Bounce Without Launch

Without question, the video game I've logged the most hours with, by far, is Sim City 4.  I've always been a fan of the series, from the original that I had on floppy disk all the way through 4.  The fourth edition of the game came out well over 10 years ago and I had consistently played it up until the spring of this year.  Its expansive maps and large on-line user community which provided custom content kept the game fresh over the years.  Plus the sequel(s?) received less than stellar reviews, making the question to upgrade to the newest edition an easy one to answer.

When my PC had a hardware failure and essentially died in October of 2014, I was forced to make a decision on which computer to buy to replace it.  At the time, it was difficult to find anything Windows-based within reason that wasn't Windows 8, which I wasn't interested in.  Because of this I decided to go with Mac, and generally I think that has been a good decision.  However, this essentially meant giving up on Sim City 4.  Sure, they had an original Mac port but I read it was terrible.  So suffice it to say that I was surprised to see Sim City 4 in the app store being released by a company called Aspyr.  This version was only $20 and got good reviews on the app store, so I decided to try it out.  I was not disappointed at first.

First off, the game looked great.  The graphics, while the same, had definitely underwent an overhaul.   Everything looked sharper and crisper.  The cities looked great, especially at night.  Secondly, the game ran great as well.  It was fast and never crashed, something I cannot say about its Windows counterparts that I ran on various different Windows machines.

I was thrilled to be able to continue my city building.  For 16 months I worked on a region that was loosely based on San Francisco's Bay Area.  I had pushed the population up to 2.9 million.  I even started using mods again, most of which were designed for the Windows version of the game, but some of which worked on Aspyr's Mac version.  Then last winter I got busy and didn't play the game for a few months.  When I went back to play the game again, something odd happened - the program wouldn't launch.  When I click on the icon, it bounces briefly on the dock and a window pops up that says "Verifying Sim City 4 Deluxe Edition," then disappears and nothing happens.  Nothing.

When I Google this problem I come up with absolutely no information which is strange.  Most of what comes up are issues people were having back in 2012 with the original Maxis Mac port.  Literally nothing comes up about this problem regarding the newer Aspyr version.  The app store reviews contain a lot of complaints regarding the issue but no real solution to the problem.  Seems like there was an update that occurred in the background which had an issue with any mods that were installed.  But even getting rid of the mods doesn't seem to fix the problem.  This is incredibly frustrating and makes me think, at this point with the game being over 10 years old, I may never be able to play it again.  And while the online modding community is part of what made the game great, I can't help but to think this problem, so severe that the game won't even start, would never happen on a console.

The Mini NES

Nintendo is releasing this mini version of the NES this fall.  Not only does the new release look like a scaled version of their classic 1980s console, it comes pre-loaded with 30 classic NES games!  I am super excited about this.  For a variety of reasons I rarely play games anymore.  Probably the biggest reason is that today's games are too complex to just sit down and play and enjoy.  Their learning curve is too steep and requires too much effort to really get into the game.  I think this is one of the things that make classic games so appealing to me.  For the most part, they can be picked up and played with minimal effort.  Of course, the biggest appeal is the nostalgia.  The price for this device is $60, which I think is right.  I'm almost for sure going to pick one up.  It comes with HDMI output, so I am hoping the games look at least decent on a modern TV.  Anyone who has tried playing any console prior to the PS2 knows that older consoles generally look pretty bad on modern TVs.  At any rate, what a cool idea.

Dog Days Of Summer

We've reached that time of summer when baseball's all-star game is being played.  The all-star break is an absolute black hole in the sports landscape, where the only major league playing takes a break.  We're somewhat lucky this year as the olympic trials have been going on, however.  I still enjoy the olympics, not so much for the major sports, but for the more fringe sports that I don't typically pay attention to, such as track & field and women's gymnastics.  Additionally, the weather has turned uncomfortably hot and my grass is now partially brown.  Hence, the two month writer's block.  I've either been too busy to write, or not busy enough to have anything to write about.  I'm going to try to get back on the wagon. Cheers!