Revisiting the Classic SimCopter Experience!
ฝัง
- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 11 มี.ค. 2022
- Many years ago I checked out an old Sim game that I couldn't get working as a kid. See, I had this Sims 30-in-1 CD back in the 90s but only half the games worked. I never managed to play SimCopter, SimEarth, or SimTower, so now I want to share a casual foray I had with one of the weirdest games I've ever played that also has a bizarre controversy attached to it... SimCopter. This was a helicopter flight simulation game that was meant to tie into SimCity 2000, kind of like Streets of SimCity, which I did actually play. You could load in your cities and fly around them, exploring your city like never before and doing jobs related to catching criminals, putting out fires, managing traffic, and transporting sims all to earn money and points which allow you to progress through the career mode. If you've never seen SimCopter, keep watching. It's definitely a product of its time and a fascinating thing to look at today.
Vote on the GOG wishlist for this game!
www.gog.com/wishlist/games/si...
#AbandonwareAdventures is a format where I find a good old game that is no longer for sale and play some of it. These are often PC games from my childhood that have been abandoned and I think need to be looked at again. Watch more at • Abandonware Adventures...
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This was something I streamed a few years ago when I wasn't feeling so well and wanted to just mess about, but having mentioned it recently people asked if I could publish it properly, so here it is. Let me know what you think about me posting some jank recordings like this from the past!
Just an FYI, game logic is tied to the frame rate I didn't notice it until you mentioned 60fps but you were having camera and control issues because of it (and probably stability issues). There's a patch called SimCopterX that fixes these issues and makes the game compatible on Win 10.
Honestly it's a very chill 'turn brain off' game, would love to see you run through the campaign
As someone who watches your content primarily on TH-cam, here are some of my humble thoughts.
I've always enjoyed finding out about new games through your perspective, games from the past or the future.
If "jankiness" is the price I have to pay to learn about a new game, I'd definitely take it.
Besides, personally I don't find this video "jank" at all. It's a perfectly valid impressions video worth every second of my time watching.
Ah, I figured it was an older video. You seemed younger~! ^^
What was pretty cool about this game is how open it was. You actually have 3 different was to do a medical evac. You can call an ambulance, fly an ems person out to the person to pick them up, or get out and pick them up yourself.
A remaster of this would sell so so well.
Take On Helicopters is a bit similar.
Would it though? Most people don't even remember this exists.
I loved this game as a kid, and I believe I even had the SimCity 2000 map import feature working at one point. I couldn't get enough, and still can't really. Good on you for finally getting to play it and thanks for sharing your experience with us.
SimCopter took up so much of my time as a kid when it came out. Fun Fact: It's the first appearance of a sort of proto-version of the Simlish language!
Also, I love the reaction of, "What? I got nearly two meters off the ground? That's where helicopters fly, right? I've lost control!"
And, of course, "Nothing is explained in this game."
That's how we did it in the nineties, baby! And we liked it that way!
Hints for a future revisit:
You're stuck with the basic helicopter until you earn enough money to upgrade to a better one. You can do that by walking into the garage. There you can also upgrade and fix a damaged helicopter.
The use F1-F9 keys for stuff like calling the police or the firefighters. You only use the water bucket to put out fires in rural areas. An injured person needs to be picked up and brought to the hospital. Once on the roof of the hospital, click on the human the bottom right to let him out of the helicopter. He'll then be picked up by a doctor. If a doctor walks into your helicopter, then he'll pick up future injured people automatically once you land close to them. The hardest are the people stuck on top of a train, there you'll have to let down the rope and follow the train so they can catch the rope and you can pull them into the helicopter.
Hope I could help. Enjoy! 😁
Thanks for the tips! I feel like this is the kind of game you gotta spend a long time learning everything.
This game is absolutely awesome. I've loved playing it as a kid and currently have a virtual machine running the game.
I wish there was a remake. The game was so quirky and buggy that it made the whole experience so much better.
Happy to see you checking it out 🥰
The Speedo guys and the flying dogs! 🤣
ohh boy this brings back memories. i was too young to understand how to play this game properly at first but eventually figured it out and once i did it became an amazingly fun experience.
all i remember about this was entering the cheat codes which turned the chopper into an AH-64 Apache and blowing up the city.
I played this game a great deal back in the day - I enjoyed putting out fires and evacuating injured people in a city that I had designed. It did have glitches, though.
I DID get this working as a kid, and played it a ton. It had a very addictive "one more mission" gameplay loop back in the day!
i used to play this religiously as a kid, i 1st discoverd it when i was little at a boys and girls club computer lab xD..
Hell yeah! My favorite game as a kid, I'd love creating my own Cities in SimCity2000 and playing them in SimCopter. And that soundtrack...fantastic!
I did that with Streets of SimCity, but now I've played this a bit, SimCopter is definitely more developed than Streets.
@@GamerZakh I hope you can stream it again sometime once you know what exactly you're supposed to do LOL
As a kid I could never figure this game out. It was so confusing and even a little surreal in that vaguely eerie, liminal way. I got the game in a package with SimCity 2000 Deluxe Edition and Streets of SimCity and I played plenty of those though. I think I eventually just gave up on SimCopter and stuck to Streets of SimCity to explore the cities I made in SimCity 2000, but Streets of SimCity was hella jank too.
Omg I used to spend hours on this game, at first it was confusing but when you get a hold of it the missions are really fun and......there is a military helicopter on the map that you can use for vigilante missions or even better to destroy the city, burn it down to the ground....Omg that was so fun back in the day 😂😂😂
Man sim earth and sim ant where the first games i was exposed to in my childhood
I remember playing this as a kid and getting the apache helicopter
I think I still have my copy of this game somewhere. I swear I remember using my microsoft sidewinder joystick with it as well.
I loved the will wright games as a kid and still do as an adult. sim city and sim ant took up a bunch of my time lol. I remember seeing this in stores but i never bought it. Thanks for exploring this for us!
The hours spend on this game.. i loved it.. thanks for bringing back the memories.. thanks bruh
Glad you enjoyed it!
I played this game SO MUCH when I was younger! Loved it LOL!
I loved this game when i was a kid. I would love to see a proper remaster.
I loved MS flight sim in early 80's! It had a cockpit with gauges and everything. A huge step up from going to the local arcade and playing pacman.
Loved this game so much! Nostalgia central! :)
I love simtower. i still play it today.
This is a blast from the pasttt. Wow haha!
Glad you enjoyed it!
Was a very relaxing game, and yes, you can transport people and fly them around and them throw them out your copter in mid-air. 😅
I still whistle to the jazz songs on Sim radio 🤣🤣
Come on guys, we gotta "get to ze choppah!"
My favourite part of this amazing game as a kid was loading up one of you own cities. Then fly to a military base, take an attack helicopter and set fire to your whole city and reduce it to rubble.
Loved this game as a kid. That said the first copter sucks you really have to upgrade to have control.
This was my one of the first game ever
LOL! Thanks for the laughs
There's an emulator called PCEM, and I think people will be able to experience 1996 era if run through it
Loved it to pieces
This might be Zakh's shortest video in a long time. 😂 I could not believe my eyes seeing it was only 16 minutes.
Haha one reason I didn't consider it a 'proper' video and didn't publish it until now.
I remember thirsting over all these sim games when they were on sale at the Post Office of all places.
Didn't have the money for them, when I tried them later they didn't work on my newer PCs.
Maybe it was for the best.
Everything is in chaos😂
simcopter, simcopter
parkopter, parkopter
SimCopter is amazing!
It was such an odd game, but as a kid I think that's what kept me fascinated. I kept trying, even though I had no clue what to do, and eventually got to the 2nd helicopter.. which was as much punishment as I could handle.
I swear that this game wasn't as janky as this and was very playable with the hardware back then. It came with a 100-page user manual and was probably the longest book I've read at that time. Some things I remember is that you need to dip the bucket in water to fill the bucket, you can land on a hospital helipad to pick up medics who would do the medievac pickup for you, and you go in the hanger to do all sorts of stuff.
The open world was like the GTA of its time - this game is even earlier than the first GTA.
Yeah things are a bit messed up here because it's running at too high a framerate. There's a fan patch for it now apparently to fix the issues.
@@GamerZakh Maybe try it again, I swear it's a load of fun when it's working properly.
Oh, the number of people I "helped" on the demo...
Loved this and sim tower. I wasn’t good at this, but I played it a lot.
That was most of my gaming in the 90s haha. I'm not good at any game but played a ton.
A game playing in the background the Appassionata of Beethoven, wow.
This game had weird tastes.
Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri is such a great game though. You should try it!
I really should, it seems like something I would enjoy especially since it's from the Civ 2 era.
i couldnt get the game to come up on OBS studios.
what program did you use to stream it.
I ran this in a Windows emulator then captured that window.
I lost way too many hours to SimTower. Wish someone would remake it.
Project Highrise is pretty much supposed to be that, not played it personally though, so I'm not sure if it's good.
This game with those sounds and with *that* music seems like a fever dream, wtf
It is a bit chaotic haha
It had a weird atmosphere back when i played it.
The music and then you are just waiting for things to go horribly wrong like a mass casualty event that needs airlifts, wildfires etc....
I do not remember the copter being THAT wonky ever...
But i do remember THAT mission, a funny surprise at the time and didnt think more of it, but its definetaly one of the things i recall the best.
It's extra wonky because things are running too fast here.
@@GamerZakh Btw quick question if you dont mind.
Have you ever played "Evil Genius" ?
The sequel came out not long ago im sure you've heard of it. Damn, maybe you've already played it and i missed it? :)
Either way, super cool game and it would be fun to watch you play it.
@@KigreTheViking I didn't play it back in the day but I do have one video checking out the original here and I did a few videos on the new one.
Can this run on windows 2000? As windows 11 refuses to run this game
Aaaaand another one of my childhood games you've found out, the third one within a month or so already 😄. At this point, should i just give you a list so you can work through the rest more easily? 😄
Anyway loved this game! It was so fun lowering the water bucket to tip cars over or to rescue people with your helicopter and throw them out 😅. I'm still watching the video so maybe it'll come up anyway but did you know, you could pick up people, throw them out of the Helicopter to hurt them, which causes you to lose a bit of money buuuut then you can rescue them to earn more than it cost you 😄.
Never played SimCopter but I love Sim Tower,
Oh i loved this game as a kid! AND sim tower! Do you intend to play it sometime?
Sim Tower? I have some footage of that from this stream, I tried 3 old Sim games that day. If people like this I'll publish that too.
I liked this game. Combining Sim City with Sim Copter was fun, the atmosphere was cool, kinda like a pre-dated GTA but in the air. It was a thrill but who understands this nowadays....
Funny enough hearing younger folks commenting on games which came out during the golden age (90s) while seeing them play literally masses of shitty browser-like games.
The music you are referring to at the beginning (Why this music?)... it fits the theme of a "hectic and chaotic day in a hectic and chaotic city".
The fps is way too high... doesn't represent this game any better.
Dang you missed out on Copter and Tower? Me and my neighbor wore both those games out. I was better at copter and he was better at tower. Was good fun.
Yeah, I don't know if the CD was busted or my PC just wasn't compatible. I was mainly on SimAnt, SimPark, and SimCity 2000.
I can't believe how you massacred this classic! xD
Lol it's the best I could get it running at the time.
seems fun,is it worth buying?
HEEEEEELLLL YEAH
Have you tried Grand Ages?? Please let me know, thank you.
>he didn't get to play SimEarth. Jesus Christ
Yeah I remember really trying to get it to work but it would just crash to desktop any time I launched it.
Heya, I don't want to sound too pedantic but I have a feeling like your CPU might be a bit too fast for the game, seems like the game works at almost 3x speed. I believe this is why you are having all those glitches and unusual copter behaviour. I just tested the game here and with the right hardware it works much better and stable, also definitely much much slower. (My test hardware is Pentium II 233mhz + 16MB RAM + Voodoo3 3000 running Win98SE)
Ah, replying to myself, just noticed your pinned post mentioning this is an old video :)
@@rootifera Yeah I figured things weren't running properly but since it was a test I was half expect it to not even run at all lol. Just before this, Streets of SimCity crashed almost immediately.
lol an interesting game mr zakh
I'm pretty sure the game was running in fast forward. It wasn't that out of control and shaky back in the day.
Nothing is explained because it was released back when games had actual manuals.
The music sounds like a silent film... and oh god early 3d game colors *barf*
it would of been good if wasn't so buggy sometimes i am lucky able play 30 mins or more before game gives me a err
Someone commented that there's a fan patch for the game under my pinned comment here, that might fix the issues.
Wow you are absolutely terrible at this game 😂 I loved Simcopter when I was a kid! The seriously need to make a new one for consoles!
Yeah this was my first time playing and people are telling me the game isn't running right, but I had no idea what it was supposed to be lol. I wouldn't mind a proper remake.
Lightbulbs?
Every song in the game starts with a radio 'ad' lol
This game was awesome. Sadly you didnt figure out how to play it 😅
3:29 LOL
The game looks to be running a bit too fast.
Should see what little I have on Streets of SimCity, that bugged out and crashed as soon as the car hit something haha
@@GamerZakh Did you use the X patches for anyone of them? I've used a win 10 installer called SimStreetsX and SimCopter X. 16:9 support, slow mode, and never have crashed so far even on custom maps.
@@Balc0ra I haven't used the patches here, but I will if I return to the game.
This game benefits a lot from a stick.
That does make sense, lots of games back then were designed with a joystick in mind. Haven't owned a joystick since the 90s though haha
@@GamerZakh I think it's likely most people back then played without a stick either...
You are having a compatibility problem. Originally, the game isn't that fast. you need to patch the game. Windows 95 games have this frame problem when running on the latest machines
Very strange game.
But the ending is also a bit strange, you just quit the game and end the video without 'outro' you don't like the game hé? :p
This was a chill stream from 3 years ago where I was just trying out some old games randomly. After this I booted up SimTower for the first time.
Ahh okay, so this was a video from 3 years ago? I see you looks a bit younger there
play sim city 4
I have one video on that on this channel if you haven't seen it yet.
Game is running way too fast xD
It is kind of glitchy here haha
@@GamerZakh HAHA! I remember this game from my youth. It was amazing to be able to fly around in the city you've made in SimCity. I remember going to the military base and finding the Military Copter :OOOOOOOOOOOOOO
BUT, What drugs were they on, OK, the graphics back in the day were soso. BUT the walking animation on the Sims? WHOTT whyy xD hahaha
So.....Flawless game then?😯
So very janky. 😅
I profoundly disliked that game because it never works.
I am the CEO of McDonnell-Douglas