I'm a very new player – I got The Sims 4 to keep myself entertained during social isolation!
I played The Sims 1 way back in the day, though... And I occasionally re-visited my old neighborhood, until the game was too old to run on my present-day computer.
I never upgraded to later games because there was no way to import all my old families, and I was awfully attached to them. Plus, I didn't want to have to watch them age and die! (There was no aging or death from old age in The Sims 1.)
But The Sims 4 was on sale for almost nothing, and social isolation was clearly going to last a while, so I decided it was time to give it a try. And so far, I'm really glad I did! It's truly amazing to see how far the game has come over the years! Things that required mods are now basegame, and the mods go so much further, and there's just so much more detail and more options!
EA definitely knew what they were doing, giving the base game away for so cheap – they got me hooked, and I just spent quite a bit of cash on expansion and game packs :lol: