Importance is placed on increasing the population's standard of living, maintaining a balance between the different sectors, and monitoring the region's environmental situations to prevent the settlement from declining and going bankrupt.

Reviewers considered the game instructive and helpful toward the player's understanding of urban planning, politics, and economics.

SimCity features goal-oriented, time-limited scenarios that are contingent on the player's performance and could result in either a win or a loss.

This addition was intended to enhance the overall experience for players, by introducing clearly defined objectives and increasing the level of challenge in the game.

Although the majority of scenarios featured in the game exist within a fictional timeline or involve a city besieged by an imaginary catastrophe, a select few are based on genuine historical events.

This incorporation of actual historical events adds a unique layer of realism to the game and enables players to engage with significant moments in history in a novel way.

[14] The game reflected Wright's approval of mass transit and disapproval of nuclear power; Maxis president Jeff Braun stated "We're pushing political agendas".

[9] Wright and Braun returned to Broderbund to formally clear the rights to the game in 1988, when SimCity was near completion.

After Broderbund executives Gary Carlston and Don Daglow saw SimCity, they signed Maxis to a distribution deal for both of its initial games.

With that, four years after initial development, SimCity was released for the Amiga and Macintosh platforms, followed by the IBM PC and Commodore 64 later in 1989.

[16] After the original release on the Amiga and Macintosh, the game was released on the Commodore 64 and IBM PC compatibles, and afterward saw more releases for computers and video game consoles: Atari ST, Acorn Archimedes, Amstrad CPC, ZX Spectrum, BBC Micro, Acorn Electron,[18] Super Nintendo Entertainment System, EPOC32, mobile phone, Internet, Windows, FM-Towns, OLPC XO-1 and News HyperLook on Sun Unix.

The Terrain Editor is a simple tool that allows the user to create maps with forest, land, and water portions.

SimCity Classic was re-released in 1993 as part of the SimClassics Volume 1 compilation alongside SimAnt and SimLife for PC, Mac and Amiga.

In 1994, Interplay Productions developed and published under license from Maxis a version of the game titled "SimCity Enhanced CD-ROM" for DOS, which included 256 color graphics and FMV movies that would trigger events.

Braun flew to Nintendo of America's headquarters to meet with chairman Howard Lincoln and president Minoru Arakawa.

In August 1996, a version of the game entitled BS SimCity Machizukuri Taikai was broadcast to Japanese players via the Super Famicom's Satellaview subsystem.

According to Chaim Gingold, a former Maxis employee, he believes that the time Wright spent with Miyamoto helped to influence the direction of SimCity 2000.

[25] In January 2008, the SimCity source code was released as free software under the GPL-3.0-or-later license,[26][27][28] renamed to Micropolis (the original working title) for trademark reasons, and developed by Don Hopkins.

[32] Since Micropolis is licensed under the GPL-3.0-or-later, users can do anything they want with it that conforms with the GPL-3.0-or-later – the only restriction is that they cannot call it "SimCity" (along with a few other limitations to protect EA's trademarks).

Nintendo also put their stamp on the game, with a dangerous disaster being Bowser attack on a city (in place of a generic movie-type monster), and a Mario statue awarded once the megalopolis level of 500,000 inhabitants is reached.

The Super NES version of SimCity has been released for the Wii's Virtual Console service (No longer available as of January 2, 2013).

[50] Macworld, in their review, praised its graphics as well as its strategic gameplay, calling it "A challenging, dynamic game, realistic and unpredictable", and notes how "as the population grows the city's needs change.

[53] Sid Meier in 2008 named SimCity as one of the three most important innovations in videogame history, as it led to other games that encouraged players to create, not destroy.

There is constant strategy involved in the placement of zones, road building, political decision-making, and damage control.

Victoria Lederberg blamed her close loss in the Democratic primary on the newspaper's description of her poor performance in the game; former mayor Buddy Cianci, the most successful player, won the election that year.

[65] The ZX Spectrum version was voted number 4 in the Your Sinclair Readers' Top 100 Games of All Time.

"Sim" games of many types were developed – with Will Wright and Maxis developing myriad titles including SimEarth, SimFarm, SimTown, Streets of SimCity, SimCopter, SimAnt, SimLife, SimIsle, SimTower, SimPark, SimSafari, and The Sims, which spawned its own series, as well as the unreleased SimsVille and SimMars.

Spore, released in 2008, was originally going to be titled "SimEverything" – a name that Will Wright thought might accurately describe what he was trying to achieve.

He is a non-player character in The Legend of Zelda: Link's Awakening, and an assist trophy in the Super Smash Bros. series.