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Games such as The Sims and Rollercoaster Tycoon have proved that the simulation genre can produce some phenomenally popular titles.
Hoping to continue the tradition is Lionhead's The Movies, which is a simulation of building and operating a Hollywood-style film studio.
Players start with an empty lot at the dawn of the cinema era and have to achieve and maintain both critical and financial success as the industry progresses from silent films to talkies, then colour and beyond.
The fact that time is marching on provides constant variations on the theme. As technology progresses in the game world, your studio will have to adapt and spend some of its hard-earned dollars on new sound stages, better equipment and more staff.
You’ll soon learn to keep one eye on the timeline at the top of the screen as it scrolls from right to left. Keeping up to date with current affairs (the outbreak of war, scientific discoveries and so forth) can, for example, help you to produce films that are more in tune with popular tastes.
Part of The Movies experience is putting together the films themselves. Players who prefer not to spend time on this can automate the movie-making process to a large degree, but it is possible to get fairly hands-on, creating your very own starlets, editing scenes and even recording your own dialogue, sound effects and music.
An online community has quickly grown up around the game, with players from all over the world uploading, viewing and rating each other’s mini-masterpieces.
The Movies is packed with detail, full of wit and bags of fun to play. But the subject material won’t necessarily appeal to everybody, and it is unlikely to attain the blockbuster status of more immediate, universal games such as The Sims.
System requirements:
800MHz processor
256MB of Ram
32MB video card with T & L (transform and lighting)
Windows 98SE/ME/2000/XP
See also:
Two heads are better than one in this Middle Eastern epic 26 Jan 2006
All Arcade Games
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