Simcopter is a unique game from an era of gaming history when Maxis was in their creative prime and bringing out quite a range of difference experiences

That isn’t to say Maxis always made great games and I would go as far to say that many of their games are more curiosities and experiences or simulators than classical games, but that doesn’t detract from the joy that can be found in them

I was impressed by the low system requirements of the game needing only a 75MHz Pentium and 16MB of RAM to run.

So it was a safe install on my mighty 200MHz Pentium system, even if the Voodoo 2 3D accelerator had to sit out this game.

It came out when 3D in gaming was still a novelty rather than a mainstream given, which was reflected in the difficult development of the title due to it’s use of 3D. From memory I believe they had to hire in somebody with the experience as no-one at Maxis at the time had the knowledge.

Playing the game now is a quite clunky and confusing! I’m not sure how I managed to work it all out when I was a kid, but I needed to lookup some guides online this time to learn the ropes

There’s a big nostalgic kick playing it again after 20 or so years. It reminds me of a time when big studios could afford to make such quirky titles. This creativity is what gave birth to The Sims, which did quite well on balance