Review written by Mike Wagstaff

The Pocket PC is becoming a mainstream gaming device. A year ago, such a statement would have been laughably untrue. Now, however, not only is the Pocket PC itself gaining popularity and recognition at an ever more impressive rate, its capabilities as a gaming device are being noticed by the industry's biggest names. Sim City 2000, although brought to the Pocket PC by ZIOSoft, is under license from arguably the games industry's best-known brand, Electronic Arts. It seems safe to assume that EA want to test the Pocket PC waters, and what better way to start than with one of their top-selling all-time classics?

If you've never played a Sim City game before, the chances are you're in the minority. The original "Classic" version was the game that made Maxis, the company who developed it (and who has since been gobbled up by EA), world-famous. Unlike most computer games, the theme is one of creativity and construction, rather than violence and destruction. Sim City 2000 is one of those all-too rare titles that manages to please both parents and children - indeed, there have even been reports of it being allowed (and even encouraged) on school computers!

So, how well does the game shape up following its transition to the small screen? The answer, in a nutshell, is very well. ZIOSoft should be commended for producing a port that is, by and large, utterly faithful to the desktop original. As far as I could tell, virtually no gameplay elements from the PC version (which, admittedly, I last played a long time ago!) have been omitted. If you were worried that the Pocket PC version would have to be cut down in some way, worry no longer. This is the full Monty, right down to the subterranean water pipes, the subways and the continuous complaints and demands of your city's inhabitants, the Sims.

Gameplay-wise, therefore, Sim City 2000 is exactly equivalent to its desktop counterpart. For those who have never played the game (is there anyone left out there who hasn't?), the idea is simply this: to construct a city. The game is about as freeform as you can get - the only limits to how your city turns out are the restrictions on what you can actually build, and the map. For the most part, building is done in zones - residential, industrial or commercial (with the choice of either heavy or light).

Once you have zoned a section of land, assuming that it is receiving power and water, it will begin to become occupied. You'll notice apartment blocks and houses springing up in residential zones, factories and warehouses in industrial zones, and shopping malls and restaurants in commercial zones.

There is also a large variety of special buildings, structures and complexes that you can build, should finances allow. These range from fundamental services such as police and fire departments through to airports, parks and zoos. As time progresses, more become available, ranging from the useful to the wacky.

One of the nicest touches in the game is the animation, which makes your city feel alive. You'll see cars moving up and down, smoke pouring from factory chimneys, trains rumbling from one station to the next, aeroplanes taking off from an airport, etcetera. This is backed up by a suite of suitable sound effects which, along with the cheesy music, can thankfully be turned off from within the game.

Should you be a fan of micro-management, you'll be delighted to hear that ZIOSoft have managed to cram in seemingly all the statistics and graphing options found in the original. Want to find out your city's GNP over the past 100 years? Want to compare this with your city's growth, crime rates and unemployment figures? Not a problem! Likewise, your city's budget is entirely under your control, allowing you to fine-tune your spending and taxation plans in detail. You even get a team of advisors, although saying that they're not exactly up to much is being far too polite!

Whilst the gameplay may have survived the conversion to the Pocket PC intact, there have been some necessary changes to the interface. Gone is the floating toolbar of the PC original and in its place is a fixed toolbar along the top of the screen. As there are many more buttons than can be fitted onto a single toolbar, left and right arrows allow you to switch from one toolbar to the next - there are six in total, offering thirty-three different icons in all.

What's more, many icons actually offer more than one function - you have to tap and hold the icon for the list to appear. For example, the Residential Zone icon offers you the choice of either Light or Dense zoning, and the Education icon offers you the choice of building a school, college, library or museum. Initially, therefore, it is relatively tricky to find the particular function that you want. Over time, however, you find yourself quickly becoming used to it, although I still find myself building the occasional $4,000 power plant where all I wanted was a simple $2 power line!

The building process can be quite tricky as there is no visual guide when it comes to placing structures such as police stations, zoos and town halls. To place a structure, you tap the square where the middle of the building should be - although there is no way of telling the dimensions of a structure in advance which means that it's all too easy to position it wrongly. Unfortunately, there is no undo function - if you make a mistake, you have to leave it or bulldoze it, wasting your hard-earned cash in the process. While I don't remember there being an undo function in the original, it would have made a very nice addition for the Pocket PC version, especially given the interface limitations.

Fortunately, most other tasks such as placing zoned areas (e.g. residential, industrial, commercial, airports and seaports) and laying road and railway tracks are easy to accomplish, with the zone being defined by a tap-and-drag movement of the stylus. Once you're happy with the zone that you've defined (which is highlighted and the price clearly marked) or the road/rail route that you've drawn, you simply lift the stylus to effect its completion. Very simple, very intuitive.

The game screen packs in a lot of additional information, most useful, some less so. At the top of the screen, you're given information on the demand (or not, as the case may be) for the three main zones: residential, industrial and commercial. Just below is shown the date and your current budget. At the bottom of the screen is a small status bar divided into three sections. The first of these indicates your currently-selected tool and, if appropriate, the price. The second gives you the latest news reports (e.g. reports on water shortages, hurricane warnings, etc.) and the third gives you a one-word summary of the current weather.

In general, I like the way that the screen is laid out, although I do wish that ZIOSoft could have applied a semi-transparent background to more of the interface than just the single-line date/budget display. What is nice, however, is that the four zoom modes found in the original are retained, although I personally find the closest too pixelated for my liking. In addition to zooming in and out, you can also rotate your viewpoint - no need to guess what's hidden behind that mountain!

The menu, at the bottom of the screen, offers you all that you might reasonably have expected to find. Along with options to load and save cities and scenarios, you can adjust the speed (from Turtle to African Swallow), turn music and sound effects on or off and, most fun of all, effect a disaster! Alternatively, should you prefer a quiet life, you can opt to play with disasters turned off. Finally, you can opt to sign up for various newspapers.

Taking up a newspaper subscription is a good way of keeping in touch with the thoughts, views, praise and (more often than not) complaints of your city's inhabitants. From time to time, you'll even come across a feature article, although the pseudo-random style employed tends to reveal the hand of an artificial intelligence routine that places its emphasis firmly on the artificial! Nevertheless, the newspaper reports add to the atmosphere of the game, and generally offer good tips on how to improve your city.

As far as performance goes, I noticed no real issues on my iPAQ H3650. Scrolling, which can be achieved either by use of the scroll bars or the joypad, was reasonably smooth. The only slowdowns I noticed were when I had a huge city loaded and a monster was rampaging through town! Saved games vary in size from around 70 KB to 120 KB, depending on the size of the city; the game itself takes up around 3.5 MB. Incidentally, it appears that you can load previously saved games from the PC version without a problem - I downloaded a few saved games from the Internet and the game loaded them up without any trouble.

There is even a terrain editor included in the game, allowing you to terraform the world according to the way you want it. Because of the small screen size afforded by the Pocket PC, it is more than a little fiddly, but nonetheless a welcome addition. The editor can, however, perform noticeably worse than the game on occasions - I noticed a long delay when creating large mountains or valleys, for example.

Overall, this is an excellent conversion of a wonderful title. If you've played the game before and liked it, there's absolutely no reason why you shouldn't like the Pocket PC version as ZIOSoft has done a wonderful job at faithfully reproducing the original given the limitations of the Pocket PC. Granted, the graphics no longer have the wow factor that they did when the game first came out, and the music and sound effects aren't going to win any awards, but it's gameplay that's all-important and, in that particular department, Sim City 2000 comes up trumps.

Flaws? None of any note, apart from the obvious fact that the limited dimensions of the Pocket PC screen make the interface a little difficult to navigate at times. So many buttons, so little screen space! The only major quibble I have is with the price. At $29.95, this is one of the most expensive games on the market which, bearing in mind that this isn't a totally original title, is a little disappointing. This doesn't, of course, detract from the quality of the game itself, which is superb.

Pros:

• A very faithful conversion of the original.

• Excellent gameplay.

• Detailed graphics, animations and sound effects.

• Statistics and options galore.

• Terrain editor included.

Cons:

• Interface slightly fiddly on occasions.

• Expensive.

Overall Score: 9/10

Many thanks to ZioSoft for providing us with our review copy.

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