The Closeout Warrior

Although I was introduced to Civilization on the Mac, the majority of the time that I spent with the game came from the Super NES version.

I didn’t even know there was a Super NES version until I happened into my local Waldensoftware, where I found a lone copy sitting on the shelf. Waldensoftware was observing the practice of putting empty boxes on the shelves, and keeping the ‘goods’ behind the counter, so when I purchased it, for some reason I did not get the technology tree insert that told me what technologies led to what other technologies. So I got to learn the entire tree by trial and error. However, I was supplied with an unusually thick manual.

Civilization, at least the original incarnation, places you as the ruler of a tribe of people that you build up into a world power with one of two goals: world domination or launch a rocket into space to colonize another planet.

At its heart, Civilization is a strategy game, and can really be thought of as a glorified board game. Each tribe will move all of its units, adjust its cities, check expenditures, and adjust whatever minutiae, then it’s the next tribe’s turn. You have to manage a somewhat-complex balance of resources, money, citizen happiness, research funding, transit systems, gathering resources, creating trade routes, military training, your war effort, fending off barbarians, diplomacy, and the building of Wonders. It sounds like a lot, but you have no time limit on how long your turn lasts, so you can ponder and tweak to your heart’s content. I had the most fun seeing how many Wonders I could cram into one town.

Each Wonder that you built provided the city that it was built in with specific bonuses, and my capital cities were full to the gills with bonuses. Imagine a town that had the Hanging Gardens of Babylon, the Colossus, J.S. Bach’s Cathedral, the Pyramids, Michaelangelo’s Chapel, the Great Library, and the Great Wall. It was a little crowded, but also completely awesome.

This game is also one of the two games that I own that actually makes use of the Super NES mouse and isn’t Mario Paint. In a game like this, mouse support totally makes sense: you have to point and click to do everything. I’m reasonably certain that this game is responsible for both wearing out my left mouse-button and completely wearing away the textured surface in the middle of the rigid plastic mouse pad.

This entry was posted on Thursday, March 15th, 2007 at 10:52 am and is filed under Super NES. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.