Peter Richie’s SimCity 4 project, called (what else) Megacity One, is like something out of a science-fiction story. Using 81 large city tiles, 26,542km of roads, 8,626km of subway lines and 324 hydrogen power plants, he has managed to create a single sprawling metropolis of 107,658,254 people.
For reference, the largest urban centre in the real world, Tokyo-Yokohama, has “only” 37 million residents. If you’ve ever been to Tokyo, and noticed how from many vantage points the city never visibly ends, imagine one three times larger.
Like many larger cities in the world that have spread so far they have overrun other big settlements, Megacity One actually comprises multiple city centres. The four here have things like airports placed in between, to minimise pollution and maximise density.
Some other fun facts: there are 512 water pumps, 486 waste management centres, over 2000 schools, 81 universities and 162 colleges.
The best fact, though, is that he did it all without the use of mods. It’s 100% urban planning and SimCity 4.
If you want to read about the challenges of keeping the entire thing running, Richie’s interview with Motherboard is good reading.
Comments
11 responses to “SimCity Megacity Has Over 100 Million People Living In It”
That is mental! SimCity 4 had so much more functionality than the new one did.
Makes you realise how much they borked a great franchise.. 🙁
This is the reason why i will never buy the current SimCity. The older ones are 1000% better (also they actually work).
Yes but if this chap had bought the new Sim City he would most likely have achieved more in real life as his game time would have been arbitrarily limited by the quality of EAs servers.
haha yeah i guess
This is the freedom you want in a simcity game. Not that many will go this far with the game but your imagination awakens your desire for the game. The latest simcity is like building anything you want from lego but you are only allowed 10 blocks.
yep…. the size was seriously gimped in the new version. just to damn small….. ignoring all the bugs i could have played longer if there was a bit more size
Right-click > block element.
If they had made the individual city blocks larger, and neighbouring regions less disconnected, the new sim city would have been great imo.
so has simcity gotten better since launch? i gave up playing about 3 months after it came out.. 2 many bugs, maps too small, always online, crap AI etc etc..
Very tempted to boot up and continue my last city in SimCity 4. If I wasn’t lying down and feeling sleepy I’d be straight on that and it’d be 2:00AM before I knew it.
Why did this article need a gif? What purpose did the gif chosen serve? Wouldn’t a static picture have got the point across just as well?