The Revival of SimCity Streets: A Patched Masterpiece

Maxis's 3D game engine and swapping out the worst bits with modern code has led to the creation of two programs that patch the games to install and play on modern Windows, as well as getting rid of ancient DRM and bugs. The result is SimCopterX and SimStreetsX, which improve resolution and stability while still maintaining the essence of the original games. While the streets of SimCity are still a mess, they've at least been swept and tidied up a bit, making them the best way to play on both new and classic systems alike.

The Streets of SimCity game is an experience unlike any other, presenting a 1970s TV show aesthetic complete with a colorful cast of characters, slow speed car chases, and a funky soundtrack, but through a decidedly late 90s lens. Unlike Interstate ‘76 or Driver, which fully embrace the 70s time period, Streets of SimCity uses it more as a jumping-off point for its own bizarre reality. The funkiness continues in the menu, with one heckuva groove!

From here, players are free to begin a career, load a saved one, play multiplayer, jump into customizing cars, or pick player's choice, the game's practice mooooode where they can select a SimCity 2000 savegame and drive alone or against the CPU. Whatever they choose, the next step is entering the garage, where they select a car and deck it out with all the kit they can afford. For now, though, that's enough to talk about; just cruisin' around was the good stuff right here. Just a nice, relaxing, totally normal drive with perfectly realistic physics.

However, what players see is what they get – on both new and old hardware alike. The game remains a janky glitchfest, even with patches applied. For reference, I'm playing on an overachieving Windows 98 rig with a 2GHz Pentium 4 and a 64 meg GPU, using software rendering since I've come to prefer it over the 3D accelerated option, which utilizes the 3dfx Glide API. Take a look at this side-by-side comparison, it's kinda wild how much running Streets on a Voodoo card changes the whole feel of the game.

Running the game on an older system like the Voodoo card results in noticeable differences. Sure, you get that signature texture filtering and smoother frame rate, but you also get less saturation and odd lighting with dark black shadows across entire surfaces of buildings. It also makes geometry on vehicles more pronounced, with visible polygons showing through textures. And while there's a nice fog effect on the horizon, the draw distance is actually a bit lower, too. But the worst trade-off is that all of the particle effects and sprites with transparency have this black inky stroke effect surrounding them now, making explosions, sparks, smoke, and so on look far worse than software rendering, in my opinion.

That said, no matter what it's played on? Streets never really looks that great. Or runs great, or plays great, or sounds great...Well that last one's not entirely true! The sound effects mostly come from stock sound libraries, so there's not much to praise though it sure fits the whole retro TV show theme. But the in-game radio, now that's another story! Not only do you get to dial in different stations for different genres, but each one has its own radio DJ, along with tongue-in-cheek commercials.

The in-game radio is a standout feature of Streets of SimCity, offering a unique and immersive experience for players. With the ability to choose from various radio stations and listen to their favorite tunes, it's easy to get caught up in the game's funky atmosphere. The sound effects may not be on par with modern games, but the in-game radio more than makes up for it, providing an experience that's both nostalgic and entertaining.

The game's use of retro TV show aesthetics and sound design is a bold move, and one that pays off in spades. While it may not be perfect – and it certainly has its share of glitches and bugs – Streets of SimCity remains a unique and enjoyable gaming experience. Whether you're playing on a modern PC or an older system like the Voodoo card, the game's charms are undeniable. So if you're looking for a fun and quirky gaming experience, look no further than Streets of SimCity.

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enRight, I know I reviewed this once upon a time, but here’s a not-so-fun “fun fact” for ya.When I first covered Streets of SimCity from 1997 on here, it was 2010, meaning more time haspassed between now and that review, than there was between that review and the launch of the game.So I say it’s high time for a fresh LGR retrospective on Streets of SimCity! Developed and published  by Maxis Software in August of 1997. “It’s your city to cruise through or bruise through.” It’s  mayhem in your metropolis, check out your SimCity 2000 cities from the perspective of 5 vehicles,  equipped with all manner of deadly weaponry. Streets of SimCity took destroying your simulated  cities to a whole new level: street level! And golly was I sold on this hard back then.  My lifelong SimCity obsession is well documented by now, with a particular high point of interest  being SimCity 2000. As a kid I frequently imagined how my cities might look from street level,  and due to Maxis’s online teasing of a full 3D version of SimCity 3000, I was beyond hyped  for that imagined realism to become reality. Of course, that version of SC3K was delayed  and ultimately canceled, but Streets of SimCity arrived in the meantime to tide me over. Alongside  everyone else! With journalists calling it out as a stopgap until the eventual release of 3000.  Though if you know your Maxis games, you’ll know we also already got SimCopter in 1996, which is  where the whole “explore your SimCity saves with a vehicle in 3D” concept started. Streets of SimCity  was built using an enhanced SimCopter engine, largely consisting of similar assets and physics,  for better and worse. But I was always more into virtual driving than flying, so seeing this slick  3D-rendered box art with missile launchers and exploding cars spoke to my very soul. Likewise  with the magazine ads, with excellent hand-drawn art that suits the game perfectly, and that edgy  90s marketing that was wildly out of character for Maxis. That aspect alone was intriguing,  they were the lighthearted “software toys” folks that made goofy little ant colony simulators.  Now all of a sudden, it was all carnage and machine guns and middle fingers! While still  receiving a K-A “for all ages” rating somehow. Heh, and check out that pre-release box art,  much like the ads I always thought the 70s movie poster vibe fit the game better. Maxis must’ve  changed it at the last minute, cuz retailers were still using the old box in the earliest  advertising of the game arriving in stores. And y’know, Maxis haphazardly changing their mind  was par for the course in ‘97, the company was in a really weird spot then. They had so many  ill-advised projects in the works, from RPGs to sports titles to puzzle and adventure games,  all while consistently reporting quarterly losses. Most of these projects were scrapped,  but Streets managed to avoid the axe, ending up as the final Maxis-developed game to release  before Electronic Arts took control. Although, some hold the opinion they should’ve canceled  Streets, too. Reviewers were NOT kind in their assessments, calling out... well, practically everything as being subpar at best and completely broken at worst. SimCopter had  its fair share of stability issues and wonky physics, but Streets? It took things to another  level of brokenness, catching even longtime Maxis fanatics off-guard, myself included. So  the resulting review scores were abysmal, with Computer Games magazine being a typical take,  calling it a somewhat guilty pleasure but ultimately one to avoid, giving it just 1½  stars out of 5. Hey, still a half star better than Test Drive 4 got on the same page! Yeesh...Anyway, here we are over a quarter century later,  with a lotta hindsight in the rearview mirror along with landmines, oil slicks,  and smokescreens. So let’s dive into this again 27 years post-launch, starting inside the box which  reveals a 13-page technical reference booklet going over Windows 95 troubleshooting. Next,  a keyboard command chart well worth keeping around due to some of the game’s more obscure controls.  And a black and white instruction manual, surprisingly containing 100 pages delving  into greater detail than is really necessary for a title like this. There was no need for a  strategy guide with a manual of this depth, going into every single item and mechanic in the game,  what they do, how to best use them and more. But that’s just the first half, the rest of it is  basically a reprint of the manual for the SimCity 2000 Urban Renewal Kit. A program that functions  as the game’s map editor, seeing as Streets relies on SC2K city files for all its tracks.And finally, we have a jewel case containing the game itself on CD-ROM. Something I’d normally use  to install and play, but not today! Because in 2019, software engineer Aleksander Krimsky  graciously did the dirty work of gutting Maxis’s 3D game engine and swapping out  the worst bits with modern code. Leading to both SimCopterX and SimStreetsX, programs that patch  the games to install and play on modern Windows, as well as getting rid of ancient DRM and bugs,  while improving resolution and stability. So while the streets of SimCity are still a mess,  they’ve at least been swept and tidied up a bit, and it’s now the best way to play  on both new and classic systems alike. For the latter, you just might have to  install it on current Windows first, then copy over all the files over to Windows 95 or 98.We first hit the streets with that ominous Maxis logo and a woodgrain  console television overlay, then an intro immediately conveying the game’s aesthetic.Which is that of a 1970s TV show complete with a colorful cast of characters, slow speed car  chases, and a funky soundtrack, but through a decidedly late 90s lens. Unlike Interstate  ‘76 or Driver for example, which fully embrace the 70s time period,  Streets of SimCity uses it more as a jumping off point for its own bizarre reality. Still,  the funkiness continues in the menu with one heckuva groove!From here you’re free to begin a career, load a saved one, play multiplayer,  jump into customizing cars, or pick player’s choice, the game’s ♪practice mooooode♫ where  you can select a SimCity 2000 savegame and drive alone or against the CPU. Whatever you choose, the  next step is entering the garage, where you select a car and deck it out with all the kit you can  afford. Something we’ll come back to, but for now? Ahh yeah, just cruisin’ around, this was the good  stuff right here. Just a nice, relaxing, totally normal drive with perfectly realistic physics.Heck yeah, Streets of SimCity in all its glorious awfulness. This was a janky glitchfest when it was new and it remains so today, even with patches applied. What you see is what you get,  on both new and old hardware alike. For reference, I’m playing on an overachieving Windows 98 rig  with a 2GHz Pentium 4 and a 64 meg GPU. And using software rendering, since I’ve come to  prefer it over the 3D accelerated option, which utilizes the 3dfx Glide API. Take a look at this  side-by-side comparison, it’s kinda wild how much running Streets on a Voodoo card changes the whole  feel of the game. Sure you get that signature texture filtering and smoother frame rate,  but you also get less saturation and odd lighting, with dark black shadows across entire surfaces of  buildings. It also makes geometry on vehicles more pronounced, with visible polygons showing through  textures. And while there’s a nice fog effect on the horizon, the draw distance is actually a bit  lower, too. But the worst trade-off is that all of the particle effects and sprites with transparency  have this black inky stroke effect surrounding them now, making explosions, sparks, smoke and  so on look far worse than software rendering, in my opinion. That said, no matter what it’s played  on? Streets never really looks that great. Or runs great, or plays great, or sounds great...Well that last one’s not entirely true! The sound effects mostly come from stock sound libraries,  so there’s not much to praise though it sure fits the whole retro TV show theme. But the  in-game radio, now that’s another story! Not only do you get to dial in different stations  for different genres, but each one has its own radio DJ, along with tongue-in-cheek commercials.-\"SimJazz!\"\"Tunes, but we ain't tellin. Ads, but we don't know em.\"\"Emergency messages when it all hits the fan.\"\"Darn! I want to read the weather report,but I can't find a Picayune anywhere!\"\"I used to have that problem, but not anymore!I get the Picayune delivered to my home now.\"-\"The Picayune has home delivery?That sure would save a lot of time!\"-\"And it doesn't cost much morethan finding them in the trash!\"-\"Techno Sim!\"\"Es. O. Ter. Ic.\"I know it wasn’t the first game to do this, even SimCopter had a radio, but Streets was  my first experience. Distinct radio stations, charismatic disc jockeys, absurd ads for in-game  companies? Yeah, Streets predated Grand Theft Auto by a couple of months, and I didn’t play  that till years later, so this was awesome. And then the music itself? Ah man, it is top notch.  A compilation of jazz, funk, rock, bluegrass, and techno that goes far harder than it needed.Such an eccentric soundtrack to this day, with tracks from go-to Maxis collaborators like Marc  Russo, Jerry Martin, Anna Karney, Jonathan Hoffberg, and Dix Bruce. Which I know since  you get full music credits in the manual, always nice to see in a game of any kind,  alongside all the song lyrics for the tracks that have them. I’d play more examples if I could, but  it all gets copyright flagged on YouTube. And I get why, since it’s been re-released officially by  EA as “Original Music From Streets of SimCity” on music streaming services. That album is annoyingly  incomplete though, specifically missing two of the most classic tracks: “Czar” and “Splatter.”That last one is by the late Dix Bruce, by the way, who was a prolific musician  and teacher known for tons of compositions, and over 50 books on learning banjo, guitar,  and mandolin. May he rest in peace, his tracks for Streets of SimCity and The Sims continue to  bring a smile to my face and get stuck in my head. Along with the rest of the soundtrack,  really! And a lotta that stems from the sheer loneliness and desolation in Streets,  especially in Player’s Choice mode. SimCopter had all kinds of sims and traffic scattered about the  city, but not so here. The radio is your one constant companion, about the only sign of  humanity somewhere out there in this weird empty world. Other than the occasional cow I guess.Oh and of course, the game’s lone pedestrian: a bald guy in blue clothing holding a box who’s  found aimlessly wandering the world. You can’t hit him, you can’t shoot him, you can’t communicate  with him. The only thing he gets to do is wave at you if you happen to have a package delivery,  but other than that? He just skulks around forever, waiting for packages alongside his  endless identical package-hungry clones, like some kinda purgatory for bald guys with an  Amazon addiction. And there is no escape, not even leaving the city limits! Go beyond the map’s edge,  what the manual calls “The Wilderness,” and you’ll soon loop right back around to the other  side. Even the day/night cycle is disconcerting, in that there isn’t a cycle at all. Instead you  simply swap between day and night with a keyboard combo. Not great. But you know what was great?  Being a kid and not giving a crap! Player’s Choice mode in Streets of SimCity ate up countless hours  for young me, and is by far the way I spent the most time with this. I thought career mode sucked,  and being able to drive around my own cities was a literal dream come true. Although I did wish for  a better car selection, with only five available to the player and the main differentiators being  performance, hardpoints, and cargo capacity. But still, street level city-viewing was just  the most immersive thing to me, even more so than SimCopter’s aerial viewpoint. And I loved  discovering all of the 3D versions of recognizable buildings, with every 2D building graphic from  SimCity 2000 represented, with more detailed textures than SimCopter. Plus trains, boats,  and aircraft, ah it doesn’t looked like much in hindsight but dang this was neat. And naturally,  you can shoot and demolish practically everything, provided you’re packing heat.Gettin’ strapped happens in one of three ways. First, your car may come equipped  with weapons already, either if you load a vehicle you’ve already modified in the car factory,  or you’re playing a scenario with a pre-modified vehicle. The second way is by grabbing pickups,  which provide ammo, armor, repairs, fuel, and gadget batteries. But there are also packages,  some of which instantly give new weapons. Although most packages are random silly items meant for  delivery somewhere in-town. And the third way brings us back to the garage, which you can enter  anytime by coming to a stop within a gas station. The garage is a fascinating mechanic – heh, no pun  intended – essentially providing a pitstop safe room that pauses any ongoing action outside.  Reload, refuel, and repair, and perhaps make some choice upgrades if you have the  funds leftover to do so. All while this excellent music plays, properly setting the mechanical mood.So each vehicle has a set number of upgrade slots, and these can be populated with faster engines,  armor plating, different tires for different situations, plus all your firepower. Machine  guns and missile launchers are the forward-facing weapons, then in back you can add mine layers,  oil slicks, and smoke screens. Then there are gadget mods, like radars, shields, and goofy  stuff like the airfoil and the hopper. Those last two going into the realm of campy sci-fi,  launching your car into the sky and letting you hover and fly around like something outta Back to  the Future II. It’s fantastically dumb, and when engaged is the most intuitive controlling part  of the game. Being based on a helicopter sim, I guess that makes sense. But on the ground,  ehh. Streets of SimCity is deeply strange when it comes to... moving. On first taking the wheel,  things feel all outta whack. Under- and oversteer occur unpredictably,  and there’s little sense of physical connection to the road, it’s simultaneously grippy and slippery.  Until you look up all the keyboard commands and it begins to make sense, in a screwed up,  Streets of SimCity kinda way. Like check this out, pressing shift plus up engages a power boost,  pressing shift and down is for power braking. Performing an automatic 180 happens by pressing  shift plus down and either left or right. Then you have strafing, for some reason,  by pressing control plus a direction while moving. And then an extremely kart-like  powerslide drift maneuver is engaged by holding shift while turning. Combine this with resetting  to a random location by pressing F10, or holding control to align to the nearest road, and there  ya go! Most of the steering iffiness and collision glitching is addressed by utilizing those combos,  so get familiar with all of ‘em before diving into career mode! ...I tell myself in retrospect,  since I completely forgot about these while capturing most of the rest of the footage. Whoops.Anyway, career mode! These missions are separated into five “channels” on the TV interface,  with each channel offering up scenarios presented as episodes of a television program. According to  page 16 of the manual, you’re simply playing a stunt driver for the studio, and you aren’t  actually shooting people left and right, it’s all Hollywood magic. Buuut I prefer to ignore that,  cuz out of context the Streets campaign is absolutely unhinged! It has you going on  lengthy killing sprees dealing with religious fanatics, domestic terrorists, dirty cops,  shady government operatives, nuclear meltdowns. Not to mention placing bombs to blow up the city  at the behest of a power-mad mayor, and raiding drug dealers to collect heroin. Like, straight-up  500 kilos of smack, no beating around the bush! And you’ll also be enduring the actual apocalypse,  in the very first mission. Which has you driving around a yellow Beetle picking up and delivering  packages in a post-apocalyptic wasteland, while machine gun-wielding raiders try to kill you  and steal your stuff. Like I said, Streets of SimCity’s career is unhinged, and I love it. Well,  I love the idea at least. This is still the game that it is, and it is crash-y and unstable as  balls. Less so with the Krimsky patch, but I still had an annoying time and not only  because of the crashing. Much of the career is just... poorly conceived, seriously undercooked,  and even wildly unfair. Stingy time limits, vague objectives, overly armored AI that turns  on a dime and shoots with inhuman precision. And a tiny barely-useful minimap with no pointer or  anything showing where to go most of the time, which is frustrating on huge maps. And the truly  awful camera angles don’t help at all. The in-car cameras are good for precise aiming but don’t show  enough of what’s going on around you, making it harder to keep enemies in your sights while they  flail around shooting you in the butt. And all the external cameras constantly zoom in and zoom out,  way too frequently and too far. Plus they run into viewing angle and collision issues when  you’re near other drivers and buildings. Which is basically all the time, cuz that’s the game.Other than thaaaat, Streets of SimCity is kind of awesome! The career may not provide a whole  lotta meat, but it’s fine, I make my own meat. SCURK meat! As mentioned earlier, it came bundled  with a copy of the SimCity 2000 Urban Renewal Kit, which previously was sold as a standalone  program for editing SC2K artwork and maps. But that also makes it an ideal editor for Streets,  since every location in the game uses city save files to determine its layout. So every street,  every hill, every building, every body of water, it all stems from SimCity 2000 map data,  so creating your own maps is a cinch. As for creating actual tracks, that’s where the Streets  of SimCity Race Course Editor comes in. This lets you pick which roads in your city act as a track,  where the starting line and checkpoints are placed, and some specifics on things like the  number of laps, number of opponents, their skill level and so on. It doesn’t let you create any  of the more involved objective-based scenarios from the campaign though,  only straightforward racing circuits. Which is unfortunate, because the racing is easily  my least favorite activity in Streets. There’s some gameplay even guns can’t fix, and in fact,  arguably make kinda trivial. Just immediately shoot and explode everyone, then boringly speed  through the rest of the laps by yourself. Wheee. I assume that the 8-person multiplayer mode would’ve  been much more engaging, which is done locally through serial or LAN setups, or online through  direct modem connections. But I never knew anyone else who had this game to try that.And finally, I’ve gotta mention modding! As a kid I quickly learned  how easy it was to mod Streets due to it using everyday, uncompressed,  unencrypted files. 8-bit Bitmap files for textures, 22 kilohertz WAV files for sound,  Smacker video clips for animations and so on. Simply by poking through the folder structure,  like I did with every game, I discovered I could create my own custom paint jobs and modify the  sounds for almost everything in there. The manual does actually mention you can make custom radio  stations, but it doesn’t tell you about all the other stuff you can modify, so I felt special.  Though I just discovered there were fansites with custom vehicle skins. No surprise really,  this stuff was easy. Heck, even that one single pedestrian dude can be swapped out for  an animated Doomguy or whatever. All you need is a compatible late 90s copy of RAD Smacker Tools,  and you can encode little video clips that function in Streets, so long as they  adhere to the expected resolution and color palette. Good times, man. Shooting cows...And that’s about it for Streets of SimCity, 27 years later. And y’know what? As objectively  busted as it may be, fact is that Streets has never fully left my brain. It’s always somewhere  in the back of my mind for one reason or another. Typically it’s the soundtrack, but seriously, for  whatever reason I find myself craving to revisit its glitchy madness and drab lonely landscapes  again. Which then leads to me going down a late night research rabbit hole and finding releases I  forgot about, or never knew existed. For example, the CD-ROM Classics budget re-release from EA was  pretty common. As was the SimCity 2000 combo pack, bundling both games together in a folding gray box  often sold in Wal-Mart stores. And of course it was crammed in shovelware packs, like Ultimate Sim  and SimMania, to clear out warehouses of unsold stock. But did you know Streets got a Scholastic  Book Fair release? I wonder how many discovered the game that way. Or how about this big box  Japan-exclusive, with Japanese text all over the packaging. Soon as I saw this there was no way  I could resist importing it. Streets content even made its way into one of those X-Media  Publishing packs, titled SimClusive, filled with fan-made custom content slapped onto a disc for  a quick profit. Anyway, all that to say that I find Streets of SimCity unusually captivating,  despite an objectively better game existing: SimCopter. By comparison, Streets is cramped,  twitchier, more difficult, and the physics barely work for vehicular combat. Yet I came to oddly  appreciate it, this is a special breed of so bad it’s good. When something’s so inherently messy  and unstable, why waste time wishing it wasn’t? I say just accept and enjoy it for what it is.And if you enjoyed, check out my other Maxis game retrospectives, or many more things from  the last... 15 daggum years. Or stick around for new videos in the works, with early access  to future episodes through LGR YouTube memberships by clicking the Join button. Thanks for watching!\n"