Today marks the 10th birthday of the classic ‘The Sims’ game. It was released in the US on January 31, 2000. Were you one of the many who picked it up on that day? I didn’t come into The Sims franchise until August of that year – had no money to afford a $50 game! It’s a funny story behind how I managed to get a copy. It was actually a gift from my friend from back in middle school when he felt bad for pushing me out of my chair in band class and flatting my trombone. There was no way he was able to afford fixing the actual trombone, rather that was worked out between the parents, but he did give me the money to purchase the game 🙂 10 years later I still have the original game – even my old trombone (which was fixed). 😛 Share your story in the comments!
My brother (now 27,… or is he 28?) actually played the game first. He introduced me to it and I feel in love! I soon began to take over and I played longer than he did! As he grew older, and his interest disappeared, mine increased! I know own almost every Sim game ever created! 😀 I don’t think I’d be the same person if it wasn’t for The Sims! It definitely helped me during hard times, and got me to the point at where I am now! This game (as corny as it may sound) basically defined me as a person! Thanks EA, Maxis, and Will Wright for helping me be who I am, literally! 😀
OH! and…. HAPPY BIRTHDAY THE SIMS!!! 😀
I was never really into computer games, or any video games for that matter, besides the educational kind. I don’t know how or why, but I managed to convince my mom to pick up the game when I saw it at Costco. I remember I spent that night reading the manual over and over, before I went to bed. And when I first played it, I was hooked.
I have literally made friends through the Sims franchise! My family moved from California the summer after it was released, and when I was getting to know someone, I would mention that I liked the Sims, and that would instantly be our new conversation topic.
My next door neighbor and I grew up playing the first series together — creating stories with our scrapbook. I remember, whenever I picked up a new expansion pack, I’d give him a call, and we’d be SO excited about the new features. We even came up with an expansion pack idea of our own, and we tried to figure out how to send it to Maxis to get them to look at it. It was The Sims: On the Job, which let you follow your sims to work. We were so proud of that idea!
I love The Sims, and I always will. I give my thanks to Will Wright, EA, and Maxis, for creating such an incredible game that has had such a profound impact on my life. Happy Birthday, with many more to come!
My introduction to The Sims is just all coincidental. It’s all up to my dad and without him, I wouldn’t have spent the hundreds of dollars on hosting and games! One day, he had picked up a copy of The Sims at a Wal-Mart (they’re called ASDA in the UK though) and brought it home. I still have that exact copy. The original sims which I got in 2007 brought me into The Sims 2 in 2008 and then The Sims 3 in 2009 (but I doubt i’d get The Sims 4 in 2010! :D)
The Sims has helped me so much because without it I wouldn’t know HTML or CSS. I wouldn’t have worked this hard in my life so far!
Well I didn’t get introduced to The Sims until 2002 where every morning before school, I’d head over to my mate’s house and we’d play a game for a while, usually either GTA III or Rollercoaster Tycoon 2 (weird combination lol). One day he was playing The Sims when I got there and I absolutely loved it. Unfortunately at the time, I didn’t even have a computer that could play games so I was longing for a version to come out for the PS2, which it did not long after I first started playing the game. I was extremely happy and loved the game, and soon after I had a PC capable of playing the original PC version. My mum’s boyfriend got a copy for his laptop one day and he enjoyed it for a while, but then he gave it to me, and that’s where it all started. To this day, I still love the franchise, despite EA’s silly decisions recently lol
I first played Simcity when i was 3 (it was fun learning how to run a city). Then later i first played The Sims in 2007, when i played i had no idea both of the games were related until I created my fansite, in 2008.
I started off with The Sims Deluxe Edition and got hooked. I bought it because I had played it around a cousins house a few days before 😉
Haha, that’s an awesome story as to how you got started! Who knew a flattened trombone could lead to the acquisition of a game that would lead to this passionately-run website years later? : )
I don’t have any nifty stories like you guys, I just heard lots of hype and eventually picked the game up at a computer fair for £20 (about 66% of the retail price, ish). At first, the whole family used to watch me play, since we’d never seen a game like it.
And the manual was great, you just don’t see manuals like that any more. Full of fun, slightly snarky humour.
Wow 10 years already, that went by so dam fast!! makes me feel so old even though I’m only 22 lol
I got the game back when house party was out, I remeber seeing the commercial for the sims and thought I want that game and I’ll never forget when I went to the store they had The Sims, The Sims Living Large & The Sims House Party and I thought they were all 3 different games and had no idea what the hell a expansion pack was lol , so I asked the guy and he explained it to me and I got just the sims played it that night and the next day I went back and bought living large and house party and well to make a long story short, ten years later I have bought every single sim product they made same with sims 2 and now with sims 3.
I sometimes think if someone had told me all those years ago that I would be addicted to a game and spend all that I would tell them they were crazy but I am and proud of it 🙂
When the news came out about The Sims, I was freaking out about how much I wanted it, and ohmigosh please I need to save the money for it. It was pretty easy, but I don’t remember when I got it….I’m assuming by April, since Christmas/Valentines Day/ and Easter are holidays where I would’ve gotten some money, but there are other situations where I could’ve gotten something too.
Anyway. Bought it, opened the box, and as it was installing I remember looking at all the stuff and showing my mom who was ready to smack me with whatever she had laying around….and by then everyone knew how much I loved the game and how freakin obsessed I got with playing it….
And that’s really how that went. Bought some of the EPs, like 2 or 3 I think. Then SIms 2 came out, bought 1 EP, and now my Sims 3.
I made a thread to celebrate The sims 10th anniversairy!The party has started!
Click here to join: http://forum.thesims3.com/jforum/posts/list/166662.page
i feel a little guilty for buyin every expansion. thats a lot of money down the drain. so its probaly game over for me. we really should be thanking will wright so thanx mr.wright ,thanks EA and happy 10th anniversary
A great story! I only started simming last year with the release of TS3! But happy decade for those who have simming for much, much longer. It’s a great franchise!
I remember begging my mom for the game for Christmas, but she checked the system requirements and our computer didn’t meet them, so she didn’t buy it. Just after House Party was released, my brother borrowed the base game, Livin Large and House Party from his friend. It took ALL NIGHT just for the base game to install! We eventually got it all installed and working, and it actually ran great (just lagged if we had 8 sims in a family). My brother’s interest would die out before Sims 2 was ever released, but my interest in the games has remained. 🙂
It seems a lot of us wouldn’t be where we were without a lot of other people
I didn’t even know about it until the spring of 2009 around May thanks to a TV ad, and I got it in June. However, I didn’t get a desktop until August, so I had to play it on other people’s computers until then by installing and uninstalling, etc. Ever since, I had gotten every pack released, as well as Sims 2 and Sims 3. Nothing special, just a simple story like anyone else. 🙂
When i got The Sims 1 It didn’t wok on any of my computers! I had to install and uninstall 23 times! and then again with another one of my computers and again with The Sims 2 (but 43 times) and just to be remember of The Sims 1 i reinstalled the series (but it turned out they were installed in the wrong order) so i uninstalled (all 3 games) and reinstalled (all 5 games) and all that multiply 3 cause of the computer running out of battery! same thing with simcity and spore. I’m going to buy a new computer!
I first came across TS1 back in 2000 shortly after I had graduated from Uni, and a mate had a copy to spare. He brought it round one day and insisted I give it a shot, and erm… nine years later, I’m still playing the games.
I think I must’ve bought nearly every EP for the original game, and I remember doing some custom content (clothing in this case) for a website called “Livin-It-Up” back around 2002. My old PC back then wasn’t powerful enough for TS2, so it wasn’t until 2005 that I moved over to it. Now in 2010, it’s the same PC running TS3 with few problems at all, once I use proper mods with it.
I’ve seen websites come and go; battle lines drawn between the emerging paysites and freesites (and the shitstorm that ensued over SimsHost!), and the rapid decline in activity on the Usenet newsgroup alt.games.the-sims where I spent a good few years from the day I got TS1, probably right up to half-way through TS2’s product life. At it’s peak, the group received an average 300 posts a day and there was no community like it. Many of today’s Sims fansite owners started off there – joining the discussions and posting pictures and custom content on its sister group alt.binaries.the-sims. It’s a shame that the community’s a lot more fragmented now, and the less said about the BBS – any incarnation of it – the better!
So, cheers Will Wright for taking away nine years of my life and several hundreds of pounds with your digital crack, and screw you, EA for running the Sims name into the ground with your SecuROM garbage and blatant disregard for your loyal customers whom you continue to screw over every time you release yet another broken patch for the community to fix.
Livin’ It Up, I remember that site. I worked on a few items for them, specifically the ‘Prarie Set’ for The Sims 1. It’ll soon be added to this site, but the people were nice over there 🙂