Maxis SimRefinery Found!

[Ziggy]

Here's the summary: Maxis developed something called SimRefinery to simulate an oil refinery. It was never released to the public, and was thought to have been long lost or to have never even existed. But recently, an ex Chevron employee found a floppy disk containing the software.

Here's LGR talking about it and demonstrating it on real hardware: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DZ6Cqn5rTfs

Here's the game on Archive.org: https://archive.org/details/simrefinery

And here's a really in depth article about it: https://obscuritory.com/sim/when-simcity-got-serious/





I don't think this is nearly as worthwhile to play as the NES SimCity prototype that was found, being that SimRefinery was never meant to be a game and it also seems largely unfinished, but I still think it's awesome to get more of the Maxis history. SimCity was SO HUGE when it came out, it's easy to forget today how big it was back then, but stuff like this reminds us. And it's always awesome to see something that was thought to be long lost to be found just like that.

[Nemoide]

Apparently the uploader got cold feet from seeing it blow up and are worried about potential ramifications, so it was taken down from the Internet Archive. It may get reposted or it may end up on some random mirror, so it isn't LOST-lost, but it's still kind of a bummer.

I didn't get around to downloading it (and am not especially eager to play) but hope this serves as a reminder that it's important to save things from the Internet Archive that you want to make sure get preserved.

[opa]

It's really cool to see some old Maxis stuff turn up.

SimRefinery has been reuploaded on one abandonware site so if you want to play its back up.