, there had to be a happy medium. I prefer to put my residential zones around water and trees, raising the land value.

Fire departments were needed if the disasters(earthquake, fire, flood, tornado, monster, plane crash and a few others) were enabled, to prevent the fires from spreading. They would especially be needed if the city had any nuclear power plants, because in Sim City, nuclear plants sometimes had meltdowns.

With power plants, there was also a trade-off - Coal plants gave off a lot of pollution, and less power, while nuclear plants gave off more power and less pollution, but would sometimes explode and contaminate the area with nuclear waste that took years to dissapate. The mayor would have to choose between economical, clean and dangerous or safe but toxic. With nuclear power plants, disabling disasters is recommended. Both types of plants are best placed on the edges of the map to minimize pollution and contaminants.

Stadiums, Airports and Seaports are all required when the residential, commercial and industrial populations reach a certain level. Unless the structures are built and powered like the rest of the city, those three zones will not develop any further.

There are even scenarios, little games with different win conditions and time limits - if the mayor is able to meet all conditions before the time is up, then he/she wins the game. If not, the sims get mad and boot the mayor out.

There are several versions of Sim City for the PC, and now you can find them in the Maxis or Electronic Arts collections. Search for them on google or shop for this and other great classic titles at places like Target, Walmart, Bestbuy and Fry's. There are also versions of Sim City and its successors for consoles such as the Super Nintendo. And if you are into older consoles like the Coleco, I would recommend looking up Fortune Builder, an early city-building game that came before Sim City but has many of its features and plays like one of the Sim City scenarios, Dullsville. The map is always the same but the game is still very fun.

If you haven't tried those games, check them out!