Screenshots
SimCity 4 Deluxe Edition turns you into a citizen, a criminal, an architect, a mayor, even a god -- bringing you deeper into SimLife than ever! As you create.
Description
The classic city simulation game returns to the Mac!
In SimCity™ 4, you don’t just build your city; you breathe life into it. Sculpt mountains, dig riverbeds, and seed forests as you lay the groundwork for your creation. Then, use your god-like powers to construct the most realistic metropolis you can imagine.
Whether you want to build mansions on mountainsides or cross canyons with bridges, the impact of your decisions is immediate. But while each click of the mouse can create, it has equal capacity to destroy. Capping an erupting volcano might save your city, or it might reroute lava down busy city streets. Sending police to quell a riot might calm down the crowd, or it might spur even further anarchy. With every decision you make, your city and your Sims will respond – for better or for worse. It’s up to you to be their guide.
The SimCity 4 Deluxe Edition includes both SimCity 4 and the Rush Hour expansion pack, which gives you more control over your city’s transportation options, plus two bonus disasters: UFO attack and Autosaurus Wrecks.
We even included the exclusive Mac “Custom Tunes” feature that allows your iTunes library to be played in the game!
• Additional information about SimCity™ 4 Deluxe •
If you encounter problems playing the game, please visit support.aspyr.com. Our Customer Support team is happy and eager to help. Your feedback helps us make better games.
In order to run the game with satisfactory performance, your Mac must meet these minimum system requirements: 2.2 GHz CPU Speed | 4 GB RAM | 2 GB free disk space | (ATI): Radeon HD 3870; (NVidia): GeForce 8800 | (Intel): HD 3000 | 256 MB VRam
NOTICE: This game is not supported on volumes formatted as Mac OS Extended (CaseSensitive)
© 2017 Electronic Arts Inc. Electronic Arts, SimCity, EA, EA GAMES, the EA GAMES logo, Maxis and the Maxis logo are trademarks or registered trademarks of Electronic Arts Inc. in the U.S. and/or other countries. All Rights Reserved. EA GAMES™ and Maxis™ are Electronic Arts™ brands. Published and distributed by Aspyr Media, Inc. “Aspyr” and the Aspyr “star” logo are federally registered trademarks of Aspyr Media, Inc. Mac and the Mac logo are trademarks of Apple Computer, Inc., registered in the U.S. and other countries.
In SimCity™ 4, you don’t just build your city; you breathe life into it. Sculpt mountains, dig riverbeds, and seed forests as you lay the groundwork for your creation. Then, use your god-like powers to construct the most realistic metropolis you can imagine.
Whether you want to build mansions on mountainsides or cross canyons with bridges, the impact of your decisions is immediate. But while each click of the mouse can create, it has equal capacity to destroy. Capping an erupting volcano might save your city, or it might reroute lava down busy city streets. Sending police to quell a riot might calm down the crowd, or it might spur even further anarchy. With every decision you make, your city and your Sims will respond – for better or for worse. It’s up to you to be their guide.
The SimCity 4 Deluxe Edition includes both SimCity 4 and the Rush Hour expansion pack, which gives you more control over your city’s transportation options, plus two bonus disasters: UFO attack and Autosaurus Wrecks.
We even included the exclusive Mac “Custom Tunes” feature that allows your iTunes library to be played in the game!
• Additional information about SimCity™ 4 Deluxe •
If you encounter problems playing the game, please visit support.aspyr.com. Our Customer Support team is happy and eager to help. Your feedback helps us make better games.
In order to run the game with satisfactory performance, your Mac must meet these minimum system requirements: 2.2 GHz CPU Speed | 4 GB RAM | 2 GB free disk space | (ATI): Radeon HD 3870; (NVidia): GeForce 8800 | (Intel): HD 3000 | 256 MB VRam
NOTICE: This game is not supported on volumes formatted as Mac OS Extended (CaseSensitive)
© 2017 Electronic Arts Inc. Electronic Arts, SimCity, EA, EA GAMES, the EA GAMES logo, Maxis and the Maxis logo are trademarks or registered trademarks of Electronic Arts Inc. in the U.S. and/or other countries. All Rights Reserved. EA GAMES™ and Maxis™ are Electronic Arts™ brands. Published and distributed by Aspyr Media, Inc. “Aspyr” and the Aspyr “star” logo are federally registered trademarks of Aspyr Media, Inc. Mac and the Mac logo are trademarks of Apple Computer, Inc., registered in the U.S. and other countries.
What’s New
• Bug fixes and tweaks
IMPORTANT NOTE: If you are using mods, you HAVE NOT LOST your content with this update. Simply download the mod again, and your progress can continue.
IMPORTANT NOTE: If you are using mods, you HAVE NOT LOST your content with this update. Simply download the mod again, and your progress can continue.
- SimCity BuildIt is actually a mobile rendition of the new SimCity from Maxis, that, similar to the first PC game, gives you a chance to make your own special city, from the best floor of a high rise to the water framework underground.
- Which Sim City is the best? MarkyX Registered User. Sim City 2000 and Sim City 4 are the best ones. TychoCelchuuu on March 2008. Sim City 2000 was especially great since I could only game on a Mac when I was twelve (this was ~1995), and one could imagine the options with that.
166 Ratings
Great Game Just Can’t Play :/
I love this game and when I bought it here it ran perfectly and I had no issues even with tons of mods installed but now ever since the update I haven’t been able to even play as for the past month I just click on the SC4 Icon and it doesn’t load up. They’ve had the note saying we’re working on a quick fix but its been a long time and I’m getting aggrivated. RCT3 was like this but fixed in less than a day so what the heck is going on here?
UPDATE: The game did the same thing to me again just now (Feb. 2016) and so I did what they said again, reinstall which worked except I LOST ALL CONTENT! ALL OF IT! I am outraged! I lost all my plugins and my maps (which I worked very hard on). I am extremely disapointed and this will definetly be my last purchase from Aspyr.
UPDATE: The game did the same thing to me again just now (Feb. 2016) and so I did what they said again, reinstall which worked except I LOST ALL CONTENT! ALL OF IT! I am outraged! I lost all my plugins and my maps (which I worked very hard on). I am extremely disapointed and this will definetly be my last purchase from Aspyr.
Runs fine for me
This game was so cheap that I had to give it a try, despite the poor reviews. So far, I’ve had no problems running it on a 5,1 quad core Mac Pro with Radeon 7870, so I’m not sure if some folks just don’t have the power to run this as the developer says (a little odd for a game that I recall playing on single core systems running Windows XP). For those that are complaining about graphical quality, that needs to be adjusted accordingly in game. Despite my more-than-adequate system, the game defaulted to a lesser resolution. Once corrected, my system has no trouble playing the game at 1080P with all the quality settings maxed out. I’ve played it for over an hour with no crashes or slowdowns, and it looks exactly like the Windows version that I wasted absurd amounts of time playing when this game first came out. Game data appears to be saved in your User folder, it’s just hidden a few layers down.
Thanks for the memories and another reason not to dual boot!
Thanks for the memories and another reason not to dual boot!
Launching Issues FIX
I was weary to download this because of the price and the repeated reviews saying that the game would not launch. My greatest fear came true when I attempted to launch for the first time and it failed. However, by going into the game settings from the launch window, if you select one of the different aspect ratios for your screen, the game will launch and run just fine.
As for the game itself, it is a timeless city running simulation. While the graphics haven’t held up too well to today’s standards, the gameplay is overall intuitive and addicting. SimCity is a classic game that is certainly worth the high price. Additionally, it is worth noting that many of the major glitches I had encountered playing this game as a child seem to be corrected. Overall great game.
As for the game itself, it is a timeless city running simulation. While the graphics haven’t held up too well to today’s standards, the gameplay is overall intuitive and addicting. SimCity is a classic game that is certainly worth the high price. Additionally, it is worth noting that many of the major glitches I had encountered playing this game as a child seem to be corrected. Overall great game.
Information
OS X 10.8.5 or later
English, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Spanish
![Best Best](/uploads/1/2/6/4/126477532/717066623.jpg)
Family Sharing
With Family Sharing set up, up to six family members can use this app.
Developed by Maxis and published by EA, the new SimCity (or SimCity 5 if you’re counting) was supposed to be one of the main contenders for Game of the Year. It seemed to have all it took to be even better than the venerable SimCity 4 and take the crown as the most sophisticated city-building game ever. Unfortunately, SimCity not only failed to meet our very high expectations, it was also marked by one of the worst launches in recent memory. EA isn’t the most popular publisher out there and the SimCity DRM debacle certainly didn’t help either.
Riddled with lots of issues when it first launched on the PC back in March this year, we could only hope SimCity’s Mac release would be smoother. Well, it wasn’t. The game was delayed several times, with no proper information coming from EA. When it was finally released on Mac, several users reported installation issues and many others complained about poor performance. To be fair, people love to hate EA and can be sometimes harsher than needed. Controversy aside, taking SimCity in its current state and forgetting about everything that happened before, how good is it really? Can it be considered one of the greatest Mac strategy games available?
Enter SimCity
There are no major changes to the classic SimCity formula here. With a limited budget, you will have to put in place the necessary infrastructure (a power plant, water supplies, roads, etc) to start a new city. From that point, you will have at your disposal the well-known zoning system, which will allow you to place residential areas, commercials areas and industrial areas. Common sense applies here, you will want to keep the industry away from your residential buildings and as your city grows, you will need fire stations, police stations, schools and so on. Using lots of statistics and specific view options (like land value and crime), it’s up to you to make sure your citizens have all they need. The objective is to create a thriving city, with healthy residents, wealthy businesses, and high tech (clean) industry.
I bet Maxis had great expectations when they set out to create the new SimCity. Some ideas here are very good and show lots of ambition, but in many cases failed to deliver. Region play is the perfect example. SimCity focuses on Regions and dreams of creating inter-connected cities that help each other and grow together. These regions are no other than a group of cities. Ranging from 3 to 16 cities, regions effectively introduce a new angle to the SimCity games we know and love. They encourage exchange and cooperation between cities. To give you one example, you can create a “dormitory” city, full of residential buildings, and connect it to the region’s train network and airports to provide workers for a neighbor industrial city.
It could have been the perfect way to finally introduce Multiplayer to SimCity, something that until now seemed impossible. However, Regions also introduced one of the biggest gameplay issues I found: Individual cities are too small! Compared to SimCity 4, cities here are tiny, and I really mean tiny. In no time you will curse those city limits and will struggle to continue to grow. At this point, Maxis and EA would expect you to go back to the Region and create a new neighbor city. But what if I just want to create a thriving metropolis? The next London or New York? Well, you can’t and if you’re lucky, you will be able to maybe recreate lower-Manhattan.
I saw this comment on a forum and completely relate: The game feels more like The Sims City than SimCity. There’s a ton of micromanagement here, with individual citizens giving you specific objectives and the ability to track every single citizen and see what he thinks, where he lives and where he works. If this added to the experience, I wouldn’t complain, but when you combine it with the fact that cities are so damn small, you get the feeling your managing Sims and not building a true metropolis. There was big hope the soon to come Cities of Tomorrow DLC, coming later this year, would fix this issue but sources say EA and Maxis won’t change maximum city size just yet.
Overall, SimCity has solid gameplay mechanics. It reminds me of all the things I loved about previous SimCity games while adding lots of new elements and overhauling the graphics. However, the fact the cities are so small makes it feel less hardcore than SimCity 4 and more apt for The Sims fans.
Presentation
The graphics department is where SimCity really shines. Everything looks crisp and well-detailed. Mountains never looked so good and tall building never looked so impressive, especially at night. By the way, the day and night cycle really adds to the experience and it gives you completely different cities (aesthetically speaking) depending on the time of the day.
The attention to detail is impressive too. If you zoom in enough, you can actually see firetrucks put out fires and school buses pick up kids every morning. Every citizen is tracked and will go from home to work every morning. If you only have one road linking residential areas with industrial areas, the traffic jams will visually let you know that there’s a problem. Same goes for pollution. The game is full of visual cues, making the experience more natural.
A lot can be said about SimCity’s gameplay or performance but graphics is the only place where it undeniably improved upon its popular predecessor. Bear in mind though, SimCity 4 is 10 years old so it was about time the franchise’s graphics were updated to today’s standards.
The music and sound effects are solid too and respect the traditional SimCity formula. Everything has an associated sound that gives life to your cities, like the noise of cars or the sounds of birds near parks. The music is classic SimCity too and does a good job giving the game that laid-back mood SimCity games are known for.
SimCity Performance
If I had to take into account all the issues SimCity had when it first launched on PC, I would have to give it a 1/5 on the Performance department. However, this review is about the MacOS version and luckily, it went a little better.
Simcity Download For Mac
Some gamers did experience installation issues but EA claims they were solved on Day 1. Controversy and bad press aside, I played the game for over 10 hours and never found any major issue or bug. One time the mouse seemed to be stuck. Closing and re-opening the game solved the issue. Other than that, the game played fine and was reliable throughout my entire experience with the game.
I did find the game was poorly optimized, in the sense that I expected it to run a lot faster than it did. As soon as my city would start to get big, the frames per second would suffer. The game would remain playable, but considering I played the game on a powerful machine (a Mac Pro with a Nvidia GTX 660 Ti Card, an SSD and 16GB RAM), I was expecting it to run at full speed no matter what.
The other problem I found was the invasive DRM SimCity uses. The game requires you to be always online to play and will eject you from your city if you have been offline for more than 20 minutes. This limitation is extremely harsh and completely unnecessary, as the game won’t let you play if you’re traveling or are somewhere without a steady internet connection.
Minimum System Requirements:
- Lion OSX 10.7.5 with a Core 2 Duo processor
- 2 GB of RAM
- 12 GB of Hard Drive space
- Either an Intel HD 3000, NVIDIA GeForce 9600M, or ATI Radeon HD 2600 graphics card
Machine used:
- Model: Pro (Early 2009)
- OS: OS X 10.10
- CPU: 2.66 GHz Quad-Core Xeon
- Video Card: NVIDIA GTX 660Ti (1GB)
- RAM: 16 GB
New Simcity For Mac
Final Word
“Good”
SimCity had incredibly high expectations to meet. With 10 years to release a proper sequel, Maxis was supposed to create the ultimate city-builder ever, taking SimCity 4’s heritage to new heights. Truth is, Maxis did have some ambitious ideas but most of them were poorly implemented and ended up hurting the tried and true SimCity formula. Expectations aside, the game plays well and is lots of fun. If you enjoyed SimCity games in the past, chances are you could have lots of fun here. It’s just too bad for Maxis that Cities: Skylines happened, which is a much superior alternative.
Simcity 3000 For Mac
The main drawback I saw was the poor performance. If you plan to run this game on a MacBook Air or an older MacBook Pro, prepare to drop all the settings to low and face some lag.