C:\ArsGames We love games here at the Ars Orbiting HQ, from modern to ancient and all points in between. With that in mind, we've partnered with the folks at GOG.com to create a store page featuring a curated list of some of our favorites from GOG's catalog. At the end of every month, we'll rotate a couple of titles off the list and add a few new ones; altogether, we have a list of about 50 games to set in front of you. Twice a month, we'll publish a personal retrospective like this one, where we'll feature one of the games from the list—perhaps a retro game you've heard of, perhaps a modern title you missed. Regardless, GOG will have a DRM-free version of the game ready to go. Be sure to check out the earlier pieces in the series! When I was a child, SimCity 2000 felt like a fun, animated set of urban-themed Lego blocks to tinker with. Revisiting the game roughly three decades later, though, I've found the weight of my adult responsibilities tempering my role as god-mayor of a tiny metropolis. The tough economics of establishing a thriving city barely concerned me as a child. Rather than building up a durable tax base from a slowly growing city of happy citizens, I'd usually type in an infinite money cheat or load up the handy Urban Renewal Kit expansion to build whatever I wanted, wherever I wanted, as quickly as possible. Credit: Maxis A blank canvas, ready for me to destroy. A blank canvas, ready for me to destroy. Credit: Maxis Thus unleashed, my childhood self would go mad with unchecked power, petulantly turning dials just to see what happened to the citizens in my virtual ant farm. Sometimes I'd try to arrange a repeating grid of fancy arcologies and police stations, trying to create a regimented utopia out of the game's most expensive (and therefore "best") building type. More often, I'd play with the far edges of the simulation, crowding residential areas next to polluting heavy industry or letting entire neighborhoods go without fire protection and waiting to see how long it took for things to fall apart. Coming back to SimCity 2000 today, I find it much harder to callously play with the lives of my virtual citizens. The years I've spent as a homeowner, parent, and city-dwelling adult make me at least pause before I willingly inflict that kind of pain on my tiny subjects. As a child, I'd think nothing of temporarily cranking up property taxes just to pay for a pet project; now, it makes me think of my own slowly rising property tax bill. As a child, I saw the "legalized gambling" ordinance as an easy hack to fill in a budget gap in a struggling city; now, I think about all the attendant problems that would come if my town suddenly became a gambling mecca.