SIMEARTH

 SIMEARTH for the Macintosh (on which this review is based) arrives with both
color and black-and-white versions in the same box, along with a massive, and
copiously illustrated, instruction book. Copy protection consists of the
requirement that you enter easily-located information about planets in our solar
system.

 After entering the required data, you can choose to create your own world, or
play with pre-designed scenarios (including Earth 1990). As in SIMCITY, you can
specify the difficulty level, from experimental (unlimited Omega energy or cash)
to Hard (only 2000 Omega and an unregulated Gaia). If you choose to create your
own world, you may select the time period, ranging from the beginning of your
planet, all the way up to the Industrial Age. Then you're off to run your
planet!

 In the color version, you're greeted with a marvelous layout of your planet as
it cools down. Land appears as volcanoes erupt, and then the freshly cooled rock
begins to drift around the planet. You quickly become aware of all the
interesting things you're going to be able to do with your planet, including
manipulating the Geosphere, Atmosphere, Biosphere, and Civilization.

 The Geosphere allows you to modify the heat from your planet's core, the rate
of continental drift, meteor impacts, volcanoes, and so on. Atmosphere allows
you to toy with your planet's greenhouse effect, rainfall, amount of energy from
the sun, reflectiveness (Albedo) of the clouds and the ground, rate of heat
exchange between sea and air, etc. Biosphere lets you play around with the
lifeforms that develop on your planet. Here you can increase the amount of heat
your critters can take, the amount of CO2 that can be absorbed, reproduction
rate, advancement rate (evolving), and the like. And Civilization lets you tell
your SIMEARTHlings what types of energy to use, and how to use it.

 From the menu at the top of the screen, you can view your planet's atmospheric
content, which type of life you have, which type of biomes (jungle, desert,
forest, etc.) are on your plant, and a few other things. You can select the Gaia
window, in which Gaia (in the form of a planet) watches the mouse cursor on the
screen and comments on the game; you may also obtain a graph of anything from
CO2 levels in the air to the rainfall on your planet. You can view a report
showing (depending on the time period) the highest lifeform you have, the amount
of Biomass (in general, life), growth on a planet, the level of civilization,
and what it's like to live in your SimCivilization (if and when you get one).

 After a few hundred million years, oceans form, and continents begin to race
across your map (you can run a short replay of the movements to watch continents
hustle around). You can view your planet as a spinning globe: By double-clicking
on the globe, you obtain a cross-section of the planet, showing its internal
makeup. While this is fun, and lets you see what your planet really looks like,
the regular map is best for working.

 Suddenly, life forms! And your seas start to crawl with bacteria and
single-cell organisms. Then life evolves even more, and plants spread onto the
land; life begins to comprise more and more creatures. (There are a total of 16
life forms, plus robots. Only 14 of the organic creatures can become
intelligent.) Although it's useful at any time, the edit window really gets a
workout now. (SIMCITY players will feel right at home here.) You click on an
icon and a nice hierarchical display of options appears. From the edit window,
you can drop new life forms, put some trees here and there, drop an atomic bomb
or a meteorite, or even a monolith (which helps to evolve a species). For those
of you who love disasters, in addition to meteorites and atomic bombs, you can
create earthquakes, tidal waves, fires, hurricanes, plagues -- all sorts of fun
stuff!

 Soon, life forms become sentient, and everything goes haywire. At first, that's
okay, but then they pollute the world, kill off other life forms, and sometimes
nuke themselves into extinction! But if they're good little Sims, they might
move into the exodus stage, where they attach rocket engines to their cities and
blast off into space. Once they're all gone, life returns to normal, and
creatures compete to evolve into intelligent life forms. Radiation eventually
disperses, and things are happy...until another life forms evolves, or the sun
gets so big that it crisps your cozy little planet (definitely the ultimate in
SimDestruction...heh).

 To put it plainly, SIMEARTH is complicated. Pretty much everything you do
affects everything else. And a small change in one variable can really create
chaos on your planet. While complex and challenging, SIMEARTH is nevertheless a
blast to play. It looks great, too: SIMEARTH runs in 16 colors, but you'd swear
there are 256. (It will run in 256 colors, as well, but it's slower). The
black-and-white graphics aren't as nice, but they're still pretty good, and
playing in black-and-white won't affect your enjoyment of the game.

 SIMEARTH is a must for anyone, especially gamers who loved the very popular
SIMCITY.

 SIMEARTH is published by Maxis and distributed by Broderbund.

*****DOWNLOADED FROM P-80 SYSTEMS (304) 744-2253