History of sim games on Ars Technica

mossy_11

Alright, so a few of you knew I was doing this (and I expect a few more guessed it, after an earlier forum discussion).

I wrote a very long, in-depth history of sim games for Ars Technica. Part one has just been published. Check it out:
From SimCity to Real Girlfriend: 20 years of sim games

(Yes, I'm aware that the screenshot of SimAnt is captioned incorrectly. There are 73 screenshots across the two parts, so there was bound to be an error somewhere. And I don't have the privileges to fix it.)

menace690

Great so far. One missed game... or not yet addressed.

Theme Park

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theme_Park_(video_game)

mossy_11

That's in part two. One game that I really did miss (and feel terrible about doing so) is The Movies -- it was on my list of games to talk about, but I just plain forgot to mention it. People in the comments have pointed out a couple more that perhaps deserved a mention.

I'm a little nervous about part two; I'm not so knowledgeable about vehicle sims, so I relied heavily on research -- hopefully I didn't miss too much important stuff.

zweitplatzierungsboy

great article, i'm looking forward to part 2.

mossy_11

Part two went up earlier today.

From Elite to Rollercoaster Tycoon: 20 years of sim games, part 2

MetalDragon

In the first part on page two, you show a Screenshot of SimAnt on Mac OS, but the subtitle says it's SimAnt on C64.

Besides that nice article, will read Part 2 now. :)

mossy_11

MetalDragon, did you not see the bit I put in small text on my first post? I explained it there.

My favourite comment so far is this: "I'm disappointed that the landmark game Advanced Lawnmower Simulator was omitted. Its contribution to simulator game technology cannot be underestimated."

MetalDragon

Sorry I missed that, it looked like a signature text, so I didn't read it. Sorry.

mossy_11

Thankfully, I was able to get it fixed -- the SimAnt screenshot is now correctly captioned.

General feedback so far has been that the first part is fantastic, but the second part is something along the lines of a well-written, fleshed-out (still interesting) Wikipedia entry. It seems I didn't spend enough time pulling out things that made individual vehicle/flight/space sims special. Do you guys agree?

zweitplatzierungsboy

now that i've read part 2 i guess it's time to buy a joystick and get back into the cockpit again! great article, thanks for bringing back so many games to my memory, i've totally forgotten how much i used to play combat sims.

the only thing i'd like to add is that in my opinion the x-wing series actually got less sim-like with every sequel. while tie fighter was excellent, x-wing alliance was more of an action game that featured poor joystick support and was better played with a fps style mouse+wasd method. the game also felt more like a corridor shooter (descent or forsaken for example) than a space flight sim.

as for the criticism that part 2 was more like a well written wikipedia entry, you can only do so much.
of course there are many things left out, but considering that the genre was huge with a very large number of games released, you can't go too much into details or you would end up writing 7 pages on every single type of sim.
just think about all the fps and action adventures/tomb raider clones that were released in the last decade in comparison.