Simcity Original for DOS

[VERAULT]

Im looking for a working version of the Original Simcity for DOS. I want to find a copy that works on ALL the video formats properly. I used to play this on my IBM 5160 with CGA monitor and want to relive that as well as try out other modes like hercules I neve got to see.

I have scoured the Internet Archive and all the verisons I find online have corrupted files or settings.exe and will only display chunky VGA or EGA but nothing else.

 

[VERAULT]

I found this version of a kryoflux image. ver 1.02. It works fine for hercules and cga but tops out at EGA. It has no higher video modes.

SimCity - KryoFlux : Maxis Software Inc. : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming : Internet Archive

The famous game SimCity for MS-DOS.Internal version: SIMCITY V1.02- KryoFlux image of the original disk- MFM sector image (.img)- JPG scan of the disk

archive.org

 

[Plasma]

You want version 1.07 or later.

 

[Timo W.]

It works fine for hercules and cga but tops out at EGA. It has no higher video modes.

There is no version that does it all. The better version with high-res VGA was called SimCity Classic, or SimCity 2.0.

 

[VERAULT]

I have tried simcity classic. It looses a few of the mid and lower resolution settings. So you are probably right about no version doing it all. The nice thing about the Classic 2.0 version is it has adlib music, but it has no more option for IBM/Internal speaker for sound effects. Honestly Id rather have the sound effects as thats how I remember it.

 

[Plasma]

1.07 will do 640x480 mono. But if you want 640x480 color then you need 2.0 which drops 640x200 CGA.

 

[VERAULT]

I take it mixing components and configs from other versions cant regain these formats if you manually edit the simcity.cfg file?

 

[Plasma]

Seems unlikely to work but I don't know if anyone has attempted that.

 

[VERAULT]

Just to answer some PM's. This thread is in regards to the First Simcity Game released 1989 and not Simcity 2000 or anything newer.

 

[bburley]

Just for fun I was poking around in the pirated version. I see that SIMCITY.CFG only contains 5 bytes "ENI1‘" and I changed it to "ENI2‘" to see what would happen. It failed to launch with a checksum error and changing it back restored operation, so it didn't do any permanent harm.

I also see the the START.bat file contains the line config -set "sdl sensitivity=200" which makes me wonder what other -set commands might be available. Anyone have any documentation for these options?

 

[VERAULT]

Sounds like you have the simcity classic (ver 2.0). ITs config is different from the earlier ones. So I am not to sure of its switches. But it does have more sound card support.

 

[bburley]

I just found v1.10 with a settings.exe file to change video modes. It says it supports Hercules.
H - Hercules Graphics
C - CGA Monochrome
T - Tandy Color
M - Hires EGA Monochrome
e - Lores EGA Color
E - Hires EGA Color
V - Monochrome VGA/MCGA
2 - 256 Color VGA/MCGA

I am not sure how easily I can test this in DosBox. Have you seen this one;

SimCity (1989) [1.02 and 1.10] : Maxis : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming : Internet Archive

This is the original 1989 version of SimCity. It includes versions 1.02 and 1.10. Mirrored from MyAbandonware

archive.org

 

[Timo W.]

I just found v1.10 with a settings.exe file to change video modes. It says it supports Hercules.

Interesting. But that version is certainly a hack, which can be seen from the readme and all the modified files. Maybe someone combined 1.0 and Classic somehow..?

Also, "256 Color VGA/MCGA" indicates low-res only. I'll give it a try still, as it would be cool to have a version that supports pretty much every graphics standard.

 

[Timo W.]

As I assumed. No 640x480 16-color VGA mode here. And the same crappy sound options. It's also a cracked version and graphics files are modified.

 

[bburley]

I found this copy on a p2p network. I have not tried testing it, but it is the only old version I saw that contained the install.exe file.