Sim Life (AGA)

Title           Sim Life (AGA)
Game Type       Management Sim
Company		Maxis
Players         1
Compatibility   AGA 2MB
Submission	Brian Salisbury

	This Amiga Report review appears here by courtesy of Jason Compton

Review

PRODUCT NAME

			Sim Life AGA


BRIEF DESCRIPTION

This is another in the continuing line of 'software toys' from
Maxis ported to the Amiga by Mindscape.

AUTHOR/COMPANY INFORMATION

	Name:	        Maxis
	Address:	2 Theatre Square Suite 230
			Orinda, CA 94563-3346

	Telephone:	510-245-9700
	Fax:	        510-253-3736

	Name:	        Mindscape International LTD.
	Address:	Priority House,Charles AVE,Maltings Park,
			Burgess,West Sussex RH15 9PQ

	Telephone:      0444-246333
	Fax:	        0444-248996

LIST PRICE

			I've seen between 35 and 40 dollars


SPECIAL HARDWARE AND SOFTWARE REQUIREMENTS

	HARDWARE

			You need an AGA computer to run this program. Amiga 1200
			or Amiga 4000

	SOFTWARE

			None listed



COPY PROTECTION

	None (yea! Maxis!)



MACHINE USED FOR TESTING

	Amiga 1200/14
	60 mb hard drive
	2 mb chip
	1084s monitor



INSTALLATION

It was quite painless, all I did was boot from the first disk
(there are 4 total) and follow the instructions. You also have a choice of
installing a high-res or low-res version. It's recommended to install the
high-res version if you have a multi-sync monitor. And low-res if you don't

I don't. I tried both on my 1084s, I liked the high-res better and the flicker
wasn't that bad.

It was also reccomended that you have more than 2 megs of Ram, but I got
around that (see bugs). You can install the game to hard or floppy drives.

REVIEW

After installing I had to boot with no start-up to conserve memory. The
game does run a little slow on my 14mhz machine, but not as to get in the
way of game play. If you decide to install the low-res version, you'll
notice an increased speed.

Now, the actual game, there are a couple of ways to look at the game,
first you can play 6 pre-made 'missions', or go into the 'experimental'
mode and play around in you world. (oops, I sound like that guy who paints
on PBS!)

So, now after choosing the game type, you're presented with a window with
various buttons and sliders used to create the world, they include number
of mountains, rivers, food sources and average world temperature.

Now the world takes shape (The world is represented in a 2 dimensional
window) The game uses 'layers' to represent levels of information on the
World map such as soil, mountains, water, and so on, and they can be
turned off at your command.

The planet is now complete, time to breathe life on to it! The game comes
with a pre-made zoo with animals and plants, or you can create your
own plants and animals. There's a lot of detail to plants and even more
to animals, from what they eat and how they move and so on.

As you play there are charts and graphs that can be used to keep track
of your life forms and find out who's dying and why, population, animal
diversity and more.

I could go on and on but that gives you the basics.


DOCUMENTATION

The manual is in the typical Maxis style, that is, well writen
and witty, with a helpfull tutorial(there's one built into the game as well)
It took me awhile to go through it all, but who said creating life is easy


LIKES AND DISLIKES

I like the fact that you have total control over your world, everything
about the game be changed to suit your needs

I also liked the general layout of the game, the placement and style of
the user interface.

On the other hand, you might at some point think "what's the point?"
Luckily Maxis put in some goals to try and meet.


COMPARISON TO SIMILAR PRODUCTS

This is the first AGA game I've played , so I can't compare it to
anything, except maybe SimFarm for the PC. Both games had a similar
graphical look (buttons and icons)

BUGS

The only problem I ran into was that I couldn't run it from
Workbench (only 2 megs) I had to boot with no start-up, and then execute a
script to assign ENV to ram. I tried playing it without doing this, and I
didn't notice any difference in the game.


VENDER SUPPORT

I've had no reason to contact Maxis(or Mindscape) with any
problems


CONCLUSIONS

All in all, Maxis did a great job with this game, and Mindscape
did a terrific job in porting it the the Amiga! A welcome addition to your
AGA game library. Lets hope for SimCity 2000 AGA!

Alphabetical list.