Path: utzoo!attcan!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!yale!mintaka!nuhub!nic!chaos.cs.brandeis.edu!chaos!zippy From: zippy@chaos.cs.brandeis.edu (Patrick Tufts) Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac.games Subject: Re: SimEarth compared to Balance of the Planet Message-ID: Date: 17 Dec 90 23:20:27 GMT References: <1141@cvbnetPrime.COM> Sender: zippy@chaos.cs.brandeis.edu (Patrick Tufts) Organization: Brandeis University Lines: 47 In-Reply-To: fdeming@lappi.uucp's message of 12 Dec 90 14:49:51 GMT In article <1141@cvbnetPrime.COM> fdeming@lappi.uucp (Frank Deming {x6088}) writes: How does SimEarth compare to Chris Crawford's two games Balance of the Planet and (the name escapes me)? Frank Deming fdeming@aecmail.prime.com Chris Crawford currently has made *four* Mac games: Balance of Power Balance of Power '90 Balance of the Planet ??? <- I saw it last week, can't remember the name Anywhose, SimEarth v. BotP: SimEarth is a ``God's eye view'' game. You terraform planets, hurl meteors, cause earthquakes, and in general promote the evolution of a robust planet. Good points: you can cause intelligent carnivorous plants to evolve. lots of good earth science, evolution, earthy-crunchy info Bad points: game occaisionally crashes, has `look up word in manual' protection scheme Balance of the Planet: you are given powers to levy taxes on activities that harm the enviroment, and can allocate funds in areas that benefit it. Good points: politically correct (yak! I *hate* that phrase), lot's of good info on the ecology, pollution, quality of life Bad points: very easy to `win'. Just tax the hell out of the bad things, and dump money on the good ones. *requires*hard*disk* Auuuugh! Crawford made lots of hinky-dinky data files that all have to be in one folder. Even if you have 4M memory, you can't run this without loading the stuff onto a ram disk. I bought both. Were I to choose, I'd pick SimEarth if only because it offers more variety. --Pat