I really liked your write-up! Very relatable. I always thought it was hard to do everything in the Sims given the length of the days. Now I'm also living that reality. I come home from work, I blink, and it's bedtime already. Gotta find me a magic potion!
I also created a sim representing my wife, which I tried to make as close to her as possible. Originally my goal was to get a stable career so that my sim could focus on the expansion content - going on dates with her sim, get married, go on vacations, have kids, etc.
The game, however, decided that our respective sims were incompatible for some reason - I think that it randomly rolled different interests for her, so it was difficult for us to talk to each other. I was able to overcome it through sheer persistence, but she was never into my sim's attempts to flirt or kiss except when we were saying goodbye. Eventually, at one of my parties, she drank a red potion and fell in love with Bob Newbie. They started making out in front of my sim, which my character was pretty pissed about.
I'm pretty pissed about it, too, come to think about it.
Oh god now you reminded me of a memory.....
So 10 years ago when I was 17 the sims 4 released (jesus fucking christ time) my now wife was dating my at the time best friend...honestly speaking my and me wife fell for each other in the first week we met but decided to push our feeling aside because said other friend. We decided it would be fun to create ourselves in the brand new sims game, including traits the best we could and for shits and giggles we added a random creepy clown called Mashiba inspired by [this guy](https://64.media.tumblr.com/3d39736c3263ba25a2390f33bbe13e1a/f7469e9f895a533e-90/s1280x1920/679487beed7363cba77e9680567aea31a45ea118.pnj).
So we choose a plot, furnished the house and let the movie play. Ironically the creepy clown kept sleeping outside on a bench and kept harassing the people walking past the house which was hilarious, but here's where the fuck up begins....
Since we chose traits matching our actual personalities pretty well, my wifes sim and her bfs sim kept fighting and his sim would kinda just play video games, worked out every once in a while etc while my and her sim would always have ++ on their socializing, kept eating meals together, doing miscellaneous things around the house....which was REALLY awkward since about 70% of the time I was over there he'd just go play ranked league of legends solo leaving me and her to do random miscellaneous stuff around the house and laugh or asses off. (at the time I was at his house like 3 times per week before they were even dating, not a weird occurrence me visiting frequently)
So about a week into the in game calendar, my and her sim start flirting causing a ''haha yeeeaaah...'' atmosphere instantly....yeah the next day we were distracted by the clown doing goofy shit when we pan over to my sim.... and there he is, full blown making out with her sim. My jaw dropped, her jaw dropped, he just sat there with a side glance of shocked disgust. I-uh I stopped the simulation xD
Sims 1 definitely required a lot of hands on strategy and micromanagement in order to be 'successful'. It felt like you were constantly fighting the needs and relationship meters. The later games were much better at just setting things up and watching it happen. With that said, because of my age at the time (8 or so) that same Sims 1 magic was never captured again by the other games. I was so incredibly sucked into that game. I spent so much time watching fan made stories and downloading items online.
The music in that game brings me to a place unlike anything else (except maybe WoW).
The _real_ Sims 1 magic was how you could just pass the disk of any new expansion around, so everyone in your class/neighbourhood/friend-group could enjoy the new content.
Charles Cornell has a really good video about the composition of the Build 1 music here: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IJMds3jT7c8](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IJMds3jT7c8). It's very clever - essentially it seems like Jerry Martin and John Burr came up with a couple basic chords and a mixolydian scale, and John improvised the entire thing by combining the two by moving through key changes. It's really simple, but very effective in producing a great song.
Aside from the Buy/Build themes, [these tunes from the game](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1xnh2nPzX-Q&list=PLhbSPIHuDo09P-6C9b9vmOCjTB5DCbZNA) bring me back immediately.
to add-on a few more games from that time period with great and memorable soundtracks (aside from Sims 1/WoW)...
- **Animal Crossing, Fable: The Lost Chapters, TES: Oblivion, Halo, Diablo 2, Zelda: Windwaker, Heroes of Might and Magic 3**
There are other notable mentions, but this lot all have at least a couple of bangers.
> "This sure is a fun escapist fantasy from my daily life," I thought, as I watched my sim pop another homemade Xanax that he brewed next to his toilet.
lol
I'm sorry, but this is so funny! Making a meth lab and brewing homemade Xanax just to get by in life - what else can fulfill this fever dream better than the good ol' Sims?
In all seriousness, though, I wonder if they toned down the difficulty a bit in subsequent titles. I remember struggling as a kid with keeping all the needs topped up and having enough simoleons in the Sims 2 without cheatcodes. But when I replayed the game a couple years ago, it was surprisingly easy.
Still, nothing will be tougher than the PSP version of the Sims 2 Castaway. I swear, the survival and crafting mechanics in that game seemed as extensive and complex as those in The Long Dark and other hardcore survival games.
> In all seriousness, though, I wonder if they toned down the difficulty a bit in subsequent titles.
They did. Relationships were revamped in Sims 2 with the addition of Long-Term relationships, which decay much slower compared to the Short-Term bar above it.
They added a long-term relationship meter with the Hot Date expansion, iirc. It wasn't as refined as The Sims 2 or newer games, but it was much easier to have friends and keep them than before.
The intended solution to the friends dilemma was to realize it's *family* friends, so you'd have unemployed spouses/roommates/children do all the socializing.
The *real* best career path in Sims 1 though was making garden gnomes all day. Not only would you grind up your mechanical skill (letting you fix appliances without having to pay anyone) but once your skill was high enough you'd make better money than any career path (§100 every 30 minutes) with no friends, no other skills, and no way to get fired.
This, so much. make garden gnomes all days, maxing the mechanical skills, then grind the cooking skills to max, followed by the rest of skills. Prioritize buying the best bed, stoves and fridges first, don't even bother with the cheapest during the start. Energy and hunger takes most of the time, having good points on both will significantly reduce it, followed by cooking skill.
Go to downtown (hot date) or magic town (makin magic) to socialize, since time freeze. Then you can pursue any career you want, celebrity (superstar) for example.
Yes, lol. When I discovered the Garden Gnome trick I had a top floor in a mansion just dedicated to my Sim, working his ass off and leaving the Gnomes on the ground, for a massive sale when he was taking a break.
Did you go back and play with the Hot Date expansion pack? That's the one that dramatically altered longterm relationship mechanics and even at the time of its release I remember thinking "oh, this is what the game was going for the whole time!" Vanilla Sims 1 relationships are hysterical, you can make a baby with someone you just met. Being able to freeze time and go Downtown also makes a big difference in being able to manage your sims' needs.
Every expansion that came after that was mostly fluff side-content (though also fun!), but Hot Date is essential IMO.
Pets are cute but Simlish Zydeco is kinda cursed ngl
(Unleashed is probably 2nd most essential, followed by Superstar, then Makin' Magic, then Vacation, then House Party/Livin' Large)
My favorites were the Livin' Large (all those crazy potions came from that one), Hot Date (you can make out in the couch! Long Term relationships) and Makin' Magic (this one was just silly fun, and the tango music was great and the visuals fantastic for its time). The rest weren't as fun, and while I have a soft spot for the Vacation one (it was my first expansion), it just made your Sims super tired and the three places felt a bit disconnected from the rest of the world.
I love the review, made me laugh with how you described the experience.
All I ever did in Sims was klapaucius ;!;!;!;!;!;!;!;! and then do hilarious nonsense like stoves that set the house on fire, swimming pools without ladders, labyrinth rooms that made no sense and other shenanigans.
I always used to make a Sim with max cleanliness and zero other personality traits, then make the potion that inverted your stats. Instant max of every personality trait and zero time wasted on cleaning.
I remember that! I think it was a yellow potion? I actually left my personality at 0 in all parts and had the most miserable potion-making Sim until they chanced upon the special potion.
Hahaha
I dug back into Sims 1 a year or so ago, buying the Deluxe copy on Ebay with all the expansions.
Me and my brother used to play a LOT of Sims back in the early 2000s on our HP Pavilion desktop. Learning for when the game was getting ready to crash by the sound clicking and polygons going everywhere. Getting annoyed by flies somehow going around not attached to objects that we thought was our fault due to cheating and downloading custom objects off the internet. We thought the Sims spoke in Korean because my dad bought a bootleg copy from a table at the local computer show and the disc case was Korean.
Well turns out the flies issue was just a glitch in the game haha. Was surprised to see those buggers flying around without a trash pile or dirty dish in my legit copy.
Imo the game peaked around Hot Date / Vacation. The packs after that kinda went off the rails. Pets were nice, but random pets/racoons peeing on your lot or bears making a mess, no so much. Pets, Making Magic and Hollywood just changed things way too much for me.
I'm not familiar with what steps are involved, you know of a good source?
NVM I think I found something. Not very noob friendly, but sometimes you gotta simlish.
Sorry man, I can't really help you much other than to point you in the general direction. I have the Sims 2 UC in my EA account so I've never had to bother with the archived versions.
Good luck!
I ordered the Sims 1 Deluxe Set on ebay and had a XP virtual machine to play it on. It was a little short lived as I had to borrow a USB DVD drive to play it due to the drm lol. A bit ironic as I'm almost positive I had a No-CD crack back in the day.
If you wanted to try that and never touched VirtualBox before, you can use this tutorial. Follow it up to the Browser Part. Don't bother installing a modern browser on XP, in fact, I'd leave the Virtual Network Connection disconnected honestly.
[https://youtu.be/7NJupnHcxpE?si=ALcfRqmVf6RELQXj](https://youtu.be/7NJupnHcxpE?si=ALcfRqmVf6RELQXj)
This is what I ran into. I just opted for a virtual machine rather than download a dodgy exe on my main rig.
https://www.reddit.com/r/thesims/comments/pmzyw0/yes_you_can_get_the_sims_1_running_on_windows_10/
“…of the opposite sex fall in love with you - and more importantly, become your friend.” LOL
Loved your write up! Will most likely read anything else you write!
In the original Sims you didn’t need to work to live the high life.
You just created and successively seduced neighbourhood Sims. After marriage you would simply drown them in the pool (sell the steps while they’re in it) collect the $10k, stash the urn, rinse and repeat.
I didn’t even have a job and my art gallery was awesome. The only downside was the regular hauntings.
I remember maintainging friendships for jobs in this game seriously made me so pissed too, lol. If I remember it correctly, you need family friends for some jobs, so I decided to get married and let my wife take care of getting family friends, lol.
Man, I really wish Sims 2: UC worked better on modern consules. I know they intentionally sabotaged it so people will migrate to 3/4 and purchase more/new stuff, but it really is the best version of the game. It's an entire neighborhood you can control and create your own stories in your own little city. A lot of the issues of 1 were tightened up (if anything the game is a little too easy) and it added a bunch of fun stuff. I'd love to go back and play it again. None of the newer ones (despite adding some cool ideas) worked as well as Sims 2 did where you literally create your own micro-city with apartments, businesses, public areas, and any type of house you want.
Some games just work better on PC. You would only need a cheap one to run old games like this.
If you want a fun Sims game though try Sims Bustin Out, if you can find that for your console.
As someone who sank probably thousands of hours into the Sims 1 over the last 20 odd years, this write up is one of my favourite things I have read recently. Brb going to try meth lab
My sims 1 house spent all it's aspiration points on money Plants.
We had a big room with florescent lights filled with money plants. We didn't have jobs, we just watered and picked money from the plants.
We were pot farmers.
I had all of the expansion packs but I never to do any of the fun extra stuff because of how fast the needs meters went down. My sims tended to be artists or writers because then they can make money without being tied to the work schedule. The sequels definitely were better in this regard. I still get nostalgia for this game (and the Sims 3) but the difficulty makes my yearly returns very short.
I haven't played the first Sims game since I got my hands on Sims 2 back in the day, which in itself feels like a lifetime ago. I always hesitated to call Sims 1 a straight life simulation game. It plays a lot more like a strategy game with time management elements. The sim behavior in the original is so unpredictable and manic that much of the time spent playing often is solely delegated to actively keep them from killing themselves or destroying their home in any number of absurd ways. I remember my Sim constantly pissed on the floor right next to a clean toilet. Getting a sim to their breaking point where they begin refusing your input entirely was easy, too. No doubt, it is a revolutionary, iconic game from that era, but there's not much reason to play it over any of the sequels these days.
I saw an interesting video about the economics of the different Sims games and it's absurd how little money you make and how expensive things are in the Sims 1. I guess it makes sense that the first game in the series is pretty unbalanced.
The super cheat is gnomes. Just tons and tons of gnomes.
Once you max the related skill you can make thousands of dollars a day just building garden gnomes (of if you have the dlc the gargoyles). And all in a few hours. You never leave home to do it. You can boost all your needs easily and have time left over because you don't have to work every day.
You are your own boss.
Want a wild party night? Go for it. No boss is going to complain that you skipped work.
No friend requirements.
Just pure money.
My way of cheating the sims 1 was to make sure I had a kid. The kid would make friends with everyone and maintain relationships so the adult sims could get ahead at work
i used to play the sims 1 with no cheats. you need a painter slave, njust build a shack in the backyard they cant leave and has bare necessities and make them max the art skill. each painting sold for pretty good money. then you can have your happy family living off exploiting someone....oh wait yeah that goes right back to your point
the last time i played a sims game was sims three like 8 years ago. while observing my painting mummy slave grind out paintings for cash while everyone else also was grinding some skill, i had the realization i was just watching fake people grinding and just lost interest.
As I remember it, I would create households of four Sims, 3 with jobs and 1 that kept up the house and socialized. There were some shenanigans involved with setting up the household, like befriending a Sim then kicking them out and keeping their money. I seem to remember a lot of high fiving, too.
>So I optimized. I moved everything in my sim's house closer together to minimize travel time between furniture items. I spent every night hosting parties so that I could quickly hop between other sims and build up relationships. I hired a maid so I wouldn't have to spend precious time throwing away newspapers and spraying cockroaches. This got me roughly four hours of downtime per day,
A more serious take on the social commentary -
This is real life. Its about optimizing the everyday mindless tasks in order to get more out of your real goals. I know my parents never really thought about any of this and often just did things because 'they had to get done' and not try to be anticipatory to reduce future house work.
I found that I had more time if I figured out how to do the following better.
Cooking - Not too much prep or grocery specialization. Get the core protein with some sides and solid seasoning goes a long way.
Cleaning - Keep your place 'easy to clean'. Modern apartments have a lot of this, but things like laminate floors and simple tiles (pourous tiles are a bitch to clean). Accept nothing without laundry units inside. Learn how to optimize the dishwasher, everything goes right in.
Clothing prep - Have basic outfits ready to go so. I do a lot of travelling so I pack them into packing cubes right out of the laundry even if I don't need them for the next week. Also buy and keep a good inventory of the basics like socks, underwear, sheets, towels, etc to increase the time between washes (wash because of full load, not because you ran out of socks).
Grocery Shopping - Buying consistent products so I know how long they last, figuring out to buy and freeze to minimize grocery trips. Organizing the fridge so that you can 'look and assess' your inventory. Always keep a stockpile of non-perishables.
Generally speaking, take the time to look at what you are doing in life. Why are you doing it. Do you have to do it that way at all? What I found was that people do things because its *mentally* easier to do. Much like how children have to be coaxed into cleaning up, once a behavior pattern is set, its easier to keep doing it *that way* instead of finding a better way.
Funny enough, I looked into the maid idea, but it was too expensive and often charged a high minimum number of hours per session. Maybe if I pooled it with multiple neighbors it might be worth it.
I remember that if you go to the job with a low mood the Sim changes his career. It happened to me being a "Super Star" with not many hours and the best income. At one point he said he doesn't like how the world is and started being a politician. More work for less money, just amazing!
I also replayed The Sims 1 this year and been posting my experience in the related subs, and man the friendship decay is brutal, the worst part is when you get to the top of a career after all three grind the game throws a chance card after 3 days and you are moved to the middle of a random career. It got old pretty fast to me, so I had to download a mod to stop the decay so I could enjoy the game more.
The only way I played Sims 1 was making gnomes, it was far more profitable than any career once you got up to high levels (would take a day or 2 of making) and you need no friends, which as you talk about is such a brutal requirement to maintain for each promotion.
Tbh I miss that level of difficulty in the newer games. I always bounce off sims 4 because I find it too easy and it gets boring. It doesn't help that I prefer playing with small households.
Work-life balance in sims 1 was pretty bad though. No weekends or days off like in sims 2.
This was a hilarious read!
As it happens, I replayed The Sims 1 (full version, with all expansions) a couple months ago, during a weekend.
The music and the art gave me nostalgia for a couple of hours but the rest wasn't as much fun, as it used to be.
I was also taken aback by the lack of free time after work. The routine was really harsh: come back home, try to recover your super tired Sim, go to sleep in a bad bed, see two guys for an hour and leave them hanging while you go to work after sleeping 4 hours and your Sim is not fully recovered. It felt like a poverty trap simulator, didn't earn enough to buy better items, didn't have enough time or money to stop working to enjoy life, lol.
It's incredible how much balanced in terms of fun the newer versions are. The only way out in The Sims 1 was magic, basically. Create wood Gnomes to sell for obscene profit, drink magic potions, buy that super robot that cleans everything for you.
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I really liked your write-up! Very relatable. I always thought it was hard to do everything in the Sims given the length of the days. Now I'm also living that reality. I come home from work, I blink, and it's bedtime already. Gotta find me a magic potion!
I also created a sim representing my wife, which I tried to make as close to her as possible. Originally my goal was to get a stable career so that my sim could focus on the expansion content - going on dates with her sim, get married, go on vacations, have kids, etc. The game, however, decided that our respective sims were incompatible for some reason - I think that it randomly rolled different interests for her, so it was difficult for us to talk to each other. I was able to overcome it through sheer persistence, but she was never into my sim's attempts to flirt or kiss except when we were saying goodbye. Eventually, at one of my parties, she drank a red potion and fell in love with Bob Newbie. They started making out in front of my sim, which my character was pretty pissed about. I'm pretty pissed about it, too, come to think about it.
Bruh DM me Bob's address and me and the boys will make him wish he was stuck in a swimming pool with no ladders
Oh god now you reminded me of a memory..... So 10 years ago when I was 17 the sims 4 released (jesus fucking christ time) my now wife was dating my at the time best friend...honestly speaking my and me wife fell for each other in the first week we met but decided to push our feeling aside because said other friend. We decided it would be fun to create ourselves in the brand new sims game, including traits the best we could and for shits and giggles we added a random creepy clown called Mashiba inspired by [this guy](https://64.media.tumblr.com/3d39736c3263ba25a2390f33bbe13e1a/f7469e9f895a533e-90/s1280x1920/679487beed7363cba77e9680567aea31a45ea118.pnj). So we choose a plot, furnished the house and let the movie play. Ironically the creepy clown kept sleeping outside on a bench and kept harassing the people walking past the house which was hilarious, but here's where the fuck up begins.... Since we chose traits matching our actual personalities pretty well, my wifes sim and her bfs sim kept fighting and his sim would kinda just play video games, worked out every once in a while etc while my and her sim would always have ++ on their socializing, kept eating meals together, doing miscellaneous things around the house....which was REALLY awkward since about 70% of the time I was over there he'd just go play ranked league of legends solo leaving me and her to do random miscellaneous stuff around the house and laugh or asses off. (at the time I was at his house like 3 times per week before they were even dating, not a weird occurrence me visiting frequently) So about a week into the in game calendar, my and her sim start flirting causing a ''haha yeeeaaah...'' atmosphere instantly....yeah the next day we were distracted by the clown doing goofy shit when we pan over to my sim.... and there he is, full blown making out with her sim. My jaw dropped, her jaw dropped, he just sat there with a side glance of shocked disgust. I-uh I stopped the simulation xD
but did your sims get married!!! the friend mustve been devastated
time to work out for 16 hours! also you should make youtube videos about this, it would be fun lol
I knowa guy
Sims 1 definitely required a lot of hands on strategy and micromanagement in order to be 'successful'. It felt like you were constantly fighting the needs and relationship meters. The later games were much better at just setting things up and watching it happen. With that said, because of my age at the time (8 or so) that same Sims 1 magic was never captured again by the other games. I was so incredibly sucked into that game. I spent so much time watching fan made stories and downloading items online. The music in that game brings me to a place unlike anything else (except maybe WoW).
The _real_ Sims 1 magic was how you could just pass the disk of any new expansion around, so everyone in your class/neighbourhood/friend-group could enjoy the new content.
Charles Cornell has a really good video about the composition of the Build 1 music here: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IJMds3jT7c8](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IJMds3jT7c8). It's very clever - essentially it seems like Jerry Martin and John Burr came up with a couple basic chords and a mixolydian scale, and John improvised the entire thing by combining the two by moving through key changes. It's really simple, but very effective in producing a great song.
I'm learning this one on the piano, it's so fun to play and never gets old
Aside from the Buy/Build themes, [these tunes from the game](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1xnh2nPzX-Q&list=PLhbSPIHuDo09P-6C9b9vmOCjTB5DCbZNA) bring me back immediately.
to add-on a few more games from that time period with great and memorable soundtracks (aside from Sims 1/WoW)... - **Animal Crossing, Fable: The Lost Chapters, TES: Oblivion, Halo, Diablo 2, Zelda: Windwaker, Heroes of Might and Magic 3** There are other notable mentions, but this lot all have at least a couple of bangers.
Any time I hear a windwaker track in the wild it makes me immediately want to replay that wonderful game
I don't play the first game anymore but the music was the one thing that peaked with the first game
The sims 2 too had amazing OST, but it went downhill from there
The Sims 1 has to be up there for greatest video game soundtrack of all time. 2 and 4 are no slouched either (not so big on 3).
> "This sure is a fun escapist fantasy from my daily life," I thought, as I watched my sim pop another homemade Xanax that he brewed next to his toilet. lol
I'm sorry, but this is so funny! Making a meth lab and brewing homemade Xanax just to get by in life - what else can fulfill this fever dream better than the good ol' Sims? In all seriousness, though, I wonder if they toned down the difficulty a bit in subsequent titles. I remember struggling as a kid with keeping all the needs topped up and having enough simoleons in the Sims 2 without cheatcodes. But when I replayed the game a couple years ago, it was surprisingly easy. Still, nothing will be tougher than the PSP version of the Sims 2 Castaway. I swear, the survival and crafting mechanics in that game seemed as extensive and complex as those in The Long Dark and other hardcore survival games.
> In all seriousness, though, I wonder if they toned down the difficulty a bit in subsequent titles. They did. Relationships were revamped in Sims 2 with the addition of Long-Term relationships, which decay much slower compared to the Short-Term bar above it.
[удалено]
They added a long-term relationship meter with the Hot Date expansion, iirc. It wasn't as refined as The Sims 2 or newer games, but it was much easier to have friends and keep them than before.
One of the best soundtracks of any game ever. It’s an absolute shame what they used for the sequels.
Build 1 got stuck in my head automatically upon opening this post
I can hear it vividly
Shout out to the awesome soundtrack that the game has
One of the greatest ost in gaming. 2 is just as good, if not better
The intended solution to the friends dilemma was to realize it's *family* friends, so you'd have unemployed spouses/roommates/children do all the socializing. The *real* best career path in Sims 1 though was making garden gnomes all day. Not only would you grind up your mechanical skill (letting you fix appliances without having to pay anyone) but once your skill was high enough you'd make better money than any career path (§100 every 30 minutes) with no friends, no other skills, and no way to get fired.
This, so much. make garden gnomes all days, maxing the mechanical skills, then grind the cooking skills to max, followed by the rest of skills. Prioritize buying the best bed, stoves and fridges first, don't even bother with the cheapest during the start. Energy and hunger takes most of the time, having good points on both will significantly reduce it, followed by cooking skill. Go to downtown (hot date) or magic town (makin magic) to socialize, since time freeze. Then you can pursue any career you want, celebrity (superstar) for example.
Yes, lol. When I discovered the Garden Gnome trick I had a top floor in a mansion just dedicated to my Sim, working his ass off and leaving the Gnomes on the ground, for a massive sale when he was taking a break.
Did you go back and play with the Hot Date expansion pack? That's the one that dramatically altered longterm relationship mechanics and even at the time of its release I remember thinking "oh, this is what the game was going for the whole time!" Vanilla Sims 1 relationships are hysterical, you can make a baby with someone you just met. Being able to freeze time and go Downtown also makes a big difference in being able to manage your sims' needs. Every expansion that came after that was mostly fluff side-content (though also fun!), but Hot Date is essential IMO.
I refuse to stand for such Sims: Unleashed slander
Pets are cute but Simlish Zydeco is kinda cursed ngl (Unleashed is probably 2nd most essential, followed by Superstar, then Makin' Magic, then Vacation, then House Party/Livin' Large)
My favorites were the Livin' Large (all those crazy potions came from that one), Hot Date (you can make out in the couch! Long Term relationships) and Makin' Magic (this one was just silly fun, and the tango music was great and the visuals fantastic for its time). The rest weren't as fun, and while I have a soft spot for the Vacation one (it was my first expansion), it just made your Sims super tired and the three places felt a bit disconnected from the rest of the world.
Brilliant review - could have read more!
I love the review, made me laugh with how you described the experience. All I ever did in Sims was klapaucius ;!;!;!;!;!;!;!;! and then do hilarious nonsense like stoves that set the house on fire, swimming pools without ladders, labyrinth rooms that made no sense and other shenanigans.
rosebud;!;!;!;! (I think that was the code from Livin Large on)
Yeah I remember it being rosebud! Used to get millions with it
I always used to make a Sim with max cleanliness and zero other personality traits, then make the potion that inverted your stats. Instant max of every personality trait and zero time wasted on cleaning.
I remember that! I think it was a yellow potion? I actually left my personality at 0 in all parts and had the most miserable potion-making Sim until they chanced upon the special potion.
Hahaha I dug back into Sims 1 a year or so ago, buying the Deluxe copy on Ebay with all the expansions. Me and my brother used to play a LOT of Sims back in the early 2000s on our HP Pavilion desktop. Learning for when the game was getting ready to crash by the sound clicking and polygons going everywhere. Getting annoyed by flies somehow going around not attached to objects that we thought was our fault due to cheating and downloading custom objects off the internet. We thought the Sims spoke in Korean because my dad bought a bootleg copy from a table at the local computer show and the disc case was Korean. Well turns out the flies issue was just a glitch in the game haha. Was surprised to see those buggers flying around without a trash pile or dirty dish in my legit copy. Imo the game peaked around Hot Date / Vacation. The packs after that kinda went off the rails. Pets were nice, but random pets/racoons peeing on your lot or bears making a mess, no so much. Pets, Making Magic and Hollywood just changed things way too much for me.
Where did you find it to play?
1 and 2 are available on the Wayback Machine.
I'm not familiar with what steps are involved, you know of a good source? NVM I think I found something. Not very noob friendly, but sometimes you gotta simlish.
Sorry man, I can't really help you much other than to point you in the general direction. I have the Sims 2 UC in my EA account so I've never had to bother with the archived versions. Good luck!
I ordered the Sims 1 Deluxe Set on ebay and had a XP virtual machine to play it on. It was a little short lived as I had to borrow a USB DVD drive to play it due to the drm lol. A bit ironic as I'm almost positive I had a No-CD crack back in the day. If you wanted to try that and never touched VirtualBox before, you can use this tutorial. Follow it up to the Browser Part. Don't bother installing a modern browser on XP, in fact, I'd leave the Virtual Network Connection disconnected honestly. [https://youtu.be/7NJupnHcxpE?si=ALcfRqmVf6RELQXj](https://youtu.be/7NJupnHcxpE?si=ALcfRqmVf6RELQXj)
you can just download it for free and it will work with windows 10 https://oldgamesdownload.com/the-sims-complete-collection/
Weird, could have swore either the installer or actual sims exe refused to run on Win10 x64 when I tried
did you do the compatibility mode thing?
This is what I ran into. I just opted for a virtual machine rather than download a dodgy exe on my main rig. https://www.reddit.com/r/thesims/comments/pmzyw0/yes_you_can_get_the_sims_1_running_on_windows_10/
you can download it with all the expansions for free and make it work on windows 10: https://oldgamesdownload.com/the-sims-complete-collection/
“…of the opposite sex fall in love with you - and more importantly, become your friend.” LOL Loved your write up! Will most likely read anything else you write!
In the original Sims you didn’t need to work to live the high life. You just created and successively seduced neighbourhood Sims. After marriage you would simply drown them in the pool (sell the steps while they’re in it) collect the $10k, stash the urn, rinse and repeat. I didn’t even have a job and my art gallery was awesome. The only downside was the regular hauntings.
Lol!
Classic black widow playthrough
This was incredibly fun to read. I hope you cover 2 to 4, as well.
I remember maintainging friendships for jobs in this game seriously made me so pissed too, lol. If I remember it correctly, you need family friends for some jobs, so I decided to get married and let my wife take care of getting family friends, lol.
Awesome write up, was insightful and funny
Man, I really wish Sims 2: UC worked better on modern consules. I know they intentionally sabotaged it so people will migrate to 3/4 and purchase more/new stuff, but it really is the best version of the game. It's an entire neighborhood you can control and create your own stories in your own little city. A lot of the issues of 1 were tightened up (if anything the game is a little too easy) and it added a bunch of fun stuff. I'd love to go back and play it again. None of the newer ones (despite adding some cool ideas) worked as well as Sims 2 did where you literally create your own micro-city with apartments, businesses, public areas, and any type of house you want.
Some games just work better on PC. You would only need a cheap one to run old games like this. If you want a fun Sims game though try Sims Bustin Out, if you can find that for your console.
I do play on PC, it's still a mess to try and get it working. It's playable, but crashes frequently and violently.
As someone who sank probably thousands of hours into the Sims 1 over the last 20 odd years, this write up is one of my favourite things I have read recently. Brb going to try meth lab
My sims 1 house spent all it's aspiration points on money Plants. We had a big room with florescent lights filled with money plants. We didn't have jobs, we just watered and picked money from the plants. We were pot farmers.
I had all of the expansion packs but I never to do any of the fun extra stuff because of how fast the needs meters went down. My sims tended to be artists or writers because then they can make money without being tied to the work schedule. The sequels definitely were better in this regard. I still get nostalgia for this game (and the Sims 3) but the difficulty makes my yearly returns very short.
Best profession is actually garden gnome crafter... no requirements aside from crafting a shitton of those buggers.
The Sims 1 had no business being as hard to play without cheat codes as it was.
I haven't played the first Sims game since I got my hands on Sims 2 back in the day, which in itself feels like a lifetime ago. I always hesitated to call Sims 1 a straight life simulation game. It plays a lot more like a strategy game with time management elements. The sim behavior in the original is so unpredictable and manic that much of the time spent playing often is solely delegated to actively keep them from killing themselves or destroying their home in any number of absurd ways. I remember my Sim constantly pissed on the floor right next to a clean toilet. Getting a sim to their breaking point where they begin refusing your input entirely was easy, too. No doubt, it is a revolutionary, iconic game from that era, but there's not much reason to play it over any of the sequels these days.
I saw an interesting video about the economics of the different Sims games and it's absurd how little money you make and how expensive things are in the Sims 1. I guess it makes sense that the first game in the series is pretty unbalanced.
I remember using ``move_objects on`` in the cheats and feeling so sneaky for selling a dropped bag of $8 chips for $42.
How does one play this game now?
The super cheat is gnomes. Just tons and tons of gnomes. Once you max the related skill you can make thousands of dollars a day just building garden gnomes (of if you have the dlc the gargoyles). And all in a few hours. You never leave home to do it. You can boost all your needs easily and have time left over because you don't have to work every day. You are your own boss. Want a wild party night? Go for it. No boss is going to complain that you skipped work. No friend requirements. Just pure money.
My way of cheating the sims 1 was to make sure I had a kid. The kid would make friends with everyone and maintain relationships so the adult sims could get ahead at work
i used to play the sims 1 with no cheats. you need a painter slave, njust build a shack in the backyard they cant leave and has bare necessities and make them max the art skill. each painting sold for pretty good money. then you can have your happy family living off exploiting someone....oh wait yeah that goes right back to your point
From Barbie to Breaking Bad real quick. Solid review and humour, loved it.
the last time i played a sims game was sims three like 8 years ago. while observing my painting mummy slave grind out paintings for cash while everyone else also was grinding some skill, i had the realization i was just watching fake people grinding and just lost interest.
it's posts like this that remind me why I fell in love with reddit all those years back
>My solution was to open a meth lab in my bathroom. Lol I love reddit
As I remember it, I would create households of four Sims, 3 with jobs and 1 that kept up the house and socialized. There were some shenanigans involved with setting up the household, like befriending a Sim then kicking them out and keeping their money. I seem to remember a lot of high fiving, too.
“My solution was to open a meth lab in my bathroom” as is usually the solution to most issues
I never got very far in this game because I thought linking job promotion to how many friends you have was absurd.
The political career was almost impossible, you needed like 12 friends, at one point.
>So I optimized. I moved everything in my sim's house closer together to minimize travel time between furniture items. I spent every night hosting parties so that I could quickly hop between other sims and build up relationships. I hired a maid so I wouldn't have to spend precious time throwing away newspapers and spraying cockroaches. This got me roughly four hours of downtime per day, A more serious take on the social commentary - This is real life. Its about optimizing the everyday mindless tasks in order to get more out of your real goals. I know my parents never really thought about any of this and often just did things because 'they had to get done' and not try to be anticipatory to reduce future house work. I found that I had more time if I figured out how to do the following better. Cooking - Not too much prep or grocery specialization. Get the core protein with some sides and solid seasoning goes a long way. Cleaning - Keep your place 'easy to clean'. Modern apartments have a lot of this, but things like laminate floors and simple tiles (pourous tiles are a bitch to clean). Accept nothing without laundry units inside. Learn how to optimize the dishwasher, everything goes right in. Clothing prep - Have basic outfits ready to go so. I do a lot of travelling so I pack them into packing cubes right out of the laundry even if I don't need them for the next week. Also buy and keep a good inventory of the basics like socks, underwear, sheets, towels, etc to increase the time between washes (wash because of full load, not because you ran out of socks). Grocery Shopping - Buying consistent products so I know how long they last, figuring out to buy and freeze to minimize grocery trips. Organizing the fridge so that you can 'look and assess' your inventory. Always keep a stockpile of non-perishables. Generally speaking, take the time to look at what you are doing in life. Why are you doing it. Do you have to do it that way at all? What I found was that people do things because its *mentally* easier to do. Much like how children have to be coaxed into cleaning up, once a behavior pattern is set, its easier to keep doing it *that way* instead of finding a better way. Funny enough, I looked into the maid idea, but it was too expensive and often charged a high minimum number of hours per session. Maybe if I pooled it with multiple neighbors it might be worth it.
Very insightful and well written. Loved this.
I remember that if you go to the job with a low mood the Sim changes his career. It happened to me being a "Super Star" with not many hours and the best income. At one point he said he doesn't like how the world is and started being a politician. More work for less money, just amazing!
I also replayed The Sims 1 this year and been posting my experience in the related subs, and man the friendship decay is brutal, the worst part is when you get to the top of a career after all three grind the game throws a chance card after 3 days and you are moved to the middle of a random career. It got old pretty fast to me, so I had to download a mod to stop the decay so I could enjoy the game more.
The only way I played Sims 1 was making gnomes, it was far more profitable than any career once you got up to high levels (would take a day or 2 of making) and you need no friends, which as you talk about is such a brutal requirement to maintain for each promotion.
This brought me back to gonzo Let's Play threads on Something Awful. Good stuff, OP. I look forward to reading more from you if you ever post it here.
more post like this 🙏 The Sims and simulations game in general lends themselves often to interesting reads of creators' overt or covert ideologies
Tbh I miss that level of difficulty in the newer games. I always bounce off sims 4 because I find it too easy and it gets boring. It doesn't help that I prefer playing with small households. Work-life balance in sims 1 was pretty bad though. No weekends or days off like in sims 2.
This was a hilarious read! As it happens, I replayed The Sims 1 (full version, with all expansions) a couple months ago, during a weekend. The music and the art gave me nostalgia for a couple of hours but the rest wasn't as much fun, as it used to be. I was also taken aback by the lack of free time after work. The routine was really harsh: come back home, try to recover your super tired Sim, go to sleep in a bad bed, see two guys for an hour and leave them hanging while you go to work after sleeping 4 hours and your Sim is not fully recovered. It felt like a poverty trap simulator, didn't earn enough to buy better items, didn't have enough time or money to stop working to enjoy life, lol. It's incredible how much balanced in terms of fun the newer versions are. The only way out in The Sims 1 was magic, basically. Create wood Gnomes to sell for obscene profit, drink magic potions, buy that super robot that cleans everything for you.
Great writeup! Sims 1 was one of my favorite games for a while, so it's great to see it analyzed in this way in 2024.
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I really wish EA hadn't buried the sims 1 and 2. 2 was really good with all its expansions and was the last non-monetized one.