This article has a talk page!SimCity 3000, the third edition of the popular city-building series, was overlooked by most fans. It was probably one of the most out-of-place SimCity entries, with its jazzy soundtrack, goofy caricatures, bothersome petitioners, and memorable news ticker that gave useless information 95% of the time.
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Hidden Autorun Art#
A more or less recurring trope in games developed by Maxis around Y2K is the presence of a hidden illustration depicting the company's founding father, Will Wright, somewhat in the respective context of the game the disc is of. SimCity 3000 's LAUNCHER.EXE is by no means an exception. Though overlooked by some, clicking the application's Maxis logo opens the dialog box ABOUTDLG, containing but 204.BMP: Wright drawn in the same fashion as the City Advisors in game.
Something similar is also true in The Sims and its MMO release.
Unused Mouse Cursors#
There are some mouse cursor graphics that are never used. Some of them hint towards certain functionalities that had been planned but then scrapped during development.
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Looks similar to the used dispatch police and dispatch firefighters cursors. |
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Fountains use the small park cursor. It is unknown why this fountain cursor isn't used instead. |
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Instead of placing tunnels, the game automatically creates tunnels depending on how you place roads across mountains. SimCity 2000 had a dedicated tunnel tool. |
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A cursor for creating signs like in SimCity 2000. |
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When placing the stadium, the rewards cursor is used instead. |
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The final game uses a plant tree cursor which lets you plant one tree at a time. A tool like this was used in SimCity 2000's terrain editing mode. |
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The final game uses separate lower terrain and raise terrain cursors. A combined tool like this depicts was available in SimCity 2000. |
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A cursor for creating rivers. This is another tool that was available in SimCity 2000's terrain editing mode. |
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This cursor is titled wand of destruction, which might have been an early cursor for demolishing things. The final game uses a bulldozer cursor. |
Unused Text#
Debug Menu Text#
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At 0xFCDF0 in SC3.exe, there is some text which was likely used for a debug menu during development, nicknamed "Gonzo" for some reason.
Gonzo Debug Window
Debug Window Shown.
Debug Window Hidden.Unused Ticker Messages#
Some very generic placeholder messages for the tickers.
End Generic Newsticker Messages here
Test UI Msg 1I Msg 1Just Tastes Better
TEXT TO REPLACEed Backwards Is SIX AM?
TEXT TO REPLACErolling Entertainment
EMPTY TEXTUnused Music#
SimCity 2000 Theme
A rendition of the SimCity 2000 credits music is found as SC2KBUG.XA. It can be enabled in-game by changing the four numbers at the end of the "SimCity 2000 Theme" line in the [Music] section of the game's AUDIO.INI file from 0,0,0,1 to 0,1,0,1.