Waxing Lyrical: Sim City SNES

The SNES had a lot of great games on it. They had magnificent games such as the Final Fantasy series, Super Mario, Legend of Zelda, Super Metroid and people often think back to these games for the system and its music. However, there are some songs that are great but never get any attention and one of them is the music from the SNES Sim City.

In between the platformers, RPG's and sidescrollers, I have always enjoyed Sim games and the SNES Sim City was no different. However, this game falls under the “Civilization Effect” where as a young child I was too impatient and made very bad decisions which resulted in losing a lot. Like Civilization I would get angry and leave in a huff, only to return a few days later with a renewed vigour.

Unlike Civilization, every time I returned to Sim City, I was always greeted with the wonderful title screen track. The track itself is a great little tune and showcases what to expect for the game, however it is not the track I wish to focus on today. The track in question is the one when you start building your city.

There are two reasons I love The Village track. The first reason is because the track reminds me of my childhood summers. On the rainy days I would either read comics or play video games and on the the warm sunny days I would play outside where my yard turned into a fantasy world filled with monsters I had slay.

The other reason why I like this track is because it instils a feeling of freedom. The goal for the game is to simply build your dream city any way you want it. If you wanted to build an island city, you were free to do so. Anything you want to do in the game, you were free to do. That game offered an immense amount of freedom.

That is what I love about this song. While other songs invoke that feeling of freedom, Sim City was one of the few games on the system to allow full freedom to do what you want.

When I started Waxing Lyrical I wanted to focus on the songs of my youth and and for the most part I feel I have accomplished that goal. There are still countless tracks from my childhood that I wish to cover in more detail.

This is Daimo Mac and I am lost in the music.