GI Tips Hat To "Early Innovators"

[optmusprimenumber]

The latest issue (#217) of Game Informer featured an article on "Early Innovators" in their Classic section:



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[aaron]

they do this shit like once every 8 months, it seems like. it's always the same goddamn games. i hate that magazine.

[optmusprimenumber]

i'm starting to hate the magazine too... but i think i might just hate all the games that are coming out lately.

[Opa Opa]

-First Life Sim "Little Computer People". That's debatable.

Utopia on the Intellivision came out in '81. That was a simulation game where you developed your own island and tried to grow the population as best you can.

And what about Video Life on the 2600?

[BRIK]

Gaming magazines are a dying medium, I don't think I've bought one is about two years.
I rather get all my information from the net now, its up to date and you have heaps of different websites to choose from to get all the differing opinions.

[optmusprimenumber]

Free mags are cool too

[CRTGAMER]

Looks like an interesting read, I'll have to grab the son's magazine.

[optmusprimenumber]

Looks like an interesting read, I'll have to grab the son's magazine.

You must have a Gamestop card tho... don't ya? 1 year of GI free w/ it.

[Droid party]

-First Life Sim "Little Computer People". That's debatable.

Utopia on the Intellivision came out in '81. That was a simulation game where you developed your own island and tried to grow the population as best you can.

And what about Video Life on the 2600?

Would Utopia be a life sim or a God game? From your description it sounds more like Populous.

[Opa Opa]

Would Utopia be a life sim or a God game? From your description it sounds more like Populous.

It's really a mixed bag... I'll give you a quick run-down of how things operate.

You start off with a set number of gold (which you use to buy stuff) and people (I think 50). By building Hospitals, Schools, Farms, Fishing Ships, and Houses you increase the rate that the population grows. By building Factories you increase the rate at which you accumulate gold but this, in turn, decreases the health of the populous; therefore lowering the rate at which they multiply.

Fishing ships can feed 500 people and accumulate gold by manually navigating a ship on top of a school of fish. The other type of ship you can build is a ship that guards the fishing ships from pirates. But these pirates don't do the whole insult sword fighting thing so they just find pleasure in sending your fishing ships to the depths of the abyss... Thus the need for the guard ships.

Farms feed 500 people and get some sort of bonus if a rain cloud comes by and waters the field (I think it might even give you a little gold if that happens?? I don't remember right now). However, farms only last about 2-3 turns and are only effective if built early on in the turn.

Weather is another hazard to contend with. You have three types of weather acts: a rain cloud, a tropical storm, and a hurricane. A rain cloud only affects the farms and increases their abilities, a tropical storm can sink your ships and destroy your farms, and I think a hurricane can destroy ships, farms, & buildings. (I haven't had a hurricane hit me yet so I'm just making an assumption here.) The weather is randomly generated and I believe always comes from the northwest corner of the screen.

If you're playing with a second player you can also spend some gold and send a rebel group to their island to cause general terror. It's a pretty useless thing to do but it does occupy one of the opposing players squares. It's really just something to use to mess up the other guy's game.

Now that I've typed all this it is starting to sound less like a life-sim and more like a sim-city-esque game. I really don't know what to call it. The main goal is to get the highest score that you can so it has more of an arcade feel to it than that of a sim game...