SimCity Upgrades with a Downgrade
SimCity 4 for Mac OS X
Loading...It’s no secret that I have no love for the most recent SimCity. The delays, online requirements, and misinformation being propagated by EA were one thing, but in any case it transpired that the game was just not very good. People everywhere returned to what was perhaps the high point of the series, SimCity 4, unless they were on a Mac.
Mac users, if you’ll pardon the expression, were shit out of luck, with the Aspyr-ported Mac edition of the game only having been available for PowerPC, and unavailable to buy (presumably due to licensing issues). Attempts to get the game to run on Intel-based Macs led only to frustration, even with the help of a beta patch released by Aspyr in 2007.
Until now.
(Re)released today through the Mac App Store, Aspyr have brought the “Deluxe Edition” of the decade-old game to modern Macs (i.e. OS 10.8+) for the first time, with a few bells and whistles thrown in for good measure:
SimCity™ 4: Deluxe Edition includes the best-selling SimCity™ 4 and SimCity™ 4: Rush Hour Expansion Pack and tasks players with building out a city or region of cities while trying to meet the needs and demands of the cities’ residents. Game features include:
- Full control over the environment and the ability to unleash natural disasters to create (and destroy) a world all your own.
- Ability to deploy emergency vehicles and join in the action as they battle blazes, mobs, and more.
- New transportation options, including monorail and ferry system.
- Interconnectivity with The Sims, allowing players to import their sims into their city.
- And more!
Furthermore, it will even let you access your iTunes library from within the game.
It’s also worth noting that even though this is an Electronic Arts-published game, it doesn’t appear to be available through Origin, leading me to the conclusion that Origin is now more or less dead as a Mac gaming platform. Aspyr also confirmed that it would be made available through Steam and other distribution channels “in coming weeks”.