Friday, December 13, 2019

12 Days of Christmas Day 1 - PC games

The Collector is starting yet another series of posts that fit a single theme. Over the next twelve days I will share some thoughts on my favorite toys, games, and memorabilia - with an emphasis on Christmas presents of the past. I'm starting today (13 days out from Christmas) since I plan to post about this year's gifts on Christmas Day. 

Today's post is about two of my all-time favorite PC games - Old Time Baseball and SimCity 3000.


Both games were Christmas gifts from my Aunt Cynthia, who lived on the other side of our two-family house until she passed away four years ago. Because she lived next door, Aunt C always stopped by in the morning, handed me a gift, and then had coffee with my mother in the kitchen. 

The three of us went to Cooperstown for my 11th birthday in 1991 and she saw firsthand how much I loved the history of baseball. Old Time Baseball was the perfect gift for me - though I didn't have a PC to play it on until 1997. That meant I had to play it at Aunt Cynthia's office computer. (I also played it at my sister's house once in a while.)

I still have this manual in my closet somewhere

This game had features I'd never seen on any sports game - PC or console. I sat at her desk for hours playing with the 'Time Machine' feature:


In Old Time Baseball you could pick any major league team from 1871-1994 and play against any other team from any other year - in any era. You could have Ty Cobb and the 1909 Tigers battle Jackie Robinson and the 1955 Brooklyn Dodgers. Or - and this is the best part - you could have them play on the same team in a fantasy draft!


The fantasy draft feature allowed you to draft from a pool of every single player from 1871-1994 - including Negro League players! I learned a lot about Hilton Smith in particular because he was a steal in the middle rounds. 


The gameplay itself was secondary. It's an MS-DOS game from 1995, so the graphics look primitive by today's standards. The ballparks look small, but the backgrounds were fairly detailed. In fact, my most memorable moment of Old Time Baseball was when I had Babe Ruth on my team and he smacked a home run to deep center at Old Yankee Stadium. When I watched the replay I discovered that the ball had disappeared into the flag!

The play-by-play sounds mechanical, and it's often well behind the action. Still, it's a nice bonus to hear the voice of Mel Allen or Curt Gowdy. I found a full game on YouTube and I recommend watching at least the first 2-3 minutes of it to get a feel for the game.


I ran the entire 50-minute video last night while doing COMC challenges. It brought back great memories and made me wish I could play it one more time - or at least draft another all-era fantasy team. 

Another favorite gift from my favorite aunt was Sim City 3000 (Unlimited).

This manual is 224 pages thick!

Since I didn't have a PC until 1997 the only Sim City game I had ever played was the Super Nintendo edition. I can't say I didn't have fun playing it, but it was sooo basic!


The only way (that we knew of) to pass enough time for a city to grow was to leave the game on all night. But! If we did that, there would inevitably be a small fire or tornado in some corner of the city that would go unchecked because we were sleeping and we'd wake up to burned-out squares of "R", "C", and "I" with few (if any) remaining Sim citizens.


When my aunt gave me Sim City 3000 Unlimited for Christmas I was thrilled. This version was everything I had hoped for in the franchise. I popped it in my disc drive and began building my first city immediately.


The selection of buildings, landmarks, and utilities far exceeded the previous versions. And I spent hours using the terrain generator to adjust the coastline and elevation.


The ticker along the bottom always had fun bits of information - some were relevant, some were random - and I enjoyed connecting my city to (computer-generated) neighboring cities. 

I also enjoyed the music. Something about that jazzy soundtrack has stayed with me for 20 years. I've bookmarked a couple tracks and they always bring back great memories of building cities and spending time with my aunt.


I'm still hopeful that I'll be able to play this game again, if I can figure out how to make it compatible with the current Windows OS. 


Do you have a favorite PC game?  



Thanks for reading!



16 comments:

  1. My absolute favorite PC game is Medieval Total War. I can't get it to play on new computers, but I loved that game.

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    1. I've never played that one. It looks awesome though!

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  2. Old Timer is awesome, but man, I spent so much time simulating season after season of Tony La Russa baseball 3. Sure there was some not so real issues like that started in sim games usually went only a few innings and the middle relief pick up all the wins and losses, but man - simulated stats and careers, and hall of fame. It was fun!

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    1. Until I researched this post I didn't know Old Time and LaRussa Baseball were related. The bugs of old games always make me laugh. I used to play Baseball Mogul, and the first edition didn't have licensing so they switched the vowels in players' names. I still call Ken Griffey Jr "Kon Gruffey Jr" sometimes.

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    2. I used to play LaRussa. Used to get bunt homers

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  3. Never heard of Old Time Baseball. Looks fun..
    My favourite is the Civilization series. Also Out of the Park

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    1. I love the Civilization series! I still play Civ V once in a while. OOTP was fun, too.

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  4. I've been able to run SimCity 3000 via the GOG launcher. 3000 is a great one. Maybe the best of the whole franchise.

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  5. For me, it was Command and Conquer (esp. Red Alert 2) and Civilization (Civ 3 was my favorite).

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    1. Another vote for the Civilization series. Those were fun games for sure.

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  6. I didn't start spending much time on computers until about 2000, but I do remember playing Oregon Trail in elementary school, and I know I spent some time playing Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego at a friend's house, but that was about it for me and pc games.

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    1. Yes! I played those in school, too - on floppy disc, right? My daughters watched a Teen Titans Go! episode about the Oregon Trail game and I've been wanting to play it again ever since!

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  7. I've never heard of the Old Time Baseball game, but it sure did look like a lot of fun!

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    1. It definitely was! My aunt even tried calling Stormfront Studios to rave about the game and ask about an updated version - but they went out of business :/

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  8. I loved playing Star Wars Galactic Battlegrounds on my Mac back in the day.

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