I have been playing a lot of the DOS version of Simcity 2000 recently. I grew up with it on my windows 98 pc, so revisiting it was nice. There were a few thing I picked up on that I never realized when I was young.
1: The game, especially the soundtrack, reminds me of Blade Runner. It has the synthy jazz instrumentals that are melancholic, but also has that classic simcity cheer.
2: The game kind of has a dystopian feel to it, at least visually. The ground is brown, with only sparse trees filling the world, buildings are fairly realistic, with not many colors, outside of the luxury homes and the Arcos are very intimidating structures, like something out of Judge Dredd or, again, Blade Runner.
3: Omg, water sucks in this game xD.
Why does this game feel so moody, at least to me? It’s also intensly funny, and I will never not laugh when 1700 llamas die in a plane crash.
If you think about it, DOS still would do pretty much all you need. Everyone’s friggin too lazy anymore though, and enjoys being bombarded with bloat.