I feel like I’ve been playing SimCity for all my life. In truth, I’ve been playing for all the game’s life — since 1989 on the Amiga. Oh, the heady days of entering the cheat code for extra money (was it funds?) 10 times and causing an earthquake. Then you learned to do it before you built anything on the map so as not to injure your city. This was when the currency was still in dollars. None of this Simoleons stuff. Fast-forward ... a lot of years *cough,* and you’ll find what amounts to the same game with spiffy new management tools, pretty art and a whole lot of functionality all in the palm of my hand to the latest incarnation. Oh, yes. We’ve added a new word on the end of the title: SimCity Creator DS.

SimCity is one of those tough games to review; I’m never quite sure just how much of the basic game to explain. It’s rather like Tetris. You’d think everyone had played it or at least knows the basics. But, alas, no. That being said, if you’re an experienced SimCity player and don’t need a refresher on housing/commercial/industrial blocking, skip the next paragraph or two.

As a rule SimCity has no goal beyond building a successful city. Successful isn’t easy and has many defining factors. You’ll begin with building housing for your people and then adding industrial areas where they can work and eventually commercial areas where goods can be bought and sold. Infrastructure must be built and maintained. This includes roads, power stations, hospitals, police, sanitation, parks and recreation ... a goodly portion of what you can think of that would make a city an attractive place to live.

If building it were the key to success, then it would only be a matter of striking the right balance of each. However, some industries produce more pollution than others (which your people don’t care for), yet they increase the number of jobs available. The densest types of housing are great for increasing your population and the crime rate. And all of this has to be paid for. You can tax each individually to encourage or discourage growth; increase the funding to existing infrastructure (how about those schools?) or trade with neighbors. There is no win or lose as such — just a growing or shrinking population (or city coffers).

The ability to play as mentioned above is quintessential SimCity and exists in SimCity Creator DS as the Freeplay mode. The level of technology available to you depends on where you begin. If you have not completed the Challenge mode, you will have limited eras in which to play. But, the eras do vary wildly from: Dawn of Civilization to Open Asia; European Renaissance to Global Warming and beyond.

In each, you’ll find all of the features from that era’s challenge mode unlocked — progressively denser land blocks, railroads (when available), variable power sources and the like. Also, awards that could have been earned are there for purchase — in Simoleons! — to increase your city’s stature and the townspeople’s attitude. This is SimCity at its most familiar.

Challenge mode is where the title deviates a little bit from the norm and where I feel it becomes two games — one for kids and one for adults. If you’ve never played the game, you’ll want to start here; if you’ve bought this game for your child (and I highly recommend it for kids), they’ll want to start here. But, be forewarned, it can be a little slow-going at first.

Creator takes a little bit from many of the more recent SimCity titles. It’s core design and purpose is all SimCity Classic, but the art of the various epochs is straight from SimCity Societies; the advisers are familiar to anyone who’s played MySims and the UI. Well, it feels very much like some of the various Sims and Urbz titles for handhelds. Together, it works remarkably well.

The top screen is very attractive, showing straw huts at the Dawn of Civilization, lots of gray brick (and not much else) during Europe’s Middle Ages, beautiful stereotypical Japanese buildings during both epochs — I especially enjoyed the tea house and wide variety during the modern age. You can zoom in and take pictures for your gallery. If I have a complaint, it’s that there’s no rhyme or reason to the coloring. I would have assumed that the darker the color the less valuable the real estate: black being least valuable, brown next, leading up to the brighter colors. However, using the examine tool, I found this not to be the case. There was discernable pattern; it was just something I had to learn.

Using the touchscreen, you will build and manage everything. And I do mean everything.

Challenge mode begins with the Dawn of Civilization and moves forward. Your goal at the beginning is to build first housing, then farmland for your citizens until they reach a population of 5,000. You’ll need to do so using game trails that make it easier for them to travel and lead into the forest so they can collect a constantly diminishing supply of wood. An adviser by the name of Maxis will guide you through this process.

Unfortunately, Maxis forgets to tell you two key things: how to create a housing block on the grid and the long-standing “roads are only effective for three land blocks” maxim. While this may not seem important to those of us who have been playing for umpteen years, newer players (i.e., the kiddies) may become upset when their ginormous housing tracks that were blossoming so well in the Stone Age suddenly turn to so much rubble in the next age.

Did you catch that? What you build in one age is passed on to the next. This was a bit startling to me the first time through. I found myself tearing down more than I was building! The good news is that Maxis does a decent job teaching each new feature in the game — farms, city centers, taxes — there’s simply nothing to tell you how to begin.

Once you’ve completed the Dawn of Civilization, you have a choice of what era you’d like to head to next, but unless you know your history, all you see are shadow outlines of two buildings. I found this to be a rather nice way to keep the Challenge mode fresh — alternate pathways through history. Your third choice gives you three buildings, ergo eras. And, you have the choice of staying put and developing the era you are in further.

And now we come to where I have two opinions about this game, one for kids and one for adults. Let’s start with the adults.

If you’re an experienced SimCity player — or even if you’re not but you’ve laid hands on at least one city builder — you’ll feel right at home with Creator, particularly in Freestyle mode. Most, if not all of the tools you’ve used in the past are there; which, quite frankly, is an amazing feat on such a small screen. The only piece I found missing was the hospital coverage map, which was frustrating during the Middles Ages. I’d go to Sim mode, click on my Sims and they’d complain about a lack of hospitals. It didn’t seem to matter how many I put in or where or even when I started to fund medicine at 150 percent! SOMEWHERE I was missing coverage, and it was the map that was left out.

The controls work tolerably well. What I mean by this is, plan on doing your minute building close up. Due to hardware restrictions on the DS, the design for undo only allows you to undo “create.” You can’t undo “undo.” This can be a bit frustrating when you only meant to clear some forest but you also cleared that $3,000 stadium. Also, the blocks are teeny tiny when not close up. This isn’t an issue initially, but the larger your city becomes, the more likely you are to make a mistake. And well, the touchpad — you’ll be hitting the same block twice more often than not.

Other than that, this is a comfortable handheld version of a venerable classic for any adult who loves some city building.

For the kids, it’s a bit different. Unless your child is a veteran city builder, without the challenge of Challenge mode, Freeplay is going to be simply beyond them. It’s open land and a lot of controls and nothing else. They need to start in Challenge mode. That being said, the aforementioned lack of instruction at the very beginning is the first hurdle. Not mentioning the “roads are only effective for three land blocks” becomes an issue when they move to their second stage and find they have to tear down much of what they just built on limited funds (assuming they didn’t build small chunks).

But, the third era is where I become most concerned. The previous two required only that a certain population be reached before moving forward. As history has shown, people will live in the worst of conditions if there is food and a roof over their heads. Era three requires something significantly more difficult to reach — a 100 percent approval rating. It is not easy. I’d even say it’s hard.

There is good news — two saves. In a world where one save is common, this surprised me. Not so much because there were two, but because the amount of information necessary to save the game is not insignificant. However, the game does not autosave, (would you want it to? Imagine saving at a bad point — ugh) so remind your child to save periodically. And, if things do go poorly and finances run in the red, Maxis will do what he can to give suggestions on how to fiscally manage his way out again.

*Parents — In one very specific place in the game that is difficult to access and occurs only under very unique circumstances, it is possible to get the reaction from your Sims, “We’re pissed and we’re not going to take it anymore.” Another reaction is, “I’m tired of all these damn mosquitoes.” I mention this for those who feel this language is inappropriate for children of a certain age and may be concerned that this is typical of the game — it is not. It appears to be a one-time incident and does not occur again. As a parent myself, I feel it is inappropriate for the game and inappropriate for the situation. HOWEVER, I feel the strengths of the game far outweigh this negative.

Before The Sims came along, SimCity was the best-selling video game of all time. Playing SimCity Creator DS brings back many memories of why — and I’ve played every version with the exception of SimCity 4, including SimCity Societies! There is something innately cool about the ability to build and provide for an entire culture; and that’s what the game has developed into over time as it allows us to experience city building with the advantages and restrictions of different eras. It’s also the ultimate teaching tool for kids but one that they’ll never know they’re learning from. They want to build and create just as we do. My 9-year-old has been waiting for a week for me to complete this review so he can get his hands on this game. I haven’t wanted to give it up. I can’t think of any better way to say, “go get this game.”