A team of digital preservers have managed to extract the data from a cartridge that contained the version of SimCity that did not go on the market. During the process they had problems with a collector who did not want to sell the cartridge.
1989 saw the birth of the city management game SimCity, which became a hit for Maxis. Its popularity made Nintendo want to bring it to their consoles, which is why we have SimCity on Super Nintendo and Nintendo 64. But it could also have been released for the Nintendo Entertainment System had it not been canceled.
For years it was known that a version of SimCity was in development for the NES, since it was announced in an issue of Nintendo Power magazine. This version was canceled, but it is now playable thanks to the work of digital curators.
SimCity is now playable on the NES thanks to emulation
The Videogame History Foundation managed to upload a copy of the SimCity NES retail prototype several days ago. This is a cartridge copy that was ready to be approved before going to production and is perfectly playable. The cartridge in question is considered an heirloom and was believed to be lost for years until it was seen at a retro fair in 2017.
That's when the members of the Videogame Gistory Foundation managed to copy the game data and take out a ROM twenty-seven years after the game was canceled. Said ROM can be run with an emulator like Nestopia or injected into a replay cartridge to play with an original NES.
Such tasks are what allow us to enjoy the work of digital curators such as discovering prototypes of canceled games, playing games that did not reach our territory or even translations made by fans. Now SimCity fans can enjoy a game that was never released, but it can also be interesting for historians and the curious.
