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If you read mental_floss with any regularity, you already know that I get easily addicted to certain types of video games. My husband can’t get enough of FIFA Soccer ‘08 for the Wii. I’m so not interested in games like that. Or games like Call of Duty. But I’m scarily obsessed with Guitar Hero, Rock Band and World of Warcraft. And during my freshman year of college, long before any of those games came about, I was holed up in my dorm room playing The Sims.
Creator Will Wright says the game is like having a virtual dollhouse to play with. And he’s absolutely right. But it’s strange that I like The Sims so much, because I never liked playing with dolls. (In fact, I find them rather terrifying.) At first, it was just fun building houses and decorating them. Then I got into the positively addicting habit of making and naming Sims after people I knew. It was fun to see if the Sim versions of us would interact like we did in real life. Plus it was always fun to kill your friends off. “Hey, Courtney, I accidentally built a room with no door around your Sim and it starved to death. Sorry about that.” This might mean I have psychotic tendencies. Whatever. Also, with my love of trivia, I liked finding Easter eggs and inside jokes scattered throughout the game, such as the “See Me, Feel Me” pinball machine.
Of course, just when the fun of the Sims was starting to wear off, Maxis started rolling out with the expansion packs. And you’d better believe I bought all of them.
• Livin’ Large was the first expansion pack and added more objects and careers.
• House Party added rave-like objects like a lighted dance floor, a mechanical bull, a go-go cage and a DJ booth. If you have a rockin’ party (enough people, enough food, etc.), Drew Carey might show up. You can’t talk to him or anything, though, you can only watch him work the crowd and talk on his cell phone. If you’re having a boring party, a mime shows up and annoys your guests until they all leave.
• Hot Date allowed your Sims to, well, go on Hot Dates. This was especially fun for messing with your real-life friends.
• Vacation allowed Sims to take skiing holidays and camping trips (among other destinations).
• Unleashed introduced the world of pets.
• Superstar was one of my favorites. You could become an actor or singer and become celebrities, complete with groupies. If you are good enough to win a “Simmy”, Marilyn Monroe hops out of a limo and presents you with an award.
• I thought I would really like Makin’ Magic, an expansion pack that capitalized on the Harry Potter trend by letting Sims cast spells and make potions and brews. But it was, eh, only OK.
More Sims trivia:
1) NPCs (non-player characters) included the Grim Reaper, Santa Claus, the Tragic Clown (ugh), strippers (yup), Avril Lavigne, Andy Warhol, Christina Aguilera, Cameron Diaz, Jon Bon Jovi, Sarah McLachlan and a Genie. 
2) Sim teens get zits if their hygiene levels drop.
3) Social workers will come and take away babies if your Sim isn’t caring for them properly.
4) The NPC character Mortimer Goth is most likely based on Vincent Price.
5) Depending on how many expansion packs you have, you can become a ghost, a vampire, a zombie or a werewolf. Oh, you can also be abducted by aliens.
6) In The Sims 2, Sims can get pregnant (prior to the Sims 2, if your Sim has a baby it just magically appears. Hmm). The action “Try for a Baby” is available when your Sim is in a changing booth, a car, a photo booth or cuddling in a bed or a hot tub. Male Sims can get pregnant if they are abducted by aliens.
7) The babble-language that all Sims speak is called “Simish”.
8) In The Sims 2, your Sim could be randomly struck and killed by a satellite falling from the sky. This is pretty rare, but it does happen.
9) There is a Sims movie in the works, which I am kind of uncomfortable with.
Anyway, at some point my PC crashed and I ended up getting a Mac. Being a poor college student, I really wasn’t up for buying everything over again for the Mac. So I fell out of my Sims habit. I did eventually get The Sims 2 for the Mac, but I guess my addiction just burned itself out. Until now.
A couple of weekends ago I got My Sims for the Wii. It’s really similar to Animal Crossing, if you’ve ever played that. You’re in charge of a town and everything that goes with it. When a new NPC moves in, instead of going to Target like every normal person would, the Sim comes to you and asks you to build them a bed. Well, after you build their house, that is. One Sim (Sir Vincent) asked me to build him a museum. I did, and then he said that UPS had lost all of his displays, so could I build him a sarcophagus?
I was more than happy to help, and when it was complete he said something like, “Wonderful! I can’t even tell the difference between this and the real thing! …and neither will my customers.” Shady Sims. You just can’t trust them.
Well, are there any other Sims addicts out there? Bella Goth fans? Am I hopelessly outdated?
Comments (30)
Comment
I never really had a chance to play The Sims, but, I LOVED Animal Crossing. I remember how I used to hate the condecending way the animals would talk to you, and then I found out that I could smack them with the net an dreally piss them off. I also liked to fish. I think I’ll pick up a copy of The Sims 2 if I get a chance.
posted by Gilbert on 3-24-2008 at 3:53 pm
I just bought MySims a few days ago. I feel like the town is putting entirely too much responsibility in my incapable hands. Now I kind of want to leave work, go home and play it some more.
posted by Jill on 3-24-2008 at 4:00 pm
…I used to be deeply into Sims. I quickly found the Simola cheat, so my household Sim avatars lived a life of ease. (Wish I could.) I once created the entire Addams family and killed them off (I fenced Pugsley into his room to starve, etc.) I quit after Sim Pets: I never found a cheat to make the puppy stop piddling on the rug while the adult Sims went out partying…
posted by Karl on 3-24-2008 at 4:04 pm
Guilty. Expansion packs galore… I even mod my sims so that the look more like the characters I write about and download far too much custom content. Now that trailers and previews for the Sims 3 are out I’ve been formalizing a ‘master plan’ for building my towns in purely fantastical themes once I get that one.
posted by Eliza on 3-24-2008 at 4:10 pm
I also named Sims after my friends and killed them if they became inconvenient. I tried making too many live in the same house and my computer wasn’t quiet fast enough to keep up with them. Sooo…two had to go. Years later one prior roommate still harasses me for killing his Sim version.
posted by Jeannie on 3-24-2008 at 4:45 pm
Another Sims addict here, I have had all the Sims games and expansion packs since they first came out. I’m going off to college soon and I think that I will need to ween myself off of it but with the Sims 3 coming out I don’t know if I can quit just yet.
posted by Jordan on 3-24-2008 at 4:47 pm
Oh man, I have wasted so much of my life playing The Sims [and The Sims 2]. And I loved every minute of it. The Sims 3 should coincide nicely with me buying a new computer… Hmm…
posted by Aemi on 3-24-2008 at 5:50 pm
I have never seen my adult brother so annoyed as he was when our 1 and only and (truly) beloved sis-in-law took over his Sims game for a shockingly brief time- I don’t remember which game- he got back on and: 1 of the kids had flunked out of college; the family died of starvation; the house burned down because of (something). All his hours of careful manipulation and whatnot- down the drain. ooooooo bad bad move
I’m not a fan myself but it certainly is in our family. And he’s a perfectly normal guy… love him!
posted by ann on 3-24-2008 at 5:50 pm
I am completely and utterlu obsessed with the sims. Ive been playing since like 4th grade and i’m a senior in highschool. when I was on the school newspaper in middleschool I wrote a column just about the sims and sims 2!
posted by Alexis on 3-24-2008 at 6:12 pm
Last year I was undergoing back surgery and “needed” something to do during my recovery (I’m a runner and THAT was out for 6 weeks!!!) so I picked Sims 2 as my hobby.
I want everyone to know that I uninstalled it about a week or so after I recovered enough to get back to real life – but during that 7 (oaky, nearly 8 weeks…) I was on my 6th and 7th generation (Thanks to a quick grow up cheat painting I down loaded from Mod the Sims) The thing that disturbed me the MOST was I would occasionally have my pregnant Sims mysteriously die! At first I thought I couldn’t figure out what was going on and then, when the 4th or 5th one died (several generations later) I realized that this was the Sims 2 equivalent of a woman “dying in childbirth”. I read about it on a forum – several other people had that happen too. I lot of other weird things happened – but it’s been so long ago now I can’t remember.
Hum, maybe I’ll reinstall it…I hear Seasons is a GREAT expansion pack!
Anyone else have anomalous happenings in their Sims games?
posted by Renee Walker on 3-24-2008 at 6:25 pm
I have been addicted to The Sims for several years now. Worse, right after I got The Sims 2 and its numerous EPs (as we fondly call them) I became a frequent poster on TheSims2.com’s bulletin boards. It doesn’t get geekier than that, folks!
Anyhoo, I still adore The Sims and TS2. One of my favorite pastimes is to make really trippy music videos. Recently, I did a Latin project with a Sims 2 video. It was intense.
posted by Allison on 3-24-2008 at 6:36 pm
I am a Sims 2 fanatic. Been playing since 2005, and I’m still not tired of it. I’ve played other games too- WoW, Rock Band (ha, I sound like Stacy)- but I’ve never been as addicted to anything else as I am to the Sims.
Sometimes people assume it is just a virtual dollhouse or a “girlie game”, but the Sims is more complicated than that. Sure, you can play sandbox-style with your Sim “dolls”, but lots of players prefer to build homes, make machinima, design new objects… Sims players are a very diverse group of people.
posted by Louise on 3-24-2008 at 6:38 pm
I loved The Sims when I was in college, but my computer couldn’t keep up with the expansion packs. My favorite was when they’d spontaneously combust and die.
posted by Nessia on 3-24-2008 at 6:56 pm
I will admit I picked up the Sims bandwagon when it first started. I even was a beta tester for the online version. And while I still toy a bit with it, I mainly enjoy killing off people in creative ways. Somehow it was so satisfying to kill off the guy who cut me off on the road the week before. So no, I don’t think it makes you psychotic. Cause I would be. And I’m not. Lol.
posted by Nell on 3-24-2008 at 9:48 pm
I am the MOST sim concious person i have every game possable im a sims junkie!
posted by Courtney a.k.a simmi on 3-24-2008 at 9:54 pm
Does anyone remember SimCity? I got it in 6th grade (early 90’s) and thought it would be like what the Sims is today. I was thrilled to finally get what I wanted back then.
posted by Lindsey on 3-24-2008 at 10:16 pm
I absolutely love the Sims and the Sims 2! I have pretty much all the expansion packs for both series and I can not wait until the Sims 3 comes out. Thought I must say, having TS2 on my computer makes college much harder.
posted by Becks on 3-24-2008 at 10:31 pm
I love the Sims 2 more than any other video game ever…Guitar Hero is a close second…maybe the love for both is on the same gene.
posted by Elisabeth on 3-24-2008 at 11:25 pm
Lindsey- I REMEMBER SIM CITY! I also remember my favorite “virtual life” game was some hotel game, it was a 2-dimensional high rise hotel that you’d build, and you could make food courts, elevators, cinemas, etc. It was great. I loved the soundtrack of elevators whooshing and cash registers opening.
I only had one version of the Sims… I remember the rosebud;!;!;!;!;!(etc) cheat that got you unlimited money. I was the opposite of seemingly all of you though, I’d name the characters after me and a guy I liked, and pray that we lived. Granted… I was in elementary and middle school back then.
posted by Kelly J on 3-25-2008 at 12:08 pm
I had Sim City too! I didn’t really get into it, but my dad was obsessed. I was a HUGE Roller Coaster Tycoon addict for a few years though.
posted by Brittany on 3-25-2008 at 12:54 pm
I remember playing Sims and not getting up to eat or go to the bathroom because I was too busy getting my Sims to eat or go to the bathroom…
posted by Nina on 3-25-2008 at 1:23 pm
Bella Goth was such a cougar! She was always trying to steal my husband. And I was all, HELLO, you’re married to the richest man in town, back off of my chubby hubby! (We had no cooking skills, so he was always eating weird stuff out of cans).
Yes, I was far too into The Sims. Had all the expansions!
posted by Franuary on 3-25-2008 at 1:47 pm
I must confess I am a Sim addict. The Sims 3 is scheduled to come out in 2009 and I can’t wait to drop another $500.00 on expansion packs.
posted by Jewel on 3-25-2008 at 2:04 pm
I love The Sims, truly, madly, deeply.
I had Superman and Lois Lane living in a house with Jerry Garcia once. Lois was messing around with fireworks in the backyard and managed to set herself on fire. While Superman freaked out, what do you think Jerry did? Yep – he picked up the guitar and rocked out while Lois died.
For some reason, my Sims always end up homosexual. I don’t plan it – it just happens that way. I cannot make them fall in love any other way, but that’s fine, I suppose. They can always adopt babies and/or get abducted.
And I never thought I was mental, but I very much enjoy thinking up new and exciting ways to kill my Sims.
posted by Rachel on 3-25-2008 at 5:43 pm
I wasn’t into The Sims but I absolutely loved My Sims! I hope EA puts out a sequel or an expansion pack.
posted by Andie on 3-26-2008 at 9:53 am
@Kelly J – You’re talking about Sim Tower! great game.
I had all the “original” sim games. Sim City, Sim Ant, Sim Tower, and Sim Farm. Does anyone know if the Sims are made by the same company?
posted by Ben on 3-26-2008 at 2:59 pm
I love The Sims and most of the expansion packs. I played through High School except our home computer was too slow so I would go to my best friends house to play. I don’t remember all the cheat but rosebud ;!;!;! etc was one of my favorites so I could build the best house ever. I always tried to make it after the dream house I’ve always wanted but the Sims always seemed to think the layout was crummy. Pfft..what do they know?
I was also addicted to ‘Sim Ant’ and ‘Sim City’. I love those games…
posted by Henna on 4-28-2008 at 2:15 am
Ahh… The Sims is my one real addiction. They’ve made it so there’s no such thing as a “quick game” of Sims. You either play for hours or you don’t play at all.
Oh, and in The Sims 2, if you have the Seasons expansion pack, you can also become a “plant sim” where you turned green and your hair turns into foilage.
posted by Lark on 5-4-2008 at 11:18 pm
My friend’s cousin is addicted to THE SIMS. I am addicted to watching her play only because I am a game junkie and I know she will never see her SIMS again ( devilish laugh). As I type I just know she’s waiting of those expansion packs for her Birthday…darn it!
posted by Brianna on 12-31-2008 at 12:07 pm
I LUV THE SIMS 2!!!!! And yes, I confess, I love killing my Sims. It’s so fun to kill Sims. LOL!!!!! I’m always addicted to Sims 2. Of course, there are other games that I’m addicted to like Civilization 4.
posted by Karl on 3-21-2009 at 10:39 am