As an introverted kid growing up in the early 2000s, I was the prime demographic for a game like The Sims that allowed me to make digital dolls, build houses, and tell all kinds of stories. I may have been playing since I was in grade school, but I’d be lying if I said that’s the last time I played - I bought a copy of The Sims and the Livin’ Large expansion in 2020, and I got whiplash from how much the series has evolved since its formative years.
Its scope is larger, its controls and customizations are leagues more involved, and the amount of content available for the series has grown exponentially. But, above all else, the old Sims games were hard.
RelatedThe Sims 25th Birthday Bundle Overview - Ultrawide Nostalgia
Experience The Sims 1 and 2 once more with The Sims 25th Birthday Bundle.
Posts 1As a not-so-secretive secret drop after a week of inundating their social media pages with nostalgic Sims posts, the original Sims, The Sims 2, and every expansion pack for both games launched on January 31 to celebrate the series’ 25th anniversary. As such, plenty of you are discovering right now what I’ve recalled since that fateful eBay purchase: that your Sims seem to almost want to die in the original game.
There Are Two Extra Needs, When Needs Are Hard Enough To Fill Already
Back then, we had eight needs to tend to, only six of which endured into the fourth generation. But even the ones that have stuck around have become much more flexible, especially with the introduction of moodlets and gradually changing mood states. We’ve always had to feed our Sims to keep them alive, but nowadays, the Hunger need slides slowly from full to peckish to hungry to ravenous before dying of hunger. Back then? Those bars turned red fast leaving Sims in a seemingly permanent bad mood - they ate, they got hungry, they felt cranky, and then, if there wasn’t a plate of unidentifiable food on hand, they simply died.
The two needs that were cut in the last quarter-century take some work to keep in the green, even for people like me who grew up with them. One of them, the Comfort need (which is more hidden nowadays), saw each chair, sofa, and bed have a Comfort score in addition to its Energy score and this affected Sim’s mood. Can’t afford a nice bed yet? Your Sim will be sleepy and stiff, a double whammy for your mood.
Meanwhile, the Room need takes your Sims’ surroundings into consideration, with things like unpainted walls and dirty dishes sinking the meter into the red, and just walking through a room with an unattended dinner plate was enough to taint their mood if things weren’t to their liking. Is yesterday’s newspaper on your lawn as you leave for work? Congratulations, your mood becomes awful in the time it takes to get from the door to the carpool, and now you’re not getting promoted today.
Another thing I don’t miss from the old game was the need to make friends as promotion requirements. As your Sims worked their way up their career ladder, they’d gradually need to have more friends, as if keeping your Sim alive wasn’t hard enough without the need to form, and maintain, a social circle. This led to you rushing outside to stop just about any passerby on the sidewalk to introduce yourself, chat, chat, chat, joke, joke, joke, hug, hug, hug until they left with that coveted little smiley face next to their name in your relationship panel. Socializing in general has wildly expanded in The Sims since the original game, but while I love the randomness of needing to pester Mortimer Goth by dancing on his lawn in the middle of the night so I can get promoted tomorrow at work, I also love not needing to anymore.
It’s hard enough to keep your Sim alive, let alone happy in this game, so real players knew that the pro move was skipping work every other day to tend to needs and build skills, since there was almost no way to survive otherwise. Your Sims had to go to work every single day without a single day off in the schedule, and one missed shift incurred a warning, while a second consecutive miss got you fired without hesitation. This meant that the move was essential, but risky. One particularly tragic day my Sim couldn't get out of the bathroom because someone else left a plate on the ground on the other side of the door, and she missed her carpool. Everything she had worked toward was gone, just like that. All because of a half-eaten cheeseburger her roommate didn’t put in the trash.
The quality of life changes in the last 25 years have never felt more limitless than they do to me as I got back to playing the original Sims without them, but there’s also plenty to enjoy. I’ve got a skydiving machine in my backyard after a couple of Rosebud cheats. Taking ladders out of the pool works as intended once again. And I never thought I’d be as excited to get robbed as I was when the burglar sound played for the first time. Not only is this fun, nostalgic birthday present to lifelong Simmers like me taking me for a welcomed trip down memory lane, but it’s also helping me appreciate just how far we’ve come.
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LikeThe Sims (2000)
Simulation Systems 10.0/10 Released February 4, 2000 ESRB T Developer(s) Maxis Publisher(s) Electronic Arts Franchise The SimsWHERE TO PLAY
PHYSICAL
