SimCity has a port for the Super Nintendo Entertainment System, developed by Nintendo EAD and Intelligent Systems, with input from Maxis. It was initially released in Japan on April 26, 1991, before releasing in North America on August 23 as one of the launch titles for the SNES, and releasing in Europe the following year.
While it otherwise plays similarly to the original computer game, it still has a number of differences. One of which is an animated mascot named Dr. Wright (named for Maxis founder Will Wright), as well as some Nintendo-themed changes. For instance, when the city reaches Metropolis status, you can place a Mario statue in the city. The Monster disaster was also changed from a Godzilla-like being to Bowser. It would receive a Satellaview version in August 1996, called BS SimCity Machizukuri Taikai, and Dr. Wright eventually got featured as an assist trophy in the Super Smash Bros. series since Brawl.
The SNES port contains examples of:
- Adaptation Expansion: The rewards system is introduced here. Also, introduced the only recognized mascot of the series, Dr. Wright. Think of him as precursor to the education, transit, and health czars in subsequent games.
- Adapted Out: The Dullsville and Hamburg scenarios are not present. However, the Las Vegas bonus scenario has a similar concept to the latter.
- Colour-Coded for Your Convenience: Where the original game usually has green represent Residential zones, this port changed the colour to red.
- Cosmetic Award: The "View" gift, while not costing anything, merely allows you to see your city tilted at an angle as if on a tabletop. It also disables pop-up notifications regarding disasters, pollution warnings, and the like, which can be handy if you just want to pass time as the city grows.
- The Cameo: You're able to erect a statue in Mario's honor. There is also a disaster where Bowser rips through the city looking for the portly hero. If the statue is present when Bowser arrives he'll snatch the statue and leave your city alone.
- Endless Game: Outside of the scenarios (other than Freeland), there is no way to "win" Simcity. The game will simply keep going on until the player decides to stop playing. The closest thing to a victory condition is building a city that achieves megalopolis status, which happens when the population hits 500,000. Though you get an additional congratulatory message if you go beyond that to reach 600,000.
- Exposition Fairy: Dr. Wright.
- Felony Misdemeanor: You can get fired in a non-scenario situation, not by giving your city the highest tax rate in the world, not by letting crime take over your city, not by letting pollution create a hole in the ozone layer right over your city, not even by demolishing the entire city yourself, but by failing to make your loan payment at the end of a year.
- Gone Horribly Right: Having high land value is good, because they attract wealthier citizens and businesses to provide more tax revenue to your city. However, if you let your land values get too high, you'll get citizens complaining about Housing Costs (meaning that it's too expensive to live in your city). One of Dr. Wright's suggestions for this is to put Commercial Zones closer to Residential ones.
- Jumpscare:
- The Plane Crash disaster, which is a loud "WHOOSH!" (the jet engine) followed by a "BOOM!" (the crash itself). It can be quite startling if you're minding your own business and it occurs without manually triggering it from the Disaster Menu, especially since it doesn't have to happen onscreen to take effect. And once you do build an Airport, the planes WILL crash randomly, sooner or later, especially since there's no way to control the airplane or helicopter's movements to make them stop occasionally running into each other.
- The "Disaster" music theme
can be quite startling since it begins with loud emergency vehicle sirens.
- Leitmotif: Each city size has its own background music. Additionally, the music varies slightly with the season, being more mellow in winter, for example.
- Loads and Loads of Loading: When starting a new city from scratch, you have 1,000 maps to choose from. Problem is, you'll have to load each individual map and it takes a loooong time to do so. Fortunately, if you have the instruction manual, there's a special section with thumbnails of each map so you can eyeball them instead of loading each one in-game.
- Stop Poking Me!: You can click on Dr. Wright's icon in the game's HUD to ask for advice. However, if you click and exit too many times in short succession, he'll get annoyed and dress you down with a message while having his back turned to you."Enough is enough! You're the one getting all the fame and glory around here. You should be the one who makes the decisions. Remember, elections are just around the corner!"
- Super-Deformed: Dr. Wright is a very Japanese touch to an otherwise-Western game.
- Theme-and-Variations Soundtrack: This version features a heavily modified version of the melody for each stage of the city.
- Unending End Card: There is an option to "quit the game", which would lead to a "see you later" card accepting no input from the controller. Well, it SEEMS like it isn't accepting input, anyway - you can put in a code to reach the debug menu from this screen.
- Useless Item: Hospitals will randomly occupy a newly developing residential zone, but they will have no benefit on your city, taking away valuable space until bulldozed. Schools would occupy the same niche, but by getting three, six, and nine of them at once, you get the gift of libraries which help develop your other residential zones. Once you got the libraries, though, the schools were fair game to demolish. However, the instruction manual warns you that if you bulldoze too many schools and hospitals a disaster might be triggered.
- Violation of Common Sense:
- Just as in the original PC game, the SNES port had a strategy of building a city with no roads and just strictly with train tracks; thus eliminating complaints about traffic and reducing pollution in your city. In fact, the SNES game's instruction manual blatantly encourages this.
- While a seaport and an airport are eventually required to be built in a city, they do not need to be powered. This will prevent them from spawning boats and aircraft, which in turn prevents shipwrecks and plane crashes from occurring. Further, a seaport can be placed anywhere on the map; it does not need to be near water.
- There are two scenario maps without water, and yes: a seaport is still required in them.
- You Require More Vespene Gas: There is a near Game-Breaking Bug where upon loading any saved city, the electricity will start off as non-existent for 5 seconds before restoring itself. This can have a severe effect on certain blocks, easily dropping a C-3 High building down to a C-1 Low for example or dropping a growing R-2 High to low density housing. Of course as a cartridge game with a very niche following, this bug was never fixed. You can actually get ahead of this by IMMEDIATELY setting the game to pause upon load, letting everything load in properly for a minute or so, then setting the game speed back, but who figured that one out in the early '90s?