I always heard of SImCity but never played , or maybe did aeons ago.

I was wondering which is the best, most fun, version of this game?
If you can tell me I will buy it and test it out!

They are all pretty solid, but SC2K seems to be the most loved. It certainly has my vote. :)

I believe SC2k to be the best one. It's simple and fun.

SC3K has better graphics and some neat new ideas, but I found it rather chaotic quite often. You start loosing RCI and population plunges without any explanation.

I have SC4, but played very little of it, so I don't know if it's better. It sure is more complicated, since the way the zones interact with each other changed and the country/area scheme means you MUST have multiple cities close to each other to make each grow.

SimCity 4 is my favorite because of the level of customization it presents -- you can really make your city yours -- however I also like SC2K, and SC2K's mechanics are considerably different so they're both going to be worthwhile plays in either case.

SimCity 3000 I didn't like, because it didn't really differentiate itself from SC2K all that much, and the new features it did add weren't nearly as developed as they were in SC4.

I didn't really like the first SimCity much either. There's just not a lot going on in it.

I wouldn't say SC4 is necessarily more /complicated/, it's just on a very different scale than what SC2K did. SC4 focuses more on things like traffic patterns, urban morphology, and how different regions of a city interact. SC2K is much higher level and more of a business sim in some regards, and also places a much greater emphasis in finding ways to accommodate a large population in a limited area.

Both games do a few things that bug me. Like, construction time is for roadways and buildings is basically negligible, even though both of these have a /huge/ impact on cities in real life. Also you never get people mad at you for bulldozing huge swaths of town. Lack of combined urban/commercial spaces is bothersome... SC4 tends to have 14 people living in small houses, which is weird, highways don't really make sense in something with SC2K's scale, the way disasters work in the series as a whole is just bizarre and has nothing to do with reality, seasons don't matter much, and areas that have different occupation at different times of day aren't modeled, even though this is apparently a big deal in modern urban design with regards to cutting down on crime.

Yeah, SimCity 4 is highly customizable and expandable, but it is so incomplete to begin with (especially without the Rush Hour expansion). I remember when SC4 first came out, you couldn't even control the layout of the streets. At it's heart, it's a very mediocre game, and only the SC4 community made it a worthwhile experience, if you are willing to take the time to download all the mods and lots and stuff (Road Top Mass Transit is a must).

Unlike SC2K, which is a light-hearted science-fiction game, SC4 was meant to be realistic, but it's just not detailed or complex enough, even when compared to SC2K in some ways (there's only a single water level in SC4, for example, which I find annoying).

So at its core, SC2K is far superior to SC4, but with Rush Hour and mods, SC4 might be the more satisfying game overall, especially after having majored in human geography and taken several courses on urban geography, including urban planning. SC4 just requires a lot more dedication and patience.

SC2 and SC3, in that order. Of course, I haven't played SC3 in ages since I only have it on disk.
The atmosphere of the games gets progressively worse. SC5 sounds positively nonsensical. concept wise..
The gameplay of SC4 has a worse flow and it has no random map generator which is positively bullox. The switch to a kind of "real" 3d actually detracts from the experience. The game is just eyecandy with a bad atmosphere that makes you feel like you ought to turn the thing off and uninstall it. I don't currently have it installed.

Though you have to admit, if there's anything that would make SimCity more interesting, it's multiplayer.

That said, SC2K is my personal favorite. SC4 was pretty, but bloated with useless features (Rush Hour and the driving missions). SC3 was horrible. I don't know what it was about that game, I just can't stand it for some reason. SC1 for SNES is an odd duck. It's a good game, but playing it with a joypad just feels wrong. It had very good music, though.

I think SC2K is the best implementation of a city-building GAME in the series. There are clear rules and enough information provided by the game to aid the player in constructing a functional city that uses many of the available city-building elements.

I think the answer to the "What am I supposed to do?" question becomes increasingly ambiguous in the games after SC2K. That said, SC4 has some cool things. One can make some great-looking cities, and the ability to use your own elevation map to create cities that are approximately geographically correct is pretty cool.

SC5 sounds like an oversimplication, and I do not plan to buy it. While the piping system might be unnecessary, I think I read that they have got rid of transport.

I meant customizable in terms of how you approached building a particular city. I never felt like I had enough control in SC2K, and I never felt like cities would develop unique character -- that the game was particularly stacked towards Wright's idea of whatever an ideal city would be. You can't really do satisfyingly accurate sprawls, or run down rust-belt villages, or places with actual distance in them.

SC2K was about making places like New York City and Chicago. SC4's about making things like the Cinn/Day Corridor, or Gary, or Lansing.

I equally like SC2k and SC4. SC2k is more of a game, whereas SC4 is more complicated and gives more of a challenge when building a city. I'm a bit put off SC5 on the basis that I don't want always online DRM and I don't want to play against other people - I prefer a single player game and don't believe Maxis when they say that the economic system is so complex it requires cloud computing (or if it is, I don't see why a system that complex would actually be fun). It's like corruption in Civ III - more realistic perhaps, but it's not fun.

I saw some actual dev-hosted videos of SC5 and the economy looks more like TTD -- it sounds like there are various resources in various locations, and it's up to you weather you want to develop those areas for resource extraction or other things.

The videos make the game actually look really cool and not at all like what EA's been advertising it as.

Except for the always-online stuff. You don't even have to play it multiplayer, and the cloud computing stuff they're talking about, where they're saying /local/ simulation stuff needs to be run server side, sounds like complete BS. Devs never brought it up in their video, and if that actually was how the game worked, I think they WOULD bring it up because that would actually be a really impressive usage of cloud computing and something they'd want to show off.

They are just trying to be totalitarian, like STEAM. That's what EA is for. They aren't going to run part of the game server side, there wouldn't be the money for it. Unless they're going to sell the game for 60+ dollars and close it down in a few years when the profit runs out. SPORE had a good excuse for it, but I only bought Spore when it was on the lowest sale I've ever seen, and only played it a few times. I still don't know what kind of game it is supposed to be.

Simcity 2000 Special Edition for Windows is what I always go back to.
I looks good for how old it is and very easy to play (good or bad).
The tilesets are a nice addition to play with.

I used to have a copy of SimCity Classic for Windows on my work laptop that
I would play when on work trips, it was small and I found it fun until we upgraded to Win 7.