| Mail |

You might also like: WoW Insider, Massively, and more

More Sites You Might Like

/ Register

Joystiq

SimCastle and SimMars scrapped in favor of The Sims

by Griffin McElroy on Oct 12th 2009 4:00PM

After breaking our hearts by showing us the Road Rash remake which never will be, the gaming industry's Encyclopedia Brown, supererogatory, dug up another pair of intriguing titles which sadly never saw the light of day. The personal blog of game designer Ward Moore mentions two Sim games which were ultimately canceled in order to focus on the blockbuster The Sims franchise: SimCastle, a game based on the SimTown engine set in medieval times, and SimMars, which ... simulated life on Mars, we guess?

Moore's blog included a look at the called-off Martian endeavor, seen above. The blog of illustrator Corey Keller includes a few conceptual designs from SimCastle, one of which can be seen after the jump. SimAnt, which perplexingly somehow got made while these two promising titles didn't, can be seen here. Life can be awfully unfair at times.

Source

Tags: cancelled, ea, Electronic-Arts, maxis, sim, simcastle, simmars, sims, simulation

Reader Comments (39)

What I would love to see is a remake of Lords of the Realm--or a third installment.

Forgot to add that I'd rather see Lords of the Realm than a Sim Castle game...

There was a third Lords of the Realm installment. Unfortunately, it was terrible. I had a lot of fun with LOTR 2 back in the day.

I actually wondered about that when I wrote my second post. The second game is still great--I play it occasionally on my laptop.

Sorry to tell you this, but Lords of the Realm 3 was made, and the game was absolutely horrible. It removed everything you loved about LotR2 and turned it into a pure RTS that used money only to buy back captured units and completely stripped away the farming and smithing elements and turned castle building into a simple "drop cash, castle appears" affair.

You can insult SimAnt all you want, Joystiq, but if you say one foul word about SimFarm it's gonna come down to fisticuffs.

Hey, SimAnt is the shit. Nothing quite like fighting an ant war on dozens of fronts while trying to avoid the deadly spider and vacuum cleaner.

SimAnt was great, except when you got eaten by the spider, then you could see it's face. I'd flip out and cry =(

SimAnt was great; don't get me wrong. But SimFarm allowed you to fly your crop duster and drop pesticides over the nearby town, or -- if you were like me -- crash it into buildings. It allowed you to be a maniacal farmer, which is undeniably badass.

The SimFarm crop futures markets were a fantastic introduction to economics.

@whymog

You just convinced me to play a game I otherwise would have disregarded for the rest of my life.

I loved SimFarm and would have bought SimMars (although I did buy The Sims so I guess it worked out for Maxis)...

@Anthology - That's why I'm here. Enjoy.

SimAnt was awesome. I don't know what Joystiq is talking about.

I would have bought SimMars, I always had a thing for the god of war.

I loved Sim Tower. Can we get that back? iPhone/DS/PS3orLive download title.. something? That game was addictive as heck.

Shift-Ctrl-Alt for a three-story lobby!

There was another Tower game for DS released in Japan. It seemed kind of neat but the language barrier didn't help matters.

Don't forget, first thing is to build a lobby in the very bottom left, gave you a ton of money to start with.

Hear hear! That's the first thing I thought of when I read the summary...I LOVED SimTower. Such a good game. SimAnt was a ton of fun too. I dunno what Joystiq is complaining about here. I remember sneaking in games of that during computer class in 5th grade. Knowing more about computers than the computer teacher knows FTW.

Hey, don't talk crap about SimAnt. A few months ago when I got a bunch of ants in my apartment, and I knew not to mess with the carpet around the traps I set out as ants work off scent - which I learned from playing a boatload of SimAnt!

In the event I ever become a mayor, I also learned not to put microwave power plants in a densely populated area thanks to SimCity 3000.

I hate that SimMars never got made. I remember when that game was still supposedly in development, a coon's age ago. =(

I want a new Simctiy, but SimMars would tide me over, I remember playing Alpha Centurai when I was younger, perhaps too young for it and it confused the hell out of me, but I liked making the custom ships.
SimCastle, well currently having a shot with Majesty I guess thats close enough

Another reason why the Sims needs to go into a coma for 2 years...

I freaking loved SimAnt, it and SimEarth are my two favorite entries in the line.

I still have Ant around somewhere...

I agree. SimEarth was great for those casual gaming times. Maybe I can get it running on my PSP using DosBox.

simant was awesome wtf man!

Watching the linked Road Rash video still brings a tear to my eye... even in that unfinished state it still looks awesome :[
Life IS unfair!

SimMars looks like a dead-on high res version of Sierra's Outpost, for those who played that back in the day...

And Castles and Castles 2 were great Interplay games years ago as well..

Would definitely be cool to see a re-imagining of either of those concepts, since they surely wont be getting my money for more Sims.

SimCity5 and a new SimAnt would be so awesome

sim city societies sucked, and will wright left maxis, so sim city 5 doesnt look too hopeful. the good news is ive heard a lot of good things about cities xl. its not a piece of shit like city life was and it might even be out already

Hey, why do these sound familiar?
http://www.mobygames.com/game/dos/simcity-graphics-set-1-ancient-cities
http://www.mobygames.com/game/dos/simcity-graphics-set-2-future-cities

:)

I had that Future Cities pack too. The moon tileset was pretty awesome back then.

I really wish they made Sim Mars. My love of management/business simulation games and space exploration would have been satisfied for a very long time.

Did anyone ever make a similar type of game?

Outpost: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Outpost_%28video_game%29

SimMars actually began as a mod for sim city 4 (and perhaps earlier simcity games too). will wright was interested in the idea of a space colonization sim, and actually incorporated some of his ideas into spore, but im sure the reality of an actual SimMars died when he left maxis.

I still have and love to play SimPark. I learned so much about plants in that game it's astounding. Like i learned the evilness of Kudzu before I even knew what Kudzu was. DAMN YOU KUDZUUUUUUU!!!!

Stronghold, Settlers and ANNO already satisfy my SimCastle need.

Stronghold mostly though, and I mean the original, the sequel sucked ass and I couldn't really put my finger to why. It just didn't "feel" right.

Darnit... Both of those sound a lot more fun than The Sims.

Sorry, you must be logged in to leave a comment.

Breaking News

SimCastle and SimMars scrapped in favor of The Sims

Reader Comments (39)

Posted: Oct 12th 2009 4:05PM Rick James said

Posted: Oct 12th 2009 4:05PM Rick James said

Posted: Oct 12th 2009 4:20PM (Unverified) said

Posted: Oct 12th 2009 4:22PM Rick James said

Posted: Oct 12th 2009 5:33PM LaughingTarget said

Posted: Oct 12th 2009 4:06PM whymog said

Posted: Oct 12th 2009 4:08PM quiggy said

Posted: Oct 12th 2009 4:14PM stacky said

Posted: Oct 12th 2009 4:18PM whymog said

Posted: Oct 12th 2009 4:22PM (Unverified) said

Posted: Oct 12th 2009 5:21PM Anthology said

Posted: Oct 12th 2009 5:42PM Misframed said

Posted: Oct 12th 2009 5:47PM whymog said

Posted: Oct 12th 2009 7:29PM iofthestorm said

Posted: Oct 12th 2009 4:08PM Gaming Expert said

Posted: Oct 12th 2009 4:09PM Freak mojo said

Posted: Oct 12th 2009 4:37PM (Unverified) said

Posted: Oct 12th 2009 4:42PM Mmmmz said

Posted: Oct 12th 2009 4:45PM ehisforadam said

Posted: Oct 13th 2009 3:39PM busydoinnothin said

Posted: Oct 12th 2009 4:26PM ducttapeBigSexy said

Posted: Oct 12th 2009 4:31PM (Unverified) said

Posted: Oct 12th 2009 4:41PM (Unverified) said

Posted: Oct 12th 2009 4:43PM Mmmmz said

Posted: Oct 12th 2009 4:52PM Courtney said

Posted: Oct 12th 2009 4:57PM nikescar said

Posted: Oct 12th 2009 4:57PM (Unverified) said

Posted: Oct 12th 2009 5:01PM MonkeyPunch said

Posted: Oct 12th 2009 5:28PM (Unverified) said

Posted: Oct 12th 2009 5:41PM rTwelve said

Posted: Oct 12th 2009 7:33PM INNUENDO 64 said

Posted: Oct 12th 2009 6:09PM Warlock said

Posted: Oct 12th 2009 7:04PM AeroCmdr said

Posted: Oct 12th 2009 10:11PM (Unverified) said

Posted: Oct 12th 2009 7:30PM INNUENDO 64 said

Posted: Oct 13th 2009 1:27AM Mitsuo said

Posted: Oct 13th 2009 7:38AM iHavePants said

Posted: Oct 13th 2009 7:39AM iHavePants said

Posted: Oct 13th 2009 8:57AM Vagari said

Info

Description

MSRP

Release Date

Genre

Developer

Publisher

Rating

Breaking News

Double Fine Kickstarter passes $1 million in under 24 hours, breaking yet another record

Featured Stories

Ghost Recon: Future Soldier brings information warfare to the front

Rhythm Heaven Fever review: Crazy into you

Remedy not done with Alan Wake

The most popular postsin the last 7 days

Engadget

TUAW

Massively

WoW

The most popular posts
in the last 7 days