Come with me and I will tell you a sweet preservation story: the original 1989 SimCity can be played free and legally in your browser. It is not a pirated copy or an emulator with the game bundled. It is micropolisJS, a handmade JavaScript port of Micropolis, the open-source version of the city simulator Will Wright created at Maxis.
How SimCity became Micropolis
In 2008, Electronic Arts released the source code of classic SimCity under the GPL license for the One Laptop per Child project, which handed out educational laptops to children. There was one condition: the SimCity name is an EA trademark and was not part of the license. So the open code became Micropolis. The game is the same one many people met in the 1990s, with residential, commercial and industrial zones, power plants, taxes and disasters.
What micropolisJS does
micropolisJS is the work of Graeme McCutcheon, who rewrote Micropolis in JavaScript and HTML5. You open the page, pick a freshly generated map or ask for another, name your city (up to 15 letters) and choose easy, medium or hard difficulty. The city starts in January 1900, and on easy you get 20,000 in funds. There is a budget, a city evaluation, a disasters menu and a save button. The code is on GitHub, and the project asks for no commercial files at all.
Tips for your first city
Start small, with one power plant and a few zones connected by roads, and grow slowly so you do not run out of money. Saves are kept in the browser, so it is worth following the tips in our guide to keeping your save in browser ports.
If you want the newer SimCity games, the series is sold on official digital stores. For other classics you can play legally, see our guide to games ported to the browser and PC and the Preservation section.
Where to buy: Gaming mice on Amazon
Source: micropolisJS (Graeme McCutcheon) and Micropolis.
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