Memorable Gaming Moment 2000: The Sims

The year 2000 was a great year for gaming. The Sega Dreamcast was still just a baby with hopes of bringing credibility back to the Sega brand name. The Playstation 2 would release and turn out to be one of the greatest consoles in gaming history. 2000 also featured many big game releases such as Diablo II, Perfect Dark, Final Fantasy IX, and much more. While all of this was going on, there was one game that captured me like nothing before: The Sims.

If you told me that I was going to fall in love with a game about eating, working, pooping, sleeping, and basically all the mundane aspects of real life; I would have called you crazy. It goes to show that Will Wright has a gift for making the boring and tedious aspects of everyday life enjoyable. I sunk well over a thousand hours into The Sims and all future expansion packs. I began to play more games (besides just The Sims) on the PC than consoles and that trend continued for years to come.

I’ll never truly understand why The Sims appealed to me so much and why it still does; I played the hell out of The Sims 2 and just recently picked up a copy of The Sims 3, though I’m having a few technical issues with the latter. I guess it’s just that inner part of my being that actually loves to role-play and walk in another’s shoes, or simply walk in an alternate version of my own shoes. Some people may think the game is stupid (and may be uncomfortable even calling it a game), but The Sims is by far my greatest gaming memory of 2000.