@Haroldk1 I'm the same way with Simcity 2000. I used to still have Sim Streets and Sim Copter around too, but have since misplaced the disks. That was a long time ago and for all I know is now with my ex-wife. 🙂 LOL
I agree as far as the Mayor's contest is concerned. I decided it's not worth playing. I'll look at it and if there are assignments to further my goals like "launch X disasters", "Clear X disaster areas", "Complete a shipment for such and such" then I'll launch and do those. If only doing those kind of assignments gets me a key and some coin, then that's another key or more coin than what I had before, but I'm not going to spend countless hours making a ton of product I don't need.
I disagree about the Epic projects though. With enough Epic buildings, it makes the speed of the game a whole lot bearable and right now I'm about at completing one epic project a week, so it barely puts a hamper on my game play at all. It's enough to slowly start building a stock of speed-up tokens, but not so much that I can't enjoy the other aspects of the game as well.