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The fact that this game even exists on the BBC is something of a minor miracle, thanks to the enormous programming skills of one Peter Scott who became something of a 'conversion master' during the later years of his programming for Superior Software, converting such classics as Barbarian and Hostages for the BBC.

If you own a computer other than a BBC you will have probably heard of this game before. It started out on the Commodore 64 as a somewhat simpler game than it is on the BBC, and was then converted to the Amiga. PC, ST and tons of other computers, and has spawned many other games in the 'Sim' series by Maxis, including Ant, Life and Rainforest!! Needless to say, the sequels were not as good as the original.

Anyway, in this game you become the Mayor of a village as it happens, you have to build the various things, including industrial zones, residential areas, and commercial centres, all of which help to keep the business alive in your ever expanding village/town/city. Then of course you need to keep the population under control with the Police and Fire services, all of which require money each year to function, so you have to set taxes to a level at which you can provide the services and get money for expansion, whilst keeping everyone who lives in your city happy. This is much easier said than done, and it is at times disheartening to see on the yearly readout that only 33% of your population are happy with you!

Anyway, once you have built your first little city with the small amount of money that is available, you generally have to keep everything working, and occasionally recovering from several disasters which occur randomly, including Monsters, Tornadoes and Earthquakes. If you have a Nuclear power station then this can also be a hazard as it may occasionally have a melt down, which is quite disastrous for the population!

Your score points on this game based on the amount of people who are happy, the design of the city, and various other things such as how the traffic flow and crime problems are dealt with. 500 out of 1000 is counted as an average score, and the author himself has not gotten the full amount! So far I have managed about 450 points, and am still trying hard to beat this!! It keeps me occupied for hours on end, and the instructions provided with this game are sparse, which is very deceptive as you think the game is also quite simple, but it has a hidden depth, it isn't just about putting down a few buildings and connecting them up to the power station, but about actually managing the city, building it is easy.

I think the depth is one of the best things about this game, the graphics, done in a low res mode are not superb, but they never were on the original computers it was designed for, they do their job, and probably don't take up too much memory (on the PC you needed a 640k machine to play the game, god knows how Peter Scott got it to fit into 32k!). It has a very nice method of control, use the arrow keys to scroll the main screen, and the usual Z,X,/ and * keys as a way to move the pointer onto the nicely designed icons at the foot of the screen. It is simplicity itself do design the city, although I do have a problem with the speed at which the years go by, still it is all in proportion!

This game is a rare item indeed. One which doesn't require you to read pages and pages of a manual to get to grips with it. It has a great learning curve and you just find yourself getting more and more into it the more you play it. Something is always happening and you never get bored, there is always some way to get just a few extra points out of the game. This is definitely one of my favourite games on the Beeb, and is very interesting! Also ranks high in my list of technical achievements on the BBC, right up there with Elite and Exile.