GoKawiilHow Did I Do >> Sat 20 December 2025 by Thran
SimCity 3000 is the best SimCity. It's built upon a souped-up version of the Sc2K engine. It features isometric art, crafted pixel by pixel. It strikes the right balance of features and complexity; it feels like it could be mastered but without coddling you. It also has a high resolution Jazzy/new age OST.
Running it on modern systems takes a few tweaks but is certainly doable. By "modern" I mean Windows 10 LTSC 2021, Ryzen 5 3600, Radeon Rx 7600, 48 GB of RAM, 4K monitor.
I first installed SC3k from its CD ROM. I've had this Scholastic Edition CD all my life, I actually purchased it at a school book fair in a primary school building that no longer exists. But the disk still does, and I will not pay for the same game twice. The installation completed without trouble on 64-bit Windows 10. The game launched but it wasn't very playable:
There was no widescreen support
The resolutions supported were relics like 800x600 and 1024x768
The game was laggy when scrolling
The game accelerated when scrolling
There is a big slowdown after loading a city
The music doesn't play without using the CD, and some of it was missing!
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