The NES version was then shown at the 1991 Winter Consumer Electronics Show, as proven by contemporaneous footage from the insufferable syndicated show Video Power, hosted by the equally insufferable Johnny Arcade. Nintendo announced the NES and SNES versions of SimCity in late 1990, when the NES version got a Nintendo Power preview (complete with two screenshots) that promised a Spring 1991 release date. After hearing of a similar game on PC and trying SimCity for himself, Miyamoto was impressed enough to get Nintendo to purchase the console rights for the game, rather than trying to make a competing title. From lost to foundĪs Cifaldi recounted, the story of the NES SimCity began when legendary Nintendo designer Shigeru Miyamoto says he had an idea for a game where you build and maintain an entire city. One of those prototypes has now been obtained and preserved by the Video Game History Foundation's (VGHF's) Frank Cifaldi, who demonstrated the emulated ROM publicly for the first time at MAGFest last weekend. That version of the game was considered lost for decades until two prototype cartridges surfaced in the collecting community last year. What most gamers probably don't realize is that an NES version of the game was developed at the same time and cancelled just before its planned release.
Gamers of a certain age probably remember that Nintendo worked with Maxis to port a version of the seminal SimCity to the brand-new SNES in 1991. Calculating all the interrelated variables for a city this complex gets a bit hairy on hardware like that on the NES.