SimCity Creator Videos

IGN put a preview of SimCity Creator, the Nintendo exclusive, up yesterday, along with a very nice selection of videos.

Offhand, it appears to function very similar to the SimCity 4000 I know and love, although I'd love to see a real feature comparison. When I first heard about the project I feared we'd be getting of port of the original SimCity or something incredibly toned down. But from the preview, it appears to even have some features from the 4000 expansion Rush Hour, namely, the ability to go on vehicle missions (only airplanes are mentioned). If executed correctly (it wasn't in 4000), that can be a really fulfilling feature. As much fun as building, zoning, destroying, taxing and growing your city can be, sometimes you just want to do some objective based exploration of the city you put so much work into.

The game makes generous use of the IR pointer, even though some past games have mysteriously refused to recognize the genius of the scheme for mouse-replacement. Even if this weren't a DS/Wii exclusive, the interface alone could set it apart from any console competition. The preview also mentions the ability to "free-draw" roads, as opposed to the straight and diagonal lines you could use in past versions. It isn't as if you couldn't get a road design you wanted in the PC versions, so I'm not sure how great a feature this will be, but we'll see soon enough.

SimCity Creator is due out Sept 22nd of this year. Hit the break for video footage.