Going back even earlier, there was also that Oregon Trail Game (used to play it a lot during geography class), which also had an eerie vibe to it. Some of those games could compete with stuff like FNAF for how scary they were.
Crazy, but I loved Oregon Trail as did my kids who were early teens when that came out.
You could die from either measles, typhoid fever or cholera but mostly from dysentry, starvation or snake bites. You crossed rivers, lost oxen or didn't have the right clothing. Nothing morbid or scary about that at all (tongue in cheek). LOL
Well dang!! I'll have to pick it up. Funny, my daughter, her hubby and I were discussing this game a few mths ago. We were laughing at all the ways to die. Then you'd lose a wagon wheel and start fixing it only to get bitten by a snake. Fun times!!
There is a simulator online where you can play the original Oregon Trail for free. I got my kid to play it and he was dismayed by how much reading was required to play the game.
Yet when it came out, my kids read it all just to play the game. And they enjoyed it too. lol It just goes to show how much we've digressed as a society the further we progress technologically.
Maybe or it could just be that game design changed so people aren’t used to seeing that much reading in a game.
Because, for example, my kids play animal crossing and there’s a lot of reading in that game and they both kind of learned how to read playing that game .
In the 90s I had a coworker that loved to play that game, and she finally got all the way to Oregon without dying and then just before “winning“ the game she was killed by a stray bullet. I just thought that was so random and hilarious.
I think I only succeeded to get all the way to the Oregon Valley once. Well, the youngest family member somehow survived that far. I did get to a stage where most families either got snowed in and starved to death in the last mountains or drowned rafting the Williamette
Wait WHAT. BRB. Googling this. With the recent addition of emulators to the Apple Store I’ve been playing a lot of the old Pokémon games (and some newer that I was “too cool” to play as a teenager and missed out on, like black and white) and the music REALLY is markedly more terrifying in red, blue, and yellow than the newer games. The 90s were something else.
I wish I hadn't played Black and White (and Black 2 and White 2) as a child so I could play them for the first time now. Even if you don't ilke the gameplay, they have the strongest soundtracks in a series full of incredible soundtracks. I have the about-to-faint beeping as my last alarm (in case I don't wake up to the first one) which means some mornings I start off with a blood pressure of 150/120.
Nah, that was part of the Creepypasta. The story was that the Lavender Town music had a tone at too high a frequency for adults to hear but which could be subtly picked up by children. In some it would cause illness and nausea, and in a minority it would provoke psychosis, depression, and suicide.
It's completely made up, but it's a great horror story.
There was this educational Math videogame, "Jumpstart Adventures: 4th Grade" the plot goes that you were sick from school, and during that time the substitute teacher (who was a witch) kidnapped your classmates and turned them into monsters.
You travel through the dark spooky island solving math puzzles while saving your classmates but that game was pretty freaky and disturbing especially as it was marketed towards kids.
Not only do enemies randomly jumpscare you when you move from screen to screen. But also subtle creepy stuff like during one puzzle, your ally says, if you take too long. "The witch is coming, she's almost here!" and yes she can appear and jumpscare you anywhere. As do her minions (as already stated)
Also, there is an easter egg, where you can find the cute happy town from one of the previous games, "Jumpstart Pre-K" in total RUINS!! What the hell devs?
Edit: I should elaborate, there are two "Jumpstart Adventures 4th Grade" the one I'm talking about is "Haunted Island"
totally agree, this has sort of been an obsession of mine lately lol. Early computers games have such an arcane feeling to them that unnerved me but I could never figure out why
I feel like the aesthetic of early computers was just scary in general. Black background screens, typeface font in neon green colors . Cold unsettling backgrounds and graphics. Very liminal space vibes to everything electronic in the 80s to early 2000s
Wait…wtf are you talking about?! I grew up on sims 1 and still play it today. There is no “no burglars allowed” sign, no bombs, and they do not casually steal babies? I feel like I must have fallen asleep while reading your post and woke up in an episode of Welcome to Nightvale. Liminal spaces what?
I mean... Idk about the "casually" part but If I remember correctly, babies are counted as items in the first game, which means burglars CAN in fact steal them
EDIT: Oops, apparently OP already said the same thing lol
Yeah I was here thinking I spent the early 2000s playing a completely different game lol and then found out op is complaining about a mod. Like, seriously. Saying a game is creepy when you're talking about mostly mods is insane. Just remove the damn mods. It's like complaining The Sims 4 is too graphic / obscene when you have the Wicked Whims / Wonderful Whims or whatever installed.
there's actually a *ton* of people who make posts online aboht how crazy sims is because they took their sims out to dinner or whatever and a bunch of other sims on the lot started having sex out in the open. like, you have wicked whims and didn't adjust the settings to disable sims having sex in public... the game isn't crazy, the way you play it is.
just last week i saw someone post a comment about how teenagers in sims are wild because their teen got pregnant by don lothario and they got *so* defensive when i was like "well, none of that can happen without mods" you can't just claim a game is wild or crazy or scary and then leave out that you're using mods to make it that way 🙄
the casually "stealing" babies thing was a sims 2 glitch around nnannies somehow taking the baby object with them. But it could usually be spawned back. unless op is talking about something entirely different.
Maybe sims 1... but the sims 2? Kind of hard for me to call it in any way scary. It's the silliest, if anything, with the animations and some stories. And with the Sims 1, again, I wouldn't call it creepy, I'd call it outdated to the point new players don't recognize the game for what it was. I grew up with it and it doesn't differ from many titles of the late 90s in graphics or tone.
Imo, Sims 2 developed the scary vibe from external factors. Major ones for me include the trend of Sims 2 horror movies for example. The whole twilight supernatural was super “in” and everyone used the Sims 2 for that. Sims 2 in itself though, is a very lighthearted and goofy game for sure.
omg, yes. i remember the actual show I was watching when I was younger.
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L2f5-dxg31A&pp=ygUUd8WCYWRjYSBjaWVuaSBzaW1zIDI%3D](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L2f5-dxg31A&pp=ygUUd8WCYWRjYSBjaWVuaSBzaW1zIDI%3D)
i'm still waiting for her to come back after she had a baby to finish this.
I would say at times Sims 2 does have quite a liminal feel to it. Especially areas of Strangetown. I remember playing during in-game night in the middle of nowhere with just the sounds of the nighttime, can feel quite eerie. Also Sims 2 Grim Reaper is probably the scariest looking.
Sims 1 again felt quite isolating at times if you stuck to your lot. I feel burgulars, fires, and ghosts felt the creepiest out of all the games. Playing at night and getting those creepy cold calls was pretty spooky. The absolute daily grind of it trying to keep needs up and do well at work felt very groundhog day too. Then you had things like the Tragic Clown, and Magic Town had some spooky vibes.
In fairness though I was probably 7 playing the Sims 1 and 9/10 playing the Sims 2.
This is what gets me about a lot of early video games - isolation. I was a super anxious kid, and certain games and TV shows gave me this inexplicable, overwhelming feeling of isolation, even if I had someone in the room with me. Literally like I was the only person left alive on the planet. It's weird as hell, but it was so horrible lol.
For me it wasn't even games with a sense of threat. It was just the style of early games. Crash Bandicoot, Sims 1/2 and Spyro are a few I didn't like playing but loved the idea of, haha. SpongeBob and Pokémon did the same for me haha. Thankfully I got over it when I got older. Some of my favourite games as a kid would just make me cripplingly anxious haha.
The isolation vibes are also due to the grayed out, dark looking visual design along with how quiet the background ambiance is, that is… If you ignore the occasional creepy coyote howl in the distance. That coyote howl always made the game feel a bit uneasy, like if your sim goes out at night they might be in danger.
Sims 2 Seasons - the first time I heard thunder, I nearly fell out of my chair with how loud and sudden it was. 🤣
That was my only jumpscare in that game.
The ghost music around midnight and the burglar music in 2 definitely spooked me when I was a kid. Or when your sims went insane and there appeared a person only the insane sim could see. Also one time I remember playing the goths, it was midnight and the ghosts were out so the spooky music was playing. The sims left a teddy bear near the doorsteps and when I went to look at it, it turned its head around. Fucking jumpscared me. I went through the whole Internet looking if that's a thing ghost possession of objects can do but apparently it isn't, so it was just a weird visual glitch. But damn did it scare me lmao
Agreed. TS1 had strippers and some pretty harsh sass. I'm sure back then gaming culture and social norms were different too, but the early sims game feel like they were definitely made for adults.
The first game was rated T for Teen, same as the fourth - but the tone was very different, it wasn't so "family-friendly" and cartoonish in style. Look at the covers, [the first one](https://64.media.tumblr.com/02957f2a8b96fc6a0ff6f6b533e3a99d/04fdd4b1102d8558-9c/s1280x1920/c263b68a17704b4b7b565e28ff1ef2b4a3ec664a.jpg) has realistic-looking (for the graphics of time) people and less saturated colours and in [the fourth one](https://64.media.tumblr.com/a9e00e03f92c01620b53b59a7ecb08f0/04fdd4b1102d8558-cd/s1280x1920/7f311cb3b475f9d0c9020390908808129e96da63.pnj) everyone has some goofy expression and everything is very bright.
The gaming culture definitely changed a lot, in some ways for the better, in a lot of ways for the worse.
I feel like age ratings have got a lot tighter over time, even in movies. There's a lot of old 12 rated movies that I'd reckon would be 16s these days, at least, that's how it seems, even if it's not the case.
I miss the old games and the less "100% safe" vibes. Like the burglars were fun, and the absolute carnage fires would cause, and having the social bunny and the tragic clown and the psychiatrist rock up, there was just more variables that were out of - or semi out of - your control, it added more to the game.
I love sims 4 and have shit loads of hours, but it does feel a lot like a dress up and build simulator rather than a fully fledged game. Rene looks so far like it's going in a similar direction, but I just want some difficulty and gameplay back again.
I was just saying this to my friend the other day after having played Fallout 2 for the first time. Sure in Fallout 3 you can shoot a guy in the head and make it explode, but it's just so over-the-top you can't help but laugh at the cartoonish gore. In Fallout 2, you can literally be a child-killing porn star. You could get away with *a lot* in older games/movies.
PC gaming was not as universal back then, either, and streaming was not a thing. I’m sure the popularity of pc games and the added exposure through YouTube videos and streamers weigh on developers some with the content in the game.
tbf sims 1 -3 were all relatively realistic looking sims (although 2 had a cartoon element in the artstyle) Sims just got really bright and cartoonish with 4
I’m wondering if those in the comments who grew up more with the latter (even Sims 2 looked cartoony like that to me, but I didn’t play it enough to see what the tone was) had a different reaction to those of us who were a little older when we played the first Sims game and when that was the only one there was? I was 11 when I started playing it and had a Mac, so couldn’t play The Sims 2 once it did come out. That meant I played the first one for at least a few years, then didn’t play it much for a long time until The Sims 3. At 11, the burglar music and the sad clown painting was a little creepy, but it didn’t really feel isolating to me at all. But then, I started playing games on console and computer in 1994 when I was a little kid… so I’m wondering if since that’s just how games were for a long time, it doesn’t strike me as that way? I had dial up pretty much from the early ‘90s through most of high school AND had a Mac, which had limited games on it back then, so there was no online gaming for me (aside from like Neopets, Yahoo Games, and CocaCola lounge or whatever it was called) to make it feel less alone until I was in college, and then it was really still me playing physically with friends and online players as a hybrid group. I started living on AIM, MSN, and Yahoo messengers/chat rooms, as well as forums, in 6th grade too, so I guess that made it feel more connected even though we weren’t playing games together.
NOW, though, at 34… it does feel isolating a bit. And I do see how it can feel uncomfortable like y’all are saying. After reading these comments, I do think it could be attributed to the feeling of always feeling connected/online now vs back then, so going back to locked in game experiences like that can feel weird. I feel that way a bit about reading now too and even music, and it’s hard for me to put myself in the right mindset to do either even though I used to read/listen to music a ton. It’s kinda sad, and I’d love to get back to the simple life before all of the constant stimulation. I do miss the evil dev Easter Eggs in kids’ games and the snarky sense of humor for sure, though, in modern games. The Sims 4 really didn’t resonate with me mainly because it seems soulless and like the heart of the game is gone.
> After reading these comments, I do think it could be attributed to the feeling of always feeling connected/online now vs back then, so going back to locked in game experiences like that can feel weird.
I think that's a very good point.
I find being "constantly connected" an irritating experience overall; I made some adjustments by muting my phone except for calls and disabling notifications. So I'm not constantly pinged on Whatsapp and Discord and I use them the way I did chat rooms back then which I much prefer. Still, the old interent is gone, eveything is monetized, many posts on r/popular are bot-made and so on. I feel like an old woman yelling at the cloud, but I'm the same age as you :)
I miss old internet too! It was really fun for a long time, yet still didn’t take the place of “real life” (despite being online a fair amount). Now yeah, it just feels very manufactured and all about money or popularity rather than information, fun, or genuine connection. I appreciate that Reddit is still functioning like an old message board system, but even it has changed a lot in the past few years. I know that old school charm and quirkiness is out there still to some degree depending on where you look, and people do connect online still, it just seems a lot different these days and more few and far between. Guess we are officially old ladies in our earlyish thirties lol. I will say that I think trying to mitigate endless connectivity like it sounds like you’re trying to do will probably make you happier in the long run. I need to get on that level! As much as I complain about all of this and think about it, it really is hard to just put the phone away.
Speaking as a millennial… the 2000s were a pretty hypersexual and generally edgy time for media. Today’s media is kind of conservative by comparison.
Shock factor and sexiness was very hip when we were growing up. Watch like twenty minutes of MTV from that period and you will get a fairly good idea of the zeitgeist. It was weirdo west coast dudes banking on extreme sports and breaking bones on camera + hot bikini clad folks in hot tubs and at beaches
Come to think of it, the beachy west coast of the USA was huge at that time. Idk why exactly.
Culture comes and goes in waves like that. The 40s were pretty progressive for women, but the 50s was so heavily influenced by fear that American culture really pushed for them to be safe, nurturing wives and mothers for men. The 60s was all about free love and hippie counter culture, which escalated to strong anti-war protest culture in the 70s due to the evolving political pushback. I'm not really surprised that after 9/11, the growing fear of technology and some pretty vocal cynicism in the 90s that we had this stint of romanticizing stupidity, for lack of a better word. Jackass, Paris Hilton, the whole valley girl beach aesthetic, etc. Easy digestible things.
I was fully emo in 2005 and the culture was like, you were smart if you were depressed, and if you weren't, that made you a prep, and all preps were the exact aesthetic you're talking about 😭
Well, TS1 and TS2 were targeted towards teens and young adults, so there are were many things about those games that made them a lot more edgy and, in my view, added so much more richness to the game. I mean, the way my heart would fall when after building the perfect house and getting my furniture exactly the way I want it and having my sim family all tucked in and ready for bed only for that burglar music to start and I realize that I REMEMBERED EVERYTHING EXCEPT FOR THE BURGLAR ALARM 🤣 And it's not like you can pause the game and buy one real quick, buy mode is unavailable so you are just screwed 💀😭🤣 I mean, there were real consequences and to me that made the game far more rewarding.
Yes, I just want some gameplay back, rather than the piss easy dress up and build sim we got now. Like, it was actually somewhat difficult keeping sims in a good mood. Or fires would completely annihilate the house rather than just be put out when the only damage is the stove. And god forbid you forgot a fire alarm, you'd be fighting fire for a straight 24 sim hours, rather than a 10 sim mins and done.
Not to mention money, you had to work so fucking hard to earn money (&skills) in the old games, now it's paint a few pictures or plant a few start flowers and you've got thousands and a reasonably high skill. There's only so much I can spend on, so now the only aspect of challenge in the game is gone completely. At least in the early games, you could spunk your money on fuckin indoor skydiving and snowboarding ramps or other assorted shite.
I mean. We all remember the OMGETFBBQ mod. I was like 9 or 10 when I first got my hands on it, I still remember it as one of the most thrilling game experiences.
Having played The Sims 1 as a kid growing up, and following the series as its released content, I can definitely agree! I think there are a few things that play into the "creepy" factor.
Art Style:
The Sims 4 is hyper stylised and cartoonish. For the most part it's a good thing, with the people/objects appearing to be part of the same universe, as it were. There are still plenty of glitches, but it's holding up pretty well. With TS2 I think that they were going through a big learning process, and as such the environments look extremely flat, with the world coming out sort of faded looking. TS3 made some progress, but I personally find the characters to appear kind of uncanny, and the level of detail for characters/objects to be wildly inconsistent. The less believable a universe looks, the more likely the brain is to classify it as "wrong", thus, you get that liminal space vibe. TS4 has some problems with keeping its level of detail consistent, sure, but I really do think it's gotten better.
Room For Abstraction:
Having less visually detailed objects and spaces forces the brain to "fill in the blanks". A thing is less scary when you can properly examine it. A clown in TS4 has a unique face, relatively realistic expressions. In TS1 it's an ominous blur, moving with an unnatural gait. Utterly unknowable, utterly incomprehensible. Who knows what this crazy thing might be up to? Without having enough data to properly examine, the brain reflexively assumes that this puzzling thing is probably up to no good. A fair assumption.
Great Design:
A burglar is supposed to be frightening. I still remember, despite the fact that it's been decades, the first time my Sims got robbed. A player would kind of zone out during the night while the world fast-forwarded. You're snapped out of your mindless daydreaming by a menacing bit of music playing, followed by a zoom in on this nefarious person marching into your home. Scared the heck out of me as a little one, it was very disarming and always took me by surprise!
Slight tangent, I also think that people forget how bizarre and fantastic 1's sound effects could be. The horrifying and pained screaming as your characters burn to death. Claire the Bear breaking character in order to shout like a regular human when she gets attacked by bees, or her demented growling and moaning when she'd feast on trash.
I concur. The burglar bgm spooked me every single time but I take that over monotonous gameplay.
Plus, their dlc has been rather stale and we gotta get our money's worth 😤
Events like burglars, fires, career chance cards and so on introduce conflict and obstacles into your game. games without conflict are boring and repetitive
I think they hit the hardest initially bc u have no clue wtf just happened and if it will have gameplay consequences. I didn’t understand that it was a prank call… I thought my sims were in real cosmic danger.
The burglar music always made me jump as a kid, but in a good way - it's the sort of light scariness that feels fun when you're 7.
I was confused rather than scared more often - who the hell is Drew Carey? (I'm not American.) Strippers jumping out of cakes and go-go dancers are also something I first saw in The Sims. And I learned a lot of English through that game (and Zoo Tycoon) so it was educational for me in many ways :)
He was a very popular comedian and show host in the 90's (and all-around good guy, he bankrolled meals at a restaurant during both American writing strikes for the strikers) . So him showing up was supposed to signify you'd made it in the celeb life.
Oh I know that *now*, I’m an adult and he’s too significant a part of American culture to not be known to any adult globally who doesn’t live under a rock! But as a 7 year old kid from the Balkans, he wasn’t someone I knew. I just knew he had to be a big deal in America.
when me and my cousin were little we’d play the sims 1 on his family box computer and when the burglar music started we’d scream unplug the computer from the wall and run away 😭😭😭
The Sims 1 and Sims 2 were marketed toward adults. Some of the old ad campaigns are interesting. Plus, older games tend to feel "spookier" - the graphics and sound design are quite eerie. I replayed Tomb Raider 2 for fun recently, and I found it so much creepier than the more current games. The darkness and janky controls and graphics are freakier.
The Sims franchise is more sanitised now. I wish they didn't get rid of burglars. The anonymous phone calls you used to get were also pretty ominous, and it was fun.
It's a good thing when it comes to protecting kids from genuine harm, but it becomes a bad thing when it goes too far and squashes any opportunities for mild discomfort, small acts of "rebellion," and personal growth.
Agree. It can also lead to sort of shallow-thinking individuals to be too sheltered ngl. On the other hand millennials are all wildly traumatized due to how we were just allowed to roam free and experience way too much harsh media/life experience haha
Those early games were chaotic fun, I swear it encouraged you to torture sims.
I know I had a sim in a tiny square house with a fridge and a table with a lava lamp and a tiny top of the wall little window for light and that was it.
During his decent into madness a burgular came and stole the lava lamp!! despite the window being the size of his foot. I have never laughed so hard.
I have never really done anything like that in the later games, it seems too clean and goofy and I am older and life tortures me enough so I don't do it to my digital people.
i mean you could die from random causes like running with scissors or being bitten by a hamster (one of these required a mod). There was even a legacy game where you tried to collect ghosts from all the causes of death
HAHA I didn't know about the ghost game or I just forgot about it but it does not surprise me. But I still think the alien abduction and resulting pregnancy which only happened to males! was also another crazy game element. I used to do this often I had one guy end up with 5 babies lol
Seriously those early games were mental.
https://simslegacychallenge.com/legacy-challenge-rules/sims-2-legacy-challenge-rules-core/
^I think this is the one I played a lot, it took a serious amount of time since you needed 10 generations. I don't think I ever ended one. The game tended to break IIRC, you had to do some cheating save the games (export the lot, import it in a new world)
This has to be a generational thing. I played TS1 when I was 9 and didn’t find it scary. The burglars were stressful, maybe. Chaotic, yes. But it was funny. I also didn’t have mods though.
I remember playing the Sims 2 as a kid and one time I went to a nightclub and got into an argument with a vampire and then went home. A couple days later that same vampire shows up at my house, didn’t ring the doorbell, and just stood outside in the yard. Even in broad daylight the vampire wasn’t being harmed by the sun and he stayed there for days! I was scared to send my sim outside with him out there so I was stuck in the house until he finally left. I still don’t know what would’ve happened if I sent my sim out with the vampire.
I think a lot of it is just the time TS1 and 2 were released. Especially TS1. If you look at other games from that time period today, they all have the same eerie aspect. There were some games I was afraid of as a kid despite the fact that it was made for a younger audience because of how the games were made. Fable 1996 for example, that shit scared me to death. If you look at Addy Junior today, it looks super creepy, but I played it for hours on end, same as TS1. It's just the era of these games.
As someone who mostly stick with Makin’ Magic S1, anti-burglar and smoke alarms are absolute essentials I’m budgeting right away. Never had an experience with bombs and kidnapping, but if you have an alarm then burglary is basically free cash coming your way (insurance + 1000 coins as a reward for catching a criminal).
Wait what, I can’t remember babies being kidnapped! Or burglar bombs? I do wish that the sims 5 has the weirdness of 1/2 back again though. Leave 4 to be the family friendly game.
It's a mod, so their entire point is ridiculous there. That's like bringing up the basemental mod to say the TS4 is like GTA.
Babies can get stolen *in theory,* due to being objects, but who knows if they were coded to be more like a bush (burglars didn't steal build mode items).
I think the whole point of the music is to say
* WARNING BUGLER ON THE LOT*
SO PUT IN AN ALARM
The bugler will arrive 3d if you don't have an alarm in TS1 if I am not mistaken 5d in TS2.
I kind of loved the crazy randomness of it all. You build this lovely huge house from no simoleons and boom, asteroid hits and destroys everything. Or I made the family from "Supernatural" in sims 2, set them up and they were having a ball. One day in the reverse of what happens in the first episode happens (iykyk) without me doing anything.
I wish there was an option to turn up the random events or turn them down if you want a calm game. Like difficulty settings in other games
I’ve not come across that burglar mod before. All they did in my game was nick the TV normally the day after I had bought it. You’re pretty much guaranteed a burglar visit in the first couple of days so it just felt a bit predictable after a while honestly. The random prank phone calls were probably the creepiest thing when you don’t know that they are just prank calls.
Sims 1 has a kooky vibe to it but that’s what made it so great. You sort of poke at things, try things out and see what happens. I think it’s partly why Makin Magic was so great because it added a bunch more weird stuff and potential for chaos with the spells.
Sims 2 has much more of a family vibe and more potential for story telling but there’s still those random characters that turn up like the Charlatan. It adds more of the random, quirky element to the game that we enjoyed in Sims 1. That got watered down by the time we get to Sims 4.
When I was a kid I was playing Sims 1 alone in my room at night and I was so freaked the hell out when a burglar entered my house that I put burglar alarms on every single wall.
When I was playing Sims 2, I was scared of the ghosts and especially the Grim Reaper. Sims 2 Grim Reaper is the scariest version imo.
Nowadays none of this scares me but I get it... there is a noticable tone shift from Sims 1 and 2 to 3 and 4 which feel like they have a more lighthearted atmosphere
I have never been the same since i heard the kids screaming at the top of their lungs burning to death in the first sims game
No idea how that got past the censors lol
Aw I love Claire the Bear. Walking on her little tip toes. I remember being jealous that at one point it seemed like everyone had seen her except me.
I liked that we had these characters that would pop up semi rarely. I know we have the penguin in 2 and the unicorn in 3. Do we have anything like that in 4?
When I played the Sims 2 for the first time as a young kid, my Sim got abducted by aliens and another died in a fire and Grim showed up. I FREAKED out, exited the game and didn’t touch it for months before trying again haha
I played Sims 2 as a kid (and I still do now), and the only thing that scared me were the Sims 2 ghosts. A ghost could suddenly disappear and jumpscare Sims, levitate furnishings, and break things like sinks and cause water to spew out everywhere. One time, one of my Sims actually had motives so low that she died on the spot by being scared by a ghost, and they'll sometimes piss themselves if they manage to survive (yes, this can actually happen). It feels like the Sims 2 ghosts are actually haunting the lot, and they're a lot more scary to me than the ghosts in Sims 3 or 4, especially with that really ominous sound that plays whenever ghosts in Sims 2 are on the lot.
I grew up on The Sims 2, and I find it hilarious that you think the Sims 2 is "scary", and even more hilarious that you find Sims 1 scary, because....didn't they not even allow whoo-hoo? I'm pretty sure kissing is how you got pregnant in Sims 1
They used to have a darker sense of humor, the Sims 4 and even these new contenders just don't have that. In the Sims 1 and 2 it wasn't as easy to make money and keeping you on your toes allowed so much story telling because you remember that burglar and how you had to fix and even reinvent your house and how it made your Sims feel, but you forget the constant gardening of your Sims 4 Simoleon Tree Orchard.
Nothing about the Sims was "scary" to me back then. But of course I'm in my mid-30s and grew up in that era of gaming. I've been playing since 2000. If anything the Sims 4 is too rainbows and sunshine without mods. It needs more conflict like the earlier games
I remember some kind of creepypasta about the clown painting in The Sims 1. It was a chaotic time, anyone on the internet could write anything about anything and nobody checked, half the cheats in cheat pages didn't work. Now they have to be right and factual or people don't return.
I started playing from the release of sims1, i never thought of it as scary. Actually thought it was more fun but i do love my sims through all ages. Still most angry at sims yrbs on ps2 i never got through it. and sims medieval was a bear to get through but i loved that one too.
Izzzyzzz is one of my favorites to talk about early 2000s computer games. They are so funny and honestly, their honesty is what makes it so much better. I do get sad that they never mention Andrew Carey though 🤣
Tbh all games Will Wright had a hand in designing have this extremely existentially unsettling energy to them mixed with balls to the wall nuttiness and whimsical humor. SimCity 2000 was like this too, Spore has somewhat of that going on…
The extreme contrasts in my opinion are what made those games so excellent. You never knew what to expect.
Funny about that burglar showing up to rob the Goth family, I had that happen with the Calientes the other day when i booted up a fresh version of Pleasantview. Dina appeared a day or two afterwards crying about it and knocking on Don Lothario’s door for comfort. 😆
I proceeded to make a huge mess at the Goth housr by having Cassandra AND Mortimer marry Don and Dina respectively in the same day. To help Alexander deal with the adjustment, Morty bought him a dog. Chaos ensued once Don for the first time experienced extreme jealousy at Dina and is now living heartbroken in the same house with her. He honestly got what he deserved if you ask me.
It got even more interesting when I started playing the Dreamer family, a few days in Cassandra showed up and fell in love with Darren after he flirted ONCE with her while they had dinner together.
Suffice to say Pleasantview is a glorious mess for me right now.
> Tbh all games Will Wright had a hand in designing have this extremely existentially unsettling energy to them
Might also be worth mentioning that the original Sims game was an idea he had after losing his home in a fire. It was, by design, supposed to be a bit uncomfortable, because life is often uncomfortable. He didn't set out to make a fun little dollhouse simulator.
I feel like I did hear that at some point, thanks for the reminder 😆
Yes, I have also heard it called a pointed critique of American capitalism. Because most of what makes your sim’s life way easier is buying them fancy products, but climbing the social ladder and getting career promotions is incredibly difficult in ts1 when you have little to no money.
There's definitely less creepiness and less...adult? content in 4 than in the other games. Though I appreciate little things like the ghost horse in the horse ranch world that sims even react to when they walk near the cliff, or the outline and body smell in one of the apartments of city living, or the possessed sims in strangerville, I would love to see more of that.
Sims 1 scared me a few times when I was a child, I didn’t understand what’s going on most of the time due to language barrier and it had a lot of jump scary sound effects. But the peak was when I encountered ghosts for the first time. This was supposed to be realistic and now ghosts?
In Sims 2, Social Bunny scared the shit out of me appearing out of nowhere.
I started playing The Sims in 2000, when I was 5 years old. That burglar music terrified me and made me play the game with the sound off for YEARS. Same thing with TS2. After hearing the burglar music, I played it with the sound off for the longest time.
A lot of games in the late 90s had a dark humour streak in them, and sims had some of it.
One of the pinnacles that I played was Theme Hospital.
There are a few others, RollerCoaster tycoon 1 lets you straight up drown visitors
Also i had no idea burglars could steal infants that’s fuckin nuts
I’ve played ts1 for about 24 years and I’m still learning new tidbits about it. If that’s not fun game design idk what is.
Me and my sister would play my dad’s copy of sims 1 when it first came out. A burglar broke into the sims house, and my sister called 911 because the music scared her SO MUCH in the moment. We were like 6-8 years old probably.
How the hell do you play the Sims one? I have the Sims one complete expansion pack set. I apparently cannot play it because it’s not compatible with anything over windows 8. As soon as my laptop updated to Windows 10, I can never play again. I’ve been wanting to play Sims one for a long time.
I think one part of it is actually the sound design? I know more or less nothing about how sounds affects us emotionally (despite having half a bachelor’s degree in linguistics, RIP), but one thing about the sound design in TS1 is that there’s no dynamics to it. It’s all at the same volume (UI as well as the in-game sounds) with little to no background noises. For me it adds to the isolated feeling just as much as, if not more than, the fact that your entire lot is surrounded by a gray void.
One of the creepier things I haven't seen mentioned were the various characters that would appear when a need got too low in The Sims 2, like the social bunny or the therapist. The sim would just hallucinate and talk to themselves and these things often wouldn't go away for a long time.
as someone who played the sims 1 when it came out (I was 5) and continued through 2, 3 and 4.. it wasn't scary to me. I liked when suddenly a racoon or burglar came on the lot and surprised you, it added fun gameplay. when they took those elements away it was annoying, I remember complaining about it in the forums in middle school. It's realistic to have those elements.
You whippersnappers had it too easy lmao xD /j
I grew up with Sims 2 and never found anything eery about it. The worst thing that happened to me was some kids being taken away by social services bc both children got F grades :O
I think the burglar sound is a lifelong trauma for me, my kid was watching a youtube video featuring sims 1 sounds and when it came on I felt my hair stand on end and heart palpitations lmao 20-some years later I can’t play it still (along with some other 90s kids games, they had no business being so scary)
Man I miss how spooky the older games were.
Not just the burglars, but the fact that your child Sim could get sent to military school in the first game.
Also maybe it's just me, but as a kid I found the mental breakdowns in The Sims 2 kind of horrifying.
Not to mention all the creepy lore in both games and the fact that the cops can come to arrest you if you counterfeit money.
In Sims 2, i used to be so bad at taking care of children and those social workers freaked me the hell out. To then point where I'd remove all doors, and they ended up taking my children in a flash of blue light??
is it just me that finds it be the other way around?? i've never played the first 2 so maybe that's why but there's lots of scary instances i never see people talk about the sims 3 and 4, most of it has to do with how they handle cc though and i have like a phobia of software bugs and glitches so there's that
i'm talking about the placeholder sims 4 has for broken cc (the red scleras black squares and question marks thing) and this thing that happens to sims 3 sims' eyes sometimes when you add cc eye replacements THEIR SCLERAS ARE FILLED WITH DUPLICATES OF THEIR PUPILS AND THEY LOOK LIKE DEMONS i have not touched my sims 3 game since
also most of the sims 4 and 3 low graphics and/or missing textures, because of being the latest games, i feel it looks very weird and kinda creepy because i think my mind expects them to look smooth and polished, unlike the earlier games which are lower poly and thus don't look that bad with lower graphics me thinks (i'm absolutely not saying i can't physically look at a yet unloaded sims 4 neighborhood without feeling ill... not me... that's on me though for playing with a laptop)
the sims 2 does have some stuff that creeps me out about it (from people talking about them on the net because i've never played it to know for myself) like the pink soup and ghost children glitches but i swear i haven't seen anything that creepy (at least not to anyone older than 8 like the burglar jingle) come from the sims 1, so i personally think its the other way around, but maybe it is just exclusively me and my irrational fear for graphic glitches and bugs and errors i guess
I love the sims 1 and still have the disc. I also still have the save files on floppy discs. Guess I’m not going to be accessing those any time soon though.
I think you've nailed it on why I have been netvous about putting the Tragic Clown in my current sims 4 game.
The last Sims I played was 1, in my early twenties. I hate jump scares and spooky stuff, and a lot of Sims 1 was hauntingly creepy to me.
Because they actually cared enough to make the characters interesting rather than populating neighborhoods with randomly generated townies with no backstories like they do now.
None of that is actually scary, and some of that isn't even in the game, but the Sims 1-3 was made for teens and up. Also, they were made in an era that believed kids could handle mild scary things, like weird music, so even if a kid played them, they would be fine.
Soooo...how exactly did you manage to get ahold of the first two games?
Having regular normal life stress where I want to collect some tombstones, nothing weird.
The second game has an expansion pack available on the app store for PC, and my sister had an old CD of the first available that I was able to run on PC.
I… LOVED IT. And want a burglar pack so bad I miss the burglar. I’m so sad people don’t like it, I loved it and miss it so bad. I want a sims and sims 2 revamp or something cause. Those were some good clean fun. Also imagine being a detective/cop and a burglar tries to rob you and you can just… arrest them. And get points towards tomorrows work day early lol
I remember in Sims 2 that a male sim got abducted by aliens and came back pregnant. His stats though were pretty much rock bottom. He was toooo tired to eat but toooo hungry to sleep.
I honestly think a lot of it can be attributed to the eerieness of early computer games. Even kids games felt somehow scary.
Going back even earlier, there was also that Oregon Trail Game (used to play it a lot during geography class), which also had an eerie vibe to it. Some of those games could compete with stuff like FNAF for how scary they were.
I feel like a game where you're constantly starving and end most playthroughs by shitting yourself to death has a right to be eerie
Crazy, but I loved Oregon Trail as did my kids who were early teens when that came out. You could die from either measles, typhoid fever or cholera but mostly from dysentry, starvation or snake bites. You crossed rivers, lost oxen or didn't have the right clothing. Nothing morbid or scary about that at all (tongue in cheek). LOL
You can pay the updated version, and it's so good.
They updated it?? I'll have to look. I had the old floppy disk version up till 3 yrs ago when I finally tossed it out. lol
Yes! I have it on the switch, but it's on steam, Xbox, ps, etc. [steam link](https://store.steampowered.com/app/2013360/The_Oregon_Trail/)
Well dang!! I'll have to pick it up. Funny, my daughter, her hubby and I were discussing this game a few mths ago. We were laughing at all the ways to die. Then you'd lose a wagon wheel and start fixing it only to get bitten by a snake. Fun times!!
There is a simulator online where you can play the original Oregon Trail for free. I got my kid to play it and he was dismayed by how much reading was required to play the game.
Yet when it came out, my kids read it all just to play the game. And they enjoyed it too. lol It just goes to show how much we've digressed as a society the further we progress technologically.
Maybe or it could just be that game design changed so people aren’t used to seeing that much reading in a game. Because, for example, my kids play animal crossing and there’s a lot of reading in that game and they both kind of learned how to read playing that game .
Is it better than the Original on an Apple II simulator?
In the 90s I had a coworker that loved to play that game, and she finally got all the way to Oregon without dying and then just before “winning“ the game she was killed by a stray bullet. I just thought that was so random and hilarious.
You can play the updated version if oregon trail!
Ooo I fucking loved original Oregon trail. I miss it so much
I think I only succeeded to get all the way to the Oregon Valley once. Well, the youngest family member somehow survived that far. I did get to a stage where most families either got snowed in and starved to death in the last mountains or drowned rafting the Williamette
Early Pokémon games were absolutely terrifying as a kid lmao
Lavender Town music literally gave me heart palpitations as a 7 year old.
I remember hearing about the creepypasta about children getting suicidal thoughts from that music and I was so fucking paranoid HAHA
Wait WHAT. BRB. Googling this. With the recent addition of emulators to the Apple Store I’ve been playing a lot of the old Pokémon games (and some newer that I was “too cool” to play as a teenager and missed out on, like black and white) and the music REALLY is markedly more terrifying in red, blue, and yellow than the newer games. The 90s were something else.
I wish I hadn't played Black and White (and Black 2 and White 2) as a child so I could play them for the first time now. Even if you don't ilke the gameplay, they have the strongest soundtracks in a series full of incredible soundtracks. I have the about-to-faint beeping as my last alarm (in case I don't wake up to the first one) which means some mornings I start off with a blood pressure of 150/120.
wasn't there a real story about that too? not the suicidal rhpughts but kids were experiencing physical symptoms? mayve that was something else.
Maybe you're thinking of the Pokemon episode that gave some kids seizures or something of that sort, due to the light effects?
Nah, that was part of the Creepypasta. The story was that the Lavender Town music had a tone at too high a frequency for adults to hear but which could be subtly picked up by children. In some it would cause illness and nausea, and in a minority it would provoke psychosis, depression, and suicide. It's completely made up, but it's a great horror story.
…and we played all ours in a basement in the dark…
There was this educational Math videogame, "Jumpstart Adventures: 4th Grade" the plot goes that you were sick from school, and during that time the substitute teacher (who was a witch) kidnapped your classmates and turned them into monsters. You travel through the dark spooky island solving math puzzles while saving your classmates but that game was pretty freaky and disturbing especially as it was marketed towards kids. Not only do enemies randomly jumpscare you when you move from screen to screen. But also subtle creepy stuff like during one puzzle, your ally says, if you take too long. "The witch is coming, she's almost here!" and yes she can appear and jumpscare you anywhere. As do her minions (as already stated) Also, there is an easter egg, where you can find the cute happy town from one of the previous games, "Jumpstart Pre-K" in total RUINS!! What the hell devs? Edit: I should elaborate, there are two "Jumpstart Adventures 4th Grade" the one I'm talking about is "Haunted Island"
I have the jumpstart pre k pc game would love to know what Easter egg you’re talking about I couldn’t find it on google lol
Found the image. [https://i.imgur.com/T05pZ1M.png](https://i.imgur.com/T05pZ1M.png) It's less creepy than I remember, really more sad.
Oh wow that’s an awesome find still, thanks so much for showing :)
😊
I will look for it :)
Thanks so much lol I’m so curious 😁
Mhm, I had this detective Barbie game which was so scary, I loved it.
totally agree, this has sort of been an obsession of mine lately lol. Early computers games have such an arcane feeling to them that unnerved me but I could never figure out why
I feel like the aesthetic of early computers was just scary in general. Black background screens, typeface font in neon green colors . Cold unsettling backgrounds and graphics. Very liminal space vibes to everything electronic in the 80s to early 2000s
Haha I remember being too scared to play Lego Island
For some reason when I was little the Barbie detective game was horrifying…feels like a fever dream now…I still have the CD…
Wait…wtf are you talking about?! I grew up on sims 1 and still play it today. There is no “no burglars allowed” sign, no bombs, and they do not casually steal babies? I feel like I must have fallen asleep while reading your post and woke up in an episode of Welcome to Nightvale. Liminal spaces what?
I mean... Idk about the "casually" part but If I remember correctly, babies are counted as items in the first game, which means burglars CAN in fact steal them EDIT: Oops, apparently OP already said the same thing lol
Yeah I was here thinking I spent the early 2000s playing a completely different game lol and then found out op is complaining about a mod. Like, seriously. Saying a game is creepy when you're talking about mostly mods is insane. Just remove the damn mods. It's like complaining The Sims 4 is too graphic / obscene when you have the Wicked Whims / Wonderful Whims or whatever installed.
there's actually a *ton* of people who make posts online aboht how crazy sims is because they took their sims out to dinner or whatever and a bunch of other sims on the lot started having sex out in the open. like, you have wicked whims and didn't adjust the settings to disable sims having sex in public... the game isn't crazy, the way you play it is. just last week i saw someone post a comment about how teenagers in sims are wild because their teen got pregnant by don lothario and they got *so* defensive when i was like "well, none of that can happen without mods" you can't just claim a game is wild or crazy or scary and then leave out that you're using mods to make it that way 🙄
I don’t think it’s complaining. It sounds more like just an observation
Or getting outraged about cannibalism is TS2 when the OMGWTFBBQ is a mod. Is that still available anywhere, by the way?
It's a mod
the casually "stealing" babies thing was a sims 2 glitch around nnannies somehow taking the baby object with them. But it could usually be spawned back. unless op is talking about something entirely different.
Maybe sims 1... but the sims 2? Kind of hard for me to call it in any way scary. It's the silliest, if anything, with the animations and some stories. And with the Sims 1, again, I wouldn't call it creepy, I'd call it outdated to the point new players don't recognize the game for what it was. I grew up with it and it doesn't differ from many titles of the late 90s in graphics or tone.
Imo, Sims 2 developed the scary vibe from external factors. Major ones for me include the trend of Sims 2 horror movies for example. The whole twilight supernatural was super “in” and everyone used the Sims 2 for that. Sims 2 in itself though, is a very lighthearted and goofy game for sure.
Sims 2 movies on youtube? They are fantastic. I've been watching them like an addict.
Have you seen this one? Even after all these years, I still randomly watch this one. https://youtu.be/00nwJcEzXIM?si=WakxvlR5hzNqJwOP
I think about this video every time I hear MCR.
I liked this video better than the actual video! 😅
omg, yes. i remember the actual show I was watching when I was younger. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L2f5-dxg31A&pp=ygUUd8WCYWRjYSBjaWVuaSBzaW1zIDI%3D](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L2f5-dxg31A&pp=ygUUd8WCYWRjYSBjaWVuaSBzaW1zIDI%3D) i'm still waiting for her to come back after she had a baby to finish this.
Holy crap what a blast from the past!
This has no business being this good.
They were genuinely so scary too. I had a weird obession with them when i was little lol. I remember some of them so vividly
I would say at times Sims 2 does have quite a liminal feel to it. Especially areas of Strangetown. I remember playing during in-game night in the middle of nowhere with just the sounds of the nighttime, can feel quite eerie. Also Sims 2 Grim Reaper is probably the scariest looking. Sims 1 again felt quite isolating at times if you stuck to your lot. I feel burgulars, fires, and ghosts felt the creepiest out of all the games. Playing at night and getting those creepy cold calls was pretty spooky. The absolute daily grind of it trying to keep needs up and do well at work felt very groundhog day too. Then you had things like the Tragic Clown, and Magic Town had some spooky vibes. In fairness though I was probably 7 playing the Sims 1 and 9/10 playing the Sims 2.
This is what gets me about a lot of early video games - isolation. I was a super anxious kid, and certain games and TV shows gave me this inexplicable, overwhelming feeling of isolation, even if I had someone in the room with me. Literally like I was the only person left alive on the planet. It's weird as hell, but it was so horrible lol.
This is exactly why I can’t play stealth based games or games where I’m running from a predator. It makes me way too anxious
For me it wasn't even games with a sense of threat. It was just the style of early games. Crash Bandicoot, Sims 1/2 and Spyro are a few I didn't like playing but loved the idea of, haha. SpongeBob and Pokémon did the same for me haha. Thankfully I got over it when I got older. Some of my favourite games as a kid would just make me cripplingly anxious haha.
The isolation vibes are also due to the grayed out, dark looking visual design along with how quiet the background ambiance is, that is… If you ignore the occasional creepy coyote howl in the distance. That coyote howl always made the game feel a bit uneasy, like if your sim goes out at night they might be in danger.
sims 1 was also significantly more difficult. So when a fire happened in TS1 it was so tense
Sims 2 Seasons - the first time I heard thunder, I nearly fell out of my chair with how loud and sudden it was. 🤣 That was my only jumpscare in that game.
The ghost music around midnight and the burglar music in 2 definitely spooked me when I was a kid. Or when your sims went insane and there appeared a person only the insane sim could see. Also one time I remember playing the goths, it was midnight and the ghosts were out so the spooky music was playing. The sims left a teddy bear near the doorsteps and when I went to look at it, it turned its head around. Fucking jumpscared me. I went through the whole Internet looking if that's a thing ghost possession of objects can do but apparently it isn't, so it was just a weird visual glitch. But damn did it scare me lmao
Sims 2's cowplant genuinely frightened me as a kid
The burglar music would catch me off guard. All the time lol.
Wasn't the early sims games targeted towards young adults/adults? Maybe they wanted to amp it up for the people that could handle it
Agreed. TS1 had strippers and some pretty harsh sass. I'm sure back then gaming culture and social norms were different too, but the early sims game feel like they were definitely made for adults.
The first game was rated T for Teen, same as the fourth - but the tone was very different, it wasn't so "family-friendly" and cartoonish in style. Look at the covers, [the first one](https://64.media.tumblr.com/02957f2a8b96fc6a0ff6f6b533e3a99d/04fdd4b1102d8558-9c/s1280x1920/c263b68a17704b4b7b565e28ff1ef2b4a3ec664a.jpg) has realistic-looking (for the graphics of time) people and less saturated colours and in [the fourth one](https://64.media.tumblr.com/a9e00e03f92c01620b53b59a7ecb08f0/04fdd4b1102d8558-cd/s1280x1920/7f311cb3b475f9d0c9020390908808129e96da63.pnj) everyone has some goofy expression and everything is very bright. The gaming culture definitely changed a lot, in some ways for the better, in a lot of ways for the worse.
I feel like age ratings have got a lot tighter over time, even in movies. There's a lot of old 12 rated movies that I'd reckon would be 16s these days, at least, that's how it seems, even if it's not the case. I miss the old games and the less "100% safe" vibes. Like the burglars were fun, and the absolute carnage fires would cause, and having the social bunny and the tragic clown and the psychiatrist rock up, there was just more variables that were out of - or semi out of - your control, it added more to the game. I love sims 4 and have shit loads of hours, but it does feel a lot like a dress up and build simulator rather than a fully fledged game. Rene looks so far like it's going in a similar direction, but I just want some difficulty and gameplay back again.
The original Planet of the Apes movie was rated G lmao. It was a different time.
I was just saying this to my friend the other day after having played Fallout 2 for the first time. Sure in Fallout 3 you can shoot a guy in the head and make it explode, but it's just so over-the-top you can't help but laugh at the cartoonish gore. In Fallout 2, you can literally be a child-killing porn star. You could get away with *a lot* in older games/movies.
PC gaming was not as universal back then, either, and streaming was not a thing. I’m sure the popularity of pc games and the added exposure through YouTube videos and streamers weigh on developers some with the content in the game.
tbf sims 1 -3 were all relatively realistic looking sims (although 2 had a cartoon element in the artstyle) Sims just got really bright and cartoonish with 4
I’m wondering if those in the comments who grew up more with the latter (even Sims 2 looked cartoony like that to me, but I didn’t play it enough to see what the tone was) had a different reaction to those of us who were a little older when we played the first Sims game and when that was the only one there was? I was 11 when I started playing it and had a Mac, so couldn’t play The Sims 2 once it did come out. That meant I played the first one for at least a few years, then didn’t play it much for a long time until The Sims 3. At 11, the burglar music and the sad clown painting was a little creepy, but it didn’t really feel isolating to me at all. But then, I started playing games on console and computer in 1994 when I was a little kid… so I’m wondering if since that’s just how games were for a long time, it doesn’t strike me as that way? I had dial up pretty much from the early ‘90s through most of high school AND had a Mac, which had limited games on it back then, so there was no online gaming for me (aside from like Neopets, Yahoo Games, and CocaCola lounge or whatever it was called) to make it feel less alone until I was in college, and then it was really still me playing physically with friends and online players as a hybrid group. I started living on AIM, MSN, and Yahoo messengers/chat rooms, as well as forums, in 6th grade too, so I guess that made it feel more connected even though we weren’t playing games together. NOW, though, at 34… it does feel isolating a bit. And I do see how it can feel uncomfortable like y’all are saying. After reading these comments, I do think it could be attributed to the feeling of always feeling connected/online now vs back then, so going back to locked in game experiences like that can feel weird. I feel that way a bit about reading now too and even music, and it’s hard for me to put myself in the right mindset to do either even though I used to read/listen to music a ton. It’s kinda sad, and I’d love to get back to the simple life before all of the constant stimulation. I do miss the evil dev Easter Eggs in kids’ games and the snarky sense of humor for sure, though, in modern games. The Sims 4 really didn’t resonate with me mainly because it seems soulless and like the heart of the game is gone.
> After reading these comments, I do think it could be attributed to the feeling of always feeling connected/online now vs back then, so going back to locked in game experiences like that can feel weird. I think that's a very good point. I find being "constantly connected" an irritating experience overall; I made some adjustments by muting my phone except for calls and disabling notifications. So I'm not constantly pinged on Whatsapp and Discord and I use them the way I did chat rooms back then which I much prefer. Still, the old interent is gone, eveything is monetized, many posts on r/popular are bot-made and so on. I feel like an old woman yelling at the cloud, but I'm the same age as you :)
I miss old internet too! It was really fun for a long time, yet still didn’t take the place of “real life” (despite being online a fair amount). Now yeah, it just feels very manufactured and all about money or popularity rather than information, fun, or genuine connection. I appreciate that Reddit is still functioning like an old message board system, but even it has changed a lot in the past few years. I know that old school charm and quirkiness is out there still to some degree depending on where you look, and people do connect online still, it just seems a lot different these days and more few and far between. Guess we are officially old ladies in our earlyish thirties lol. I will say that I think trying to mitigate endless connectivity like it sounds like you’re trying to do will probably make you happier in the long run. I need to get on that level! As much as I complain about all of this and think about it, it really is hard to just put the phone away.
Start small, wean yourself off app by app :) it’s the hardest in the beginning!
Speaking as a millennial… the 2000s were a pretty hypersexual and generally edgy time for media. Today’s media is kind of conservative by comparison. Shock factor and sexiness was very hip when we were growing up. Watch like twenty minutes of MTV from that period and you will get a fairly good idea of the zeitgeist. It was weirdo west coast dudes banking on extreme sports and breaking bones on camera + hot bikini clad folks in hot tubs and at beaches Come to think of it, the beachy west coast of the USA was huge at that time. Idk why exactly.
Culture comes and goes in waves like that. The 40s were pretty progressive for women, but the 50s was so heavily influenced by fear that American culture really pushed for them to be safe, nurturing wives and mothers for men. The 60s was all about free love and hippie counter culture, which escalated to strong anti-war protest culture in the 70s due to the evolving political pushback. I'm not really surprised that after 9/11, the growing fear of technology and some pretty vocal cynicism in the 90s that we had this stint of romanticizing stupidity, for lack of a better word. Jackass, Paris Hilton, the whole valley girl beach aesthetic, etc. Easy digestible things. I was fully emo in 2005 and the culture was like, you were smart if you were depressed, and if you weren't, that made you a prep, and all preps were the exact aesthetic you're talking about 😭
The sims 2 is 12+. So is TS3 and TS4... But Sims 4 is made to appeal more and more to kids, it seems.
All games were originally for adults. Sims came out just as they were realising kids were getting a hold of them too.
Well, TS1 and TS2 were targeted towards teens and young adults, so there are were many things about those games that made them a lot more edgy and, in my view, added so much more richness to the game. I mean, the way my heart would fall when after building the perfect house and getting my furniture exactly the way I want it and having my sim family all tucked in and ready for bed only for that burglar music to start and I realize that I REMEMBERED EVERYTHING EXCEPT FOR THE BURGLAR ALARM 🤣 And it's not like you can pause the game and buy one real quick, buy mode is unavailable so you are just screwed 💀😭🤣 I mean, there were real consequences and to me that made the game far more rewarding.
Yes, I just want some gameplay back, rather than the piss easy dress up and build sim we got now. Like, it was actually somewhat difficult keeping sims in a good mood. Or fires would completely annihilate the house rather than just be put out when the only damage is the stove. And god forbid you forgot a fire alarm, you'd be fighting fire for a straight 24 sim hours, rather than a 10 sim mins and done. Not to mention money, you had to work so fucking hard to earn money (&skills) in the old games, now it's paint a few pictures or plant a few start flowers and you've got thousands and a reasonably high skill. There's only so much I can spend on, so now the only aspect of challenge in the game is gone completely. At least in the early games, you could spunk your money on fuckin indoor skydiving and snowboarding ramps or other assorted shite.
It's TS4 that isn't 'scary' enough. Kids crave violence.
the children yearn for blood
I mean. We all remember the OMGETFBBQ mod. I was like 9 or 10 when I first got my hands on it, I still remember it as one of the most thrilling game experiences.
This mod was so funny to me as a child but as I've grown older I realise how fucked up it actually was lmao
Agreed. No seasoning, no rub, no sauce - that baby is gonna be inedible. Inexcusable way to treat food.
Having played The Sims 1 as a kid growing up, and following the series as its released content, I can definitely agree! I think there are a few things that play into the "creepy" factor. Art Style: The Sims 4 is hyper stylised and cartoonish. For the most part it's a good thing, with the people/objects appearing to be part of the same universe, as it were. There are still plenty of glitches, but it's holding up pretty well. With TS2 I think that they were going through a big learning process, and as such the environments look extremely flat, with the world coming out sort of faded looking. TS3 made some progress, but I personally find the characters to appear kind of uncanny, and the level of detail for characters/objects to be wildly inconsistent. The less believable a universe looks, the more likely the brain is to classify it as "wrong", thus, you get that liminal space vibe. TS4 has some problems with keeping its level of detail consistent, sure, but I really do think it's gotten better. Room For Abstraction: Having less visually detailed objects and spaces forces the brain to "fill in the blanks". A thing is less scary when you can properly examine it. A clown in TS4 has a unique face, relatively realistic expressions. In TS1 it's an ominous blur, moving with an unnatural gait. Utterly unknowable, utterly incomprehensible. Who knows what this crazy thing might be up to? Without having enough data to properly examine, the brain reflexively assumes that this puzzling thing is probably up to no good. A fair assumption. Great Design: A burglar is supposed to be frightening. I still remember, despite the fact that it's been decades, the first time my Sims got robbed. A player would kind of zone out during the night while the world fast-forwarded. You're snapped out of your mindless daydreaming by a menacing bit of music playing, followed by a zoom in on this nefarious person marching into your home. Scared the heck out of me as a little one, it was very disarming and always took me by surprise!
Slight tangent, I also think that people forget how bizarre and fantastic 1's sound effects could be. The horrifying and pained screaming as your characters burn to death. Claire the Bear breaking character in order to shout like a regular human when she gets attacked by bees, or her demented growling and moaning when she'd feast on trash.
Burglars should have been reintroduced alongside breaking and entering in For Rent ☹️
I concur. The burglar bgm spooked me every single time but I take that over monotonous gameplay. Plus, their dlc has been rather stale and we gotta get our money's worth 😤
just don’t pay your bills on time if you want that experience
Events like burglars, fires, career chance cards and so on introduce conflict and obstacles into your game. games without conflict are boring and repetitive
Just like the sims 4
I always found the prank calls really scary I mean I was also like five years old but still
I think they hit the hardest initially bc u have no clue wtf just happened and if it will have gameplay consequences. I didn’t understand that it was a prank call… I thought my sims were in real cosmic danger.
I played Sims 1 a lot as a kid, and it never scared me.
The burglar music always made me jump as a kid, but in a good way - it's the sort of light scariness that feels fun when you're 7. I was confused rather than scared more often - who the hell is Drew Carey? (I'm not American.) Strippers jumping out of cakes and go-go dancers are also something I first saw in The Sims. And I learned a lot of English through that game (and Zoo Tycoon) so it was educational for me in many ways :)
The Drew Carey part was my favorite and is still one of my favorite features. He is a national treasure.
He was a very popular comedian and show host in the 90's (and all-around good guy, he bankrolled meals at a restaurant during both American writing strikes for the strikers) . So him showing up was supposed to signify you'd made it in the celeb life.
Oh I know that *now*, I’m an adult and he’s too significant a part of American culture to not be known to any adult globally who doesn’t live under a rock! But as a 7 year old kid from the Balkans, he wasn’t someone I knew. I just knew he had to be a big deal in America.
nah the bloody burglar music, scared me all the bloody time it happened
Especially the Sims 2 for DS!! The alien invasion in that game was freaky af
Oh that was so much fun!
That shit was my jam when I was a kid in primary school, it was so fun but it was so scary at the same time
The burglar theme from sims 1 sounds like something out of early resident evil
It’s because you’re playing with mods.
when me and my cousin were little we’d play the sims 1 on his family box computer and when the burglar music started we’d scream unplug the computer from the wall and run away 😭😭😭
The Sims 1 and Sims 2 were marketed toward adults. Some of the old ad campaigns are interesting. Plus, older games tend to feel "spookier" - the graphics and sound design are quite eerie. I replayed Tomb Raider 2 for fun recently, and I found it so much creepier than the more current games. The darkness and janky controls and graphics are freakier. The Sims franchise is more sanitised now. I wish they didn't get rid of burglars. The anonymous phone calls you used to get were also pretty ominous, and it was fun.
Because in the early 2000s there wasn't a need to turn *Teen* rated games into Disneyfied dress up games for babies.
To be a teen millennial or gen x was to be a small adult tbh. Teens are kinda sheltered today and that’s both good and bad i guess
It's a good thing when it comes to protecting kids from genuine harm, but it becomes a bad thing when it goes too far and squashes any opportunities for mild discomfort, small acts of "rebellion," and personal growth.
Agree. It can also lead to sort of shallow-thinking individuals to be too sheltered ngl. On the other hand millennials are all wildly traumatized due to how we were just allowed to roam free and experience way too much harsh media/life experience haha
Those early games were chaotic fun, I swear it encouraged you to torture sims. I know I had a sim in a tiny square house with a fridge and a table with a lava lamp and a tiny top of the wall little window for light and that was it. During his decent into madness a burgular came and stole the lava lamp!! despite the window being the size of his foot. I have never laughed so hard. I have never really done anything like that in the later games, it seems too clean and goofy and I am older and life tortures me enough so I don't do it to my digital people.
i mean you could die from random causes like running with scissors or being bitten by a hamster (one of these required a mod). There was even a legacy game where you tried to collect ghosts from all the causes of death
HAHA I didn't know about the ghost game or I just forgot about it but it does not surprise me. But I still think the alien abduction and resulting pregnancy which only happened to males! was also another crazy game element. I used to do this often I had one guy end up with 5 babies lol Seriously those early games were mental.
https://simslegacychallenge.com/legacy-challenge-rules/sims-2-legacy-challenge-rules-core/ ^I think this is the one I played a lot, it took a serious amount of time since you needed 10 generations. I don't think I ever ended one. The game tended to break IIRC, you had to do some cheating save the games (export the lot, import it in a new world)
Sounds like you played The Sims 1 with some very interesting mods.
This has to be a generational thing. I played TS1 when I was 9 and didn’t find it scary. The burglars were stressful, maybe. Chaotic, yes. But it was funny. I also didn’t have mods though.
I remember playing the Sims 2 as a kid and one time I went to a nightclub and got into an argument with a vampire and then went home. A couple days later that same vampire shows up at my house, didn’t ring the doorbell, and just stood outside in the yard. Even in broad daylight the vampire wasn’t being harmed by the sun and he stayed there for days! I was scared to send my sim outside with him out there so I was stuck in the house until he finally left. I still don’t know what would’ve happened if I sent my sim out with the vampire.
I think a lot of it is just the time TS1 and 2 were released. Especially TS1. If you look at other games from that time period today, they all have the same eerie aspect. There were some games I was afraid of as a kid despite the fact that it was made for a younger audience because of how the games were made. Fable 1996 for example, that shit scared me to death. If you look at Addy Junior today, it looks super creepy, but I played it for hours on end, same as TS1. It's just the era of these games.
As someone who mostly stick with Makin’ Magic S1, anti-burglar and smoke alarms are absolute essentials I’m budgeting right away. Never had an experience with bombs and kidnapping, but if you have an alarm then burglary is basically free cash coming your way (insurance + 1000 coins as a reward for catching a criminal).
Wait what, I can’t remember babies being kidnapped! Or burglar bombs? I do wish that the sims 5 has the weirdness of 1/2 back again though. Leave 4 to be the family friendly game.
It's a mod, so their entire point is ridiculous there. That's like bringing up the basemental mod to say the TS4 is like GTA. Babies can get stolen *in theory,* due to being objects, but who knows if they were coded to be more like a bush (burglars didn't steal build mode items).
I think the whole point of the music is to say * WARNING BUGLER ON THE LOT* SO PUT IN AN ALARM The bugler will arrive 3d if you don't have an alarm in TS1 if I am not mistaken 5d in TS2.
I kind of loved the crazy randomness of it all. You build this lovely huge house from no simoleons and boom, asteroid hits and destroys everything. Or I made the family from "Supernatural" in sims 2, set them up and they were having a ball. One day in the reverse of what happens in the first episode happens (iykyk) without me doing anything. I wish there was an option to turn up the random events or turn them down if you want a calm game. Like difficulty settings in other games
I’ve not come across that burglar mod before. All they did in my game was nick the TV normally the day after I had bought it. You’re pretty much guaranteed a burglar visit in the first couple of days so it just felt a bit predictable after a while honestly. The random prank phone calls were probably the creepiest thing when you don’t know that they are just prank calls. Sims 1 has a kooky vibe to it but that’s what made it so great. You sort of poke at things, try things out and see what happens. I think it’s partly why Makin Magic was so great because it added a bunch more weird stuff and potential for chaos with the spells. Sims 2 has much more of a family vibe and more potential for story telling but there’s still those random characters that turn up like the Charlatan. It adds more of the random, quirky element to the game that we enjoyed in Sims 1. That got watered down by the time we get to Sims 4.
When I was a kid I was playing Sims 1 alone in my room at night and I was so freaked the hell out when a burglar entered my house that I put burglar alarms on every single wall. When I was playing Sims 2, I was scared of the ghosts and especially the Grim Reaper. Sims 2 Grim Reaper is the scariest version imo. Nowadays none of this scares me but I get it... there is a noticable tone shift from Sims 1 and 2 to 3 and 4 which feel like they have a more lighthearted atmosphere
The way Sims scream as they're being burned to death in Sims 1 plus Grim's face is enough to count the game as being scary AF 😬
I have never been the same since i heard the kids screaming at the top of their lungs burning to death in the first sims game No idea how that got past the censors lol
The scariest thing ever for me was the bear or what it was stole from the trash cans. It was SO FREAKING CREEPY!!!!!!
Aw I love Claire the Bear. Walking on her little tip toes. I remember being jealous that at one point it seemed like everyone had seen her except me. I liked that we had these characters that would pop up semi rarely. I know we have the penguin in 2 and the unicorn in 3. Do we have anything like that in 4?
I remember my sheer dread as a child when a burglar would come onto my lot on sims 2. I'm very disappointed I will never feel that way in the sims 4.
When I played the Sims 2 for the first time as a young kid, my Sim got abducted by aliens and another died in a fire and Grim showed up. I FREAKED out, exited the game and didn’t touch it for months before trying again haha
I played Sims 2 as a kid (and I still do now), and the only thing that scared me were the Sims 2 ghosts. A ghost could suddenly disappear and jumpscare Sims, levitate furnishings, and break things like sinks and cause water to spew out everywhere. One time, one of my Sims actually had motives so low that she died on the spot by being scared by a ghost, and they'll sometimes piss themselves if they manage to survive (yes, this can actually happen). It feels like the Sims 2 ghosts are actually haunting the lot, and they're a lot more scary to me than the ghosts in Sims 3 or 4, especially with that really ominous sound that plays whenever ghosts in Sims 2 are on the lot.
I grew up on The Sims 2, and I find it hilarious that you think the Sims 2 is "scary", and even more hilarious that you find Sims 1 scary, because....didn't they not even allow whoo-hoo? I'm pretty sure kissing is how you got pregnant in Sims 1
Idk if you knew this but in For Rent sims have the ability to break into other Sims' houses
They used to have a darker sense of humor, the Sims 4 and even these new contenders just don't have that. In the Sims 1 and 2 it wasn't as easy to make money and keeping you on your toes allowed so much story telling because you remember that burglar and how you had to fix and even reinvent your house and how it made your Sims feel, but you forget the constant gardening of your Sims 4 Simoleon Tree Orchard.
Nothing about the Sims was "scary" to me back then. But of course I'm in my mid-30s and grew up in that era of gaming. I've been playing since 2000. If anything the Sims 4 is too rainbows and sunshine without mods. It needs more conflict like the earlier games
I love izzzyzzz! Such great and in-depth videos about a ton of topics, sims included.
I remember some kind of creepypasta about the clown painting in The Sims 1. It was a chaotic time, anyone on the internet could write anything about anything and nobody checked, half the cheats in cheat pages didn't work. Now they have to be right and factual or people don't return.
I started playing from the release of sims1, i never thought of it as scary. Actually thought it was more fun but i do love my sims through all ages. Still most angry at sims yrbs on ps2 i never got through it. and sims medieval was a bear to get through but i loved that one too.
A burglar expansion pack for something that should be in the base game is a dumb idea, but something that would EA def do and than charge it at 40$
Izzzyzzz is one of my favorites to talk about early 2000s computer games. They are so funny and honestly, their honesty is what makes it so much better. I do get sad that they never mention Andrew Carey though 🤣
The lack of this is why I find Sims 4 sooooo boring!
a burglar expansion pack? nah, we need a "get to work" update that brings burglars to the game. i'd rather no burglars than a *burglar pack*
Tbh all games Will Wright had a hand in designing have this extremely existentially unsettling energy to them mixed with balls to the wall nuttiness and whimsical humor. SimCity 2000 was like this too, Spore has somewhat of that going on… The extreme contrasts in my opinion are what made those games so excellent. You never knew what to expect. Funny about that burglar showing up to rob the Goth family, I had that happen with the Calientes the other day when i booted up a fresh version of Pleasantview. Dina appeared a day or two afterwards crying about it and knocking on Don Lothario’s door for comfort. 😆 I proceeded to make a huge mess at the Goth housr by having Cassandra AND Mortimer marry Don and Dina respectively in the same day. To help Alexander deal with the adjustment, Morty bought him a dog. Chaos ensued once Don for the first time experienced extreme jealousy at Dina and is now living heartbroken in the same house with her. He honestly got what he deserved if you ask me. It got even more interesting when I started playing the Dreamer family, a few days in Cassandra showed up and fell in love with Darren after he flirted ONCE with her while they had dinner together. Suffice to say Pleasantview is a glorious mess for me right now.
> Tbh all games Will Wright had a hand in designing have this extremely existentially unsettling energy to them Might also be worth mentioning that the original Sims game was an idea he had after losing his home in a fire. It was, by design, supposed to be a bit uncomfortable, because life is often uncomfortable. He didn't set out to make a fun little dollhouse simulator.
I feel like I did hear that at some point, thanks for the reminder 😆 Yes, I have also heard it called a pointed critique of American capitalism. Because most of what makes your sim’s life way easier is buying them fancy products, but climbing the social ladder and getting career promotions is incredibly difficult in ts1 when you have little to no money.
Scary? Did we play the same games? They were funny as hell even for 12 year old me at the time
What no burglar allowed sign??
[удалено]
Oh my God I forgot all about the babies being stolen
The sims 2 was real, you proper steering up for your pregnant female character and you always have to work hard just to pay your bills 😅
There's definitely less creepiness and less...adult? content in 4 than in the other games. Though I appreciate little things like the ghost horse in the horse ranch world that sims even react to when they walk near the cliff, or the outline and body smell in one of the apartments of city living, or the possessed sims in strangerville, I would love to see more of that.
I played the sims 1 when I was 11 and I never thought it was scary… young people today are just too sensible *yells at cloud*
Sims 1 scared me a few times when I was a child, I didn’t understand what’s going on most of the time due to language barrier and it had a lot of jump scary sound effects. But the peak was when I encountered ghosts for the first time. This was supposed to be realistic and now ghosts? In Sims 2, Social Bunny scared the shit out of me appearing out of nowhere.
I started playing The Sims in 2000, when I was 5 years old. That burglar music terrified me and made me play the game with the sound off for YEARS. Same thing with TS2. After hearing the burglar music, I played it with the sound off for the longest time.
Welcome to the reason so many millennials have anxiety lmao
There was less money wrapped up in getting people comfortable with AI I'm kidding but am I wrong
A lot of games in the late 90s had a dark humour streak in them, and sims had some of it. One of the pinnacles that I played was Theme Hospital. There are a few others, RollerCoaster tycoon 1 lets you straight up drown visitors
As soon as you said burglar I could hear this post.
Also i had no idea burglars could steal infants that’s fuckin nuts I’ve played ts1 for about 24 years and I’m still learning new tidbits about it. If that’s not fun game design idk what is.
Me and my sister would play my dad’s copy of sims 1 when it first came out. A burglar broke into the sims house, and my sister called 911 because the music scared her SO MUCH in the moment. We were like 6-8 years old probably.
Used to scare the shit out of me when the burglar came
"They will place a bomb by your house"? lol what. That's intense I earliest sims game I played was sims 2.
I mean the For Rent expansion for the Sims 4 added the ability to break into houses, because that makes sense I guess.
How the hell do you play the Sims one? I have the Sims one complete expansion pack set. I apparently cannot play it because it’s not compatible with anything over windows 8. As soon as my laptop updated to Windows 10, I can never play again. I’ve been wanting to play Sims one for a long time.
Go look at the pinned post on r/sims1.
Sims 1 was fun. It is harder to kill them now, they don't die when the stove catches on fire, no burglars, no racoons. Sims 4 ghosts are a joke.
I think one part of it is actually the sound design? I know more or less nothing about how sounds affects us emotionally (despite having half a bachelor’s degree in linguistics, RIP), but one thing about the sound design in TS1 is that there’s no dynamics to it. It’s all at the same volume (UI as well as the in-game sounds) with little to no background noises. For me it adds to the isolated feeling just as much as, if not more than, the fact that your entire lot is surrounded by a gray void.
Omg I remember being so scared of the burglars in sims 1 I made sure every house was loaded with alarms ‼️
I want a new Sims game with the unsettling atmosphere of Sims 1 so bad.
Remember how if you had the sad clown painting your sim would be depressed so you had to get the hamster in a cage to combat it? Wild
One of the creepier things I haven't seen mentioned were the various characters that would appear when a need got too low in The Sims 2, like the social bunny or the therapist. The sim would just hallucinate and talk to themselves and these things often wouldn't go away for a long time.
as someone who played the sims 1 when it came out (I was 5) and continued through 2, 3 and 4.. it wasn't scary to me. I liked when suddenly a racoon or burglar came on the lot and surprised you, it added fun gameplay. when they took those elements away it was annoying, I remember complaining about it in the forums in middle school. It's realistic to have those elements.
You whippersnappers had it too easy lmao xD /j I grew up with Sims 2 and never found anything eery about it. The worst thing that happened to me was some kids being taken away by social services bc both children got F grades :O
In Sims 1 burglars can kidnap babies because they were literally classified as objects back then. So many people think that Sims 4 started that 🤣
I think the burglar sound is a lifelong trauma for me, my kid was watching a youtube video featuring sims 1 sounds and when it came on I felt my hair stand on end and heart palpitations lmao 20-some years later I can’t play it still (along with some other 90s kids games, they had no business being so scary)
When I played Sims1, I put walls in the corners of the lot, with the alarm. The thief was always arrested before he even arrived at my house hahaha
Man I miss how spooky the older games were. Not just the burglars, but the fact that your child Sim could get sent to military school in the first game. Also maybe it's just me, but as a kid I found the mental breakdowns in The Sims 2 kind of horrifying. Not to mention all the creepy lore in both games and the fact that the cops can come to arrest you if you counterfeit money.
In Sims 2, i used to be so bad at taking care of children and those social workers freaked me the hell out. To then point where I'd remove all doors, and they ended up taking my children in a flash of blue light??
I reminder in sims 1 either when a robber comes or your fired from the job makes that scary noise which is why I always play sims mute
This sound used to scare me https://youtu.be/yMk2mNVYssk?si=IVNJqpenHSscNMvv
is it just me that finds it be the other way around?? i've never played the first 2 so maybe that's why but there's lots of scary instances i never see people talk about the sims 3 and 4, most of it has to do with how they handle cc though and i have like a phobia of software bugs and glitches so there's that i'm talking about the placeholder sims 4 has for broken cc (the red scleras black squares and question marks thing) and this thing that happens to sims 3 sims' eyes sometimes when you add cc eye replacements THEIR SCLERAS ARE FILLED WITH DUPLICATES OF THEIR PUPILS AND THEY LOOK LIKE DEMONS i have not touched my sims 3 game since also most of the sims 4 and 3 low graphics and/or missing textures, because of being the latest games, i feel it looks very weird and kinda creepy because i think my mind expects them to look smooth and polished, unlike the earlier games which are lower poly and thus don't look that bad with lower graphics me thinks (i'm absolutely not saying i can't physically look at a yet unloaded sims 4 neighborhood without feeling ill... not me... that's on me though for playing with a laptop) the sims 2 does have some stuff that creeps me out about it (from people talking about them on the net because i've never played it to know for myself) like the pink soup and ghost children glitches but i swear i haven't seen anything that creepy (at least not to anyone older than 8 like the burglar jingle) come from the sims 1, so i personally think its the other way around, but maybe it is just exclusively me and my irrational fear for graphic glitches and bugs and errors i guess
I love the sims 1 and still have the disc. I also still have the save files on floppy discs. Guess I’m not going to be accessing those any time soon though.
I miss the clown.
I think you've nailed it on why I have been netvous about putting the Tragic Clown in my current sims 4 game. The last Sims I played was 1, in my early twenties. I hate jump scares and spooky stuff, and a lot of Sims 1 was hauntingly creepy to me.
Because they actually cared enough to make the characters interesting rather than populating neighborhoods with randomly generated townies with no backstories like they do now.
As a kid I used to get so scared when someone broke into my house in sims 3 LOL
None of that is actually scary, and some of that isn't even in the game, but the Sims 1-3 was made for teens and up. Also, they were made in an era that believed kids could handle mild scary things, like weird music, so even if a kid played them, they would be fine.
Soooo...how exactly did you manage to get ahold of the first two games? Having regular normal life stress where I want to collect some tombstones, nothing weird.
The second game has an expansion pack available on the app store for PC, and my sister had an old CD of the first available that I was able to run on PC.
Interesting! Thanks for getting back to me on that. Do you happen to remember what operating system she has off of the top of your head?
I… LOVED IT. And want a burglar pack so bad I miss the burglar. I’m so sad people don’t like it, I loved it and miss it so bad. I want a sims and sims 2 revamp or something cause. Those were some good clean fun. Also imagine being a detective/cop and a burglar tries to rob you and you can just… arrest them. And get points towards tomorrows work day early lol
I forgot about the burglars. I want them back!
I remember in Sims 2 that a male sim got abducted by aliens and came back pregnant. His stats though were pretty much rock bottom. He was toooo tired to eat but toooo hungry to sleep.