First experiences with The Sims (20th birthday!)

And as I opened the topic... I should answer myself!

I remember my first steps as a builder in The Sims. I had this obsession with creating 'flying houses'! I'd place a lot of columns in the lot, build a house on top, and then delete all the columns with move_objects. Past young me found it hilarious so I did it with most of my builds :D

I started with the original SimCity and have played all of the Sims 1-4.    My favorite thing in the entire series is the TS2 penguin!  (hint, hint) I could just watch that little guy's antics and almost forget the rest of the sims on the lot whenever he showed.  Don't know why but I just fell in love with him.

But I really want to compliment the Sims team on this version of the game.  The graphics are outstanding. Sulani and the Realm, in particular, were just breathtaking when I saw them the first time.   And this version of the game is so robust as compared to the earlier versions.  And after 5 years of playing 4, I still find all kinds of little things that I haven't seen before.  It's truly a game that will endure and wide open to different play styles.   Good job guys!

Definitely. I did the flying houses thing for a long time. Separate buildings all hovering around, only connected by staircases. With only a single stair to connect to the ground. Gave me lots of room for a BIG pool on small lots!

I miss things like the robber, firemen, SPIRAL STAIRCASES... HINT HINT HINT!!!

My first Sims experience was the console version of TS1.🙂  You started living at home with your elderly mother and had to make enough money to move out. And the first place you moved to was sharing a house with Mimi Landgraab, who was a mean, partying, slob! 😞   Eventually you moved on to better houses.  But all the objects, items were just like the PC version of the game.  

I remember thinking that the game was impossible. 😃 And with TS1 if you made a few mistakes at first, they really were very hard to recover from!   But it was when I moved my Sim in with Mimi that the fires started to happen!  😮  About a third of our house burned and there were ash piles everywhere and took forever to clean up!  Every square in one section of the house had an ash pile.  They were all perfectly arranged with no overlap.  This was such a chore to clean that I dreamed that my house was divided into equally sized squares!  😃And of course I was cleaning up ash piles in my dreams!  That was how I knew I was hooked on the game , because it impacted me so much I had to dream about it! 😃❤️

I made the move to the PC when the Unleashed EP came out!  I had to have dogs and cats in my game! 🐶🐱🙌  I soon realized that the PC version was superior to the console version and soon bought all the packs for TS1!🥳  But since I was late to the PC version and at first only had the base game and Unleashed, I remember my fist bug and patch fix for it.  It was a bug that came with Unleashed that when you had puddles on the floor, they would go under the counters and you couldn't clean them up unless you went into Build Mode!  The patch fixed it! 

One thing I remember might have only been in the console version, but I remember that your lightbulbs would burn out!  💡 You had to "repair" the lamps by putting in new lightbulbs but you had to make sure the lamp was turned off or you would get electrocuted and possibly die if you didn't.  The bulbs would burn out with a sound affect of breaking glass, and when you repaired them sometimes your Sims would say "Ouch!" 😃

I have many more fond memories! 🥳❤️

I also loved the voice acting in TS1 the most, especially the children's' voices!  I know the woman who did the female adult voice has passed away. 😢  Her work gave me a lot of laughs and a lot of joy in general! ❤️ May she rest in peace! 😇

Loved that funny little penguin!  And the bear that pushed over the trash cans.
There was that one time when Drew Carey showed up at one of my Sims 1 (?) parties.

Or the "Great Gardener Invasion" (Sims 2 I think).
Another party event and my scheduled gardener showed up... followed my another ... and another.... and ... well there was a whole gang of then with their trucks lining the streets. 

Could not stop laughing!

EQ

@CGrant56, and @EuphorialQueen  I loved that penguin too! ❤️

And I remember the Great Gardner Invasion (I think you are right and that it was TS2!)

The TS1 bear was called Claire the Bear!  She would also steal honey from the beehives! 😃  I also loved Marky Sharky and Betty the Yeti from the Vacation EP for TS1!  My husband has little interest in playing the Sims but he always told me to call him over if Claire the Bear, Marky Sharky, Betty the Yeti, or Sunny the Tragic Clown would show up! 🙌

For TS3 there was a human Sim called Claire the Bear or Claire Bear that had fishing skills! 😃 This was an homage to TS1!😎

Yes, that was back when Drew Carey had his own Prime Time sitcom as well as a comedy show, long before he hosted the Price is Right!  The game also had Avril Lavigne and Marilyn Monroe! ⭐  There might have been more stars but those are who I remember! 

I remember being at walmart or something, getting the game, and attempting to play it on my PC. I had no idea what I was doing, I couldnt figure out what was happening, why my people weren't moving when I was trying to force them to move [ thinking it was like a first person game type of thing]. Then a couple years later down the road, I had purchased Sims 3, and was like hey, this aint that bad afterall. Figured everything out. and now here I am, 26 almost 27, still playing.

I don't have much to remember since Sims 4 is my first. My eldest brother, however, got The Sims when it first came out and has played all of it apparently. I can still vaguely remember seeing him play The Sims 2 once. Anyway, I jumped into Sims 4 by chance. I'm not even sure how it happened. I must have seen an add. I was impressed by how far the graphics had come. (I'm afraid the simulation designs for Sims 2 and 3 creeped and still creep me out. ^_^0)

I tried the CAS demo mode first. That sold me enough to try the actual game out. As it goes, I knew nothing about the game. (Yeah, I didn't watch my eldest brother play... kind of hard to do that when it is on the PC and he's playing the game when I'm crushed with homework or it is the middle of the night.) Actually, when I had asked my brother about it, back when he was on Sims 2, his explanation pretty much made me conclude, "I'm struggling with real life as it is and it is *censor*. I don't have time to control the lives of an entire virtual family!" (Think of tamogatchi nightmares.)

So, yeah... I jumped in blindly. My first play was depressing as heck as I knew nothing of cheats outside the hint given by the game about kaching and motherlode. Using only that cheat and not knowing it could be used again, I played the game without any cheats. As said, it was depressing as heck. My Sim had no life. She only ate salads, read in her free time and went to work. I felt horrible for her, especially when she'd be at work and by the end she had no energy to the point I feared she wouldn't make it back home. Not knowing I couldn't even give it to her until she returned home, I purchased a Sleep Potion via perk points. Nope... That had been a waste.

I didn't know about birthdays and she only had one contact who asked her out. I didn't know that going meant my Sim had to cater to the other and ensure the NPC had a great time. I didn't know cakes had to be baked by my Sim. So, they met at the park, had a nice, long conversation and the party was over. The "friend" made my Sim feel worse and I thought the NPC was a *censor*. My Sim tried really hard (considering I didn't know a think about how birthdays worked) and kept them both in positive moods the entire time.

As for my Sim's birthdays... I didn't mind as she started as a young adult and a missed birthday isn't that big of a deal as you get older. When she became an elder, however... Gawd I felt so horrible for her and thought her "friend" was a still a *censor*. In the end, my Sim lived  hard, lonely life. She had no time for friends, worked, got promoted, read and then on her last day she picked up a book, was heading to her bed to read and-
She didn't even make it to the bed! She fell to the floor and died!

When that first play ended, I was left really stunned and empty. "Why the heck do people like this game? This is the most depressing game I've ever played!" Thankfully, I decided to go to the net and research. My second time around was a great deal more enjoyable. 'Still, in that research... dang, I wish I had been able to play the Sims 2 at times. (My life was too busy and *censor* back then, however. I was sleeping on the living room couch, battling with a mental illness that had yet to be properly diagnosed and a ton of other crap...)

I wish EA would mesh to two - Sims 2 and Sims 4. Sims 4 as it is, but add in all the fun, quirky, crazy stuff from Sims 2. I want my Sims to be able to repair a car and either use it or sell it. If they did the driving system like they did in Sims 2, that would be great. I could go on a rampage of how to mesh the two games.

I started in 2009 with the Sims. But didn't play much at first. Only in 2012 i really started to enjoy playing Sims 3. I also made some flying houses in 'the future'. I always tried to get a sim pregnant by the grim reaper. They were so much in love but never managed to produce little reapers. Made a lot of ghost babies though; wonderful families! 

@PsychotpsTotally agree with your hints. I miss these too. But i like the Sims 4 as much as i did Sims 3.