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SimCity 4 Deluxe Edition by Aspyr

One of the great games for grown ups

Written by RO from LONDON

Jan 17, 2007

This game is fantastic. I have played it since SimCity 2000. I recently bought an MacBook Pro and had a great time playing the game till I tried to save and problems started; it would not save and I had to force quit it. So until an updated version is released I have to go back to my 12" PowerBook!

294 of 466 people found this useful

SimCity 4 Deluxe Edition by Aspyr

One problem solved.

Written by AM from New York

May 16, 2006

I have both 1 GHz and 1.67 GHz 17-inch PowerBooks and these games are a complete joy to play. I have been reading about how the game can slow down when your city gets larger. This is true for me as well. I hope they can fix this little flaw in the near future. Also, you CAN play this game without the CD being in the drive. Load the game as you normally would and when the region screen shows, eject the disc and you're off to the races. It works for both SimCity 4 and Rush Hour. Somehow, the computer stores the information on the HD, allowing one to play for as long as you keep the game going (Not quiting the game). You can even pause the game and put the computer to sleep and the game will start back up when you wake the computer. I have played the game like this for over a year and have not had a problem in this respect. So, go out and buy this game. It is well worth it.

296 of 474 people found this useful

SimCity 4 Deluxe Edition by Aspyr

Unplayable on Intel Macs

Written by WH from Loma Linda

Sep 27, 2008

There is a patch available, but it is officially unsupported. After applying the patch, the interface was still too slow to respond (3 seconds to react to a 'create residential zone' for example). It adds up, 3 seconds here, 3 seconds there. Extremely frustrating.

And you won't realize that until you've tried to play it--and then it's too late to return it.

Do not buy this game if you plan to use it on an Intel Mac (the only kinds of Macs sold for the last 2 years, I believe).

99 of 107 people found this useful

SimCity 4 Deluxe Edition by Aspyr

Bummed Out

Written by WR from Anoka

Dec 9, 2008

Attn: Intel Mac users,
Save the $60 and the headache, this game does not run well on an Intel mac.
It also doesn't seem like Apple or Aspyr are doing anything about this either. I've had the game for about a year now and am still waiting on a patch to make it run smoothly and more enjoyable. Meanwhile anyone running windows XP can get a copy for $20 and run it flawlessly.

66 of 77 people found this useful

SimCity 4 Deluxe Edition by Aspyr

Could have been great if it worked...

Written by KW from Kitchener

Nov 10, 2007

I had this game for my pc (pentium 4 2.3 GHz 512MB ram) and it worked great and was a blast to play. I love building cities and trying out different terrains and strategies. However I just got a new MacBook (the 2.0GHz version) and SimCity 4 does not work. It loads but is painfully slow. The mouse cursor won't even move smoothly across the screen.

I have been all over the internets looking for patches, solutions and help. All that I can find is that the Intel-Core Duo Macs don't run a bunch of Aspyr ported games. This is brutal, its not being advertised at all. I have the Aspyr Game Agent program which should say, don't buy this game because it won't work.

I called Aspyr, and EA tech support and they just say that it is a well known glitch and with the game being so old they are not likely to fix it. Yet if you go to any Apple Store or use the Aspyr Game agent you'll be lied to and told that it will work. I like Apple, I LOVE my new macbook but this has to change.

71 of 88 people found this useful

SimCity 4 Deluxe Edition by Aspyr

Couldn't get this Game Up and Running!

Written by JP from Palo Alto

Dec 6, 2007

To make a long story short I have a iBook G4 1.2 Ghz, once the game loaded it got slower and slower and slower until it froze up. Aspyr customer service was unable to shed any light on the problem. It is a Darn shame a great game won't run on computers it is supposed to.

Hope you have better luck than I did!

82 of 111 people found this useful

SimCity 4 Deluxe Edition by Aspyr

Does not run

Written by JS from hauppauge

Aug 24, 2007

I have a 6 month old Macbook 1.8Ghz with 1 Gig of ram. The game simply doesnt run and is impossible to play. Once you have more then one building up the game slows down to a snails pace. 1 year in the game at full speed mode takes about 10 minutes in real time. Zooming in or out is tedious and annoying as it takes so long for the graphics to render. It is simply unplayable. Aspyr does not even address this issue on their website. How Aspyr can put this game on the shelves for years without fixing it is unbelievable. How apple, can sell this game in their store at a price of $60 is even more of an outrage.

69 of 94 people found this useful

SimCity 4 Deluxe Edition by Aspyr

Great game, doesn't run on intel.

Written by AP from Sleepy Hollow

Dec 29, 2008

SimCity Deluxe is a great game and is very fun to play however it runs terribly on Intel macs.

44 of 48 people found this useful

SimCity 4 Deluxe Edition by Aspyr

Poor performance

Written by BL from Brooklyn

Oct 11, 2007

I grew up on the SimCity games and I've spent countless hours building cities in previous versions. SimCity 4 was my first experience with a Mac port, and I must say it was terribly disappointing. I have seen this game played on three separate machines (ibook G4, macbook, and a macbook pro) and they all have had laggy results.

I'm sure the game would be much more enjoyable if it actually played at a decent speed.

That being said, I found myself quite annoyed with some of the new features. The city advisory overreact constantly. Having to manage the budget of every single school, hospital, fire station, and police station is tedious. I thought the idea of a region was cool in theory, but I always liked making one humongous city as opposed to 3 dozen little ones. And am I the only one annoyed by the automatic roads placed when you zone an area?

I think I'll just go back to my PC version of SC3000.

74 of 108 people found this useful

SimCity 4 Deluxe Edition by Aspyr

Like it!

Written by JS from regina

Nov 12, 2007

I bought this game for my old windows and it was slow so when I found out it was made for macs I was so exited. I have a black Macbook and it works really good on it. It is my favorite game

75 of 116 people found this useful

SimCity 4 Deluxe Edition by Aspyr

Computer-freezing at its finest

Written by RC from Silver Spring

Aug 8, 2008

I feel a little odd writing a review since I'm still in the process of working with tech support at Aspyr, but out of the box this game has critical problems. My computer is ridiculously above the recommended system, yet it cannot run the software without lagging-freezing in the tutorial. I've done some maintenance work and installed the game in a fresh account and the root directory, all to no avail. Since they ask that you install it to the root directory, I assume the thinking is the performance issues are disk related, and I have 4 gigs of ram so I decided to try running it from a disk image, still to no avail. It's sad to see a game I have admired and enjoyed since almost the dawn of PCs, in such a state of disarray: I hope tech support can get this game up and playable for me quickly, else I'll be forced to seek a refund.

47 of 61 people found this useful

SimCity 4 Deluxe Edition by Aspyr

FREEZES LIKE CRAZY

Written by SK from SAN ANTONIO

Sep 26, 2008

To start off, my Deluxe Edition only has the Rush Hour game, and not the Sim City game. When I start the game, it opens to all these tutorials that I have already done, so I don't even know what to do next. When I do click on something, it takes FOREVER to load. And when it finally opens, it is immediately frozen. It doesn't work at all! When I try to exit out of the game, it continues to freeze and doesn't let me get out. I end up having to hold the power button down on my MacBook. Whenever I try to play this game, I just end up getting in a bad mood. Complete waste of 60 dollars.

36 of 40 people found this useful

SimCity 4 Deluxe Edition by Aspyr

An Excellent Game, But Needs Good Memory

Written by DC

Feb 18, 2007

Sim city is really a great, addicting game. I run it at home on my PC, works very nice there. Then I sync the cities to my Mac Book, It's really nice to have that kind of flexibility. But I'd say if you really want to play this game, your going to need the 2GB of RAM. This game really eats it up.

On the side, there are billions of plug-ins and add-ons for this game, and it's really only half the fun without them.

67 of 102 people found this useful

SimCity 4 Deluxe Edition by Aspyr

Great game, poor performance

Written by KD from Madison

Dec 8, 2007

This could be a great game (as were the other SimCity games before it),; however, it's a terrible port by Aspyr. On PowerPC Macs (dual G4 and a dual G5), the performance is slow and laggy when cities grow to a moderate size. On my MacBook, the game is almost unplayable, since it's not Universal.

117 of 203 people found this useful

SimCity 4 Deluxe Edition by Aspyr

How to play sim city 4 without freezes

Written by AC from Newport Beach

Mar 3, 2009

Hey guys,

I had the exact problems. I have a macbook pro 2.88ghz with 4gbs ram and sim city was keep freezing. I changed the setting on graphics, instead of hardward try software. I did that and now it works perfectly fine without freezing.

Thanks

37 of 44 people found this useful

SimCity 4 Deluxe Edition by Aspyr

Awesome game, needs a little work though

Written by JR from Chicago

Feb 9, 2006

I love SimCity. I've been an addict of the game since the first version on my 286 pc in the 90s. I was excited to find this game available for the mac, and love playing it. It did, however, take some work to make it playable. First off, to use the game on a newer powerbook, you have to download a patch from www.aspyr.com to make it compatible with the new graphics cards in the powerbooks. Not a huge issue, but also not addressed anywhere without googling the problem. Additionally, it seems absurd to me that there is no option to play the game solely off the hard drive. Carrying the cd around if i want to play somewhere other than home is a nuissance and seems like a major flaw. The game itself is great, hence the 4 stars, but it needs to be able to be played without the cd in the drive.

86 of 143 people found this useful

SimCity 4 Deluxe Edition by Aspyr

Sim City 4 is great, but Aspyrs support is horrible

Written by PZ from Playa Del Rey

Jun 21, 2007

I recently purchased a new Macbook Pro (2.4GHz, 2GB RAM, GeForce 8600M GT, etc.) along with it I purchased Sim City 4. I spoke to the genius bar and multiple reps assured me that even though this game lacks the Universal logo the shear power of this machine will make no difference in game play itself.

After spending countless hours trying to find the solution, and receiving nothing but "we think there is a problem with our games and the new video card on macbook pros" from Aspyr, I'm heading back to Windows where the game actually runs normally.

I get nothing but horrible performance, every object in the game that is supposed to be animated "blinks", of course now I can't return the game because the box has been opened. Good news is that my macbook pro was not purchased over 2 weeks ago - so I might be heading to return this "it just works" machine.

The game itself is amazing, you will find yourself controlling absolutely anything that has to do with a life in the city from the managerial point of view (of course there is room for improvement, but you take what you can get). Big improvement from the previous game - regions... try this game if you have a PPC or a Windows machine. Aspyr needs to get their act together on supporting this as well as other titles that just don't work on the new macbook pros.

56 of 86 people found this useful

SimCity 4 Deluxe Edition by Aspyr

Great Game

Written by JF from Roxbury

Jun 24, 2006

I taught this game as part of an Advanced Technology class (high school), 20 individual Mayors dealing with city issues is too much fun. Other components taught with this game were Google Earth (finally for MAC) structure of city government and mapping skills, a mini-lesson on the highway system. Also field trips when construction is occurring are a must and learning to listen to city noises.

Great game.

Plan to add podcasting and blogging next school year, daily SimCity4 News Reports.

80 of 134 people found this useful