The Sims (retroactively referred to as The Sims 1 or TS1 to differentiate it from

the series as a whole) is a single-player interactive life simulation game,

developed by Maxis and published by Electronic Arts. In the game, players control
the day-to-day lives of virtual people called "Sims". Sims require direction, via
mouse inputs, in order to have their needs met and live their lives efficiently.
Sims have a degree of free will, but not enough to be considered completely
independent (and even this limited free will can be disabled). The residential lot
that individual Sims or families call home can be upgraded both in terms of the
structure (Build Mode) and the furniture that occupies it (Buy Mode), with
limitations on lot space.

The Sims is a spin-off of the SimCity series, and was created by SimCity creator
and Maxis co-founder Will Wright. The Sims was released on February 4, 2000, to
wide critical acclaim and numerous awards. The success of the initial release led
to the creation of a total of seven expansion packs for the game, and ultimately
led to the release of other games in the The Sims series, including the sequel
titles The Sims 2, The Sims 3, and The Sims 4. The base game itself has sold more
than 16 million units,[1] and was at one time the best-selling PC video game in
history, until it was eclipsed by The Sims 2.

Contents
1 Overview
1.1 Origin
2 Gameplay
2.1 Create A Family
2.2 Building/Furnishing A House
2.3 Controlling Sims
2.4 Limitations
2.5 Needs
2.6 Careers and finances
2.7 School
2.8 Failure
3 Notes
4 Trivia
5 Legacy bug
6 Compilations and Expansions
6.1 Expansion Packs
6.2 Compilations with the original The Sims game
6.2.1 North American releases
6.2.2 Releases in other regions
6.3 Compilations of expansion packs
7 Custom Content
8 Gallery
9 Media
9.1 Audio
10 See also
11 References

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Overview
Strictly speaking, there is no primary objective to The Sims; it is open-ended and
players are free to decide for themselves what constitutes success or failure. The
game does, however, have plenty of clear secondary objectives, such as career and
relationship success, although there are no set rewards for this. The player will
need to make their Sim successful in many ways. Players must fulfill their need to
sleep, eat, and so forth, just like real human beings. They will also need to find
a job, be promoted, or even marry other Sims so that one can have a successful
family life.

The architecture and the artificial intelligence system have both been praised by
players. Players will need to build a well-designed house and put in different
objects to fulfill the Sim's needs. Sims can only interact with the objects in
their house. A player can control a maximum of eight Sims at a time; the Sim
currently being controlled can be identified by the PlumbBob over its head.

Origin
After suffering a fire that burned away all his possessions, Will Wright was forced
to find a new home and rebuild his life. It was this experience that inspired him
to think of a game that simulates life, linking his ideas with the SimCity series
he had developed. In 1993, he proposed the idea to Maxis but they rejected it,
believing that computers at the time could not handle such a game. In 1995, he
proposed it again to EA Games. This time, it was accepted. EA Games initially named
it Project X, however for a short while it was called Dollhouse Simulator but after
realizing that it would be hard to market to young males it was renamed to Tactical
Domestic Simulator and eventually renamed it The Sims in 1997. Promotions for the
game were first seen on the SimCity 3000 installation CD.

Gameplay
In The Sims, there is no primary objective or goal to achieve, and instead of
fulfilling objectives, the player is encouraged to make choices and engage fully in
an interactive environment. This has helped the game successfully attract casual
gamers. The only real objective of the game is to organize the Sims' time to help
them reach personal goals and succeed to the best of their ability.

Create A Family
In the beginning, the game offered players pre-made characters to control, as well
as the option to create more Sims. Creating a Sim consists of creating a "family"
(identified by a last name) that can hold up to eight members. The player can then
create Sims by providing the Sim with a first name and optional biography, and
choosing the gender (male or female), skin complexion (light, medium, or dark), age
(adult or child), a specific head and body (bundled with a specific body type and
clothing), and a personality (from among Neat, Outgoing, Active, Playful, and
Nice.). The player cannot change a Sim's face, name, or personality once they have
been moved onto a lot. However, a player can edit a Sim's biography by holding down
the ^ Ctrl key and clicking on the Sim's face's thumbnail.

Building/Furnishing A House
Each family, regardless of how many members are in it, starts with a limited amount
of cash (§20,000) that will be needed to purchase a house or lot, build or remodel
a house, and purchase furniture. All architectural features and furnishings are
dictated by a tile system, in which items must be placed on a square and rotated to
face exactly a 90 degree angle with no diagonals permitted. Walls and fences go on
the edge of a "square" and can be diagonal, whereas furniture and Sims take up one
or more squares and cannot be diagonal. There are over 150 home building materials
and furnishings for purchase in the base game.

The player can purchase several objects for Sims such as televisions, showers,
beds, and fridges, each of them has a purpose which ranges from fulfilling a
certain need or raising a skill or simply being decorative. Each item takes up a
number of tiles on the grid and can be rotated to meet the player's desires. All
items are pre-rendered.

Controlling Sims
Sims are controlled by instructing them to interact with objects, such as a
television set, a dresser, or another Sim. Sims may receive house guests, which are
actually based on the game files of other Sims in the neighborhood. The player
cannot control 'visiting' Sims, although it is important for Sims to interact with
one another in order to develop a healthy social life and gain popularity.

Sims have a certain amount of free will (if it is enabled in-game), and although
the player can instruct them to do something, Sim characters may decide to do
something else, or simply ignore the player's commands. Unlike the simulated
environments in games such as SimCity, SimEarth, or SimLife, the Sims are not fully
autonomous. They are unable to take certain actions without specific commands from
the player, such as paying their bills. Thus, if left alone without any player
supervision, the Sims will eventually develop overdue bills and their property will
be repossessed.

The inner structure of the game is actually an agent-based artificial life program.
The presentation of the game's artificial intelligence is advanced, and the Sims
will respond to outside conditions by themselves, although often the player's
intervention is necessary to keep them on the right track. The Sims technically has
unlimited replay value, in that there is no way to win the game, and the player can
play on indefinitely. It has been described as more like a toy than a game. In
addition, the game includes a very advanced architecture system. The game was
originally designed as an architecture simulation alone, with the Sims there only
to evaluate the houses, but during development it was decided that the Sims were
more interesting than originally anticipated and their initially limited role in
the game was developed further.

Limitations
There are some limitations to The Sims, most notably that while newborn babies do
eventually become children, they will never grow up to become adults without
expansion packs or hacks. There is no concept of time moving foward (every new day
is the same), and therefore adult Sims never age and cannot die of old age. Adults
and children are expected to go to work and attend school, respectively, every day.
There are no genetics or family relations, and as such there are no family specific
social interactions. This includes children grown up through expansion packs or
hacks. Sims also have path finding issues such as not being able to walk past
chairs, walking on paved or carpeted surfaces even if it means taking the long way,
and getting stuck in doorways if another Sim is coming in/out from the opposite
direction.

Needs
The player must make decisions about time spent on fulfilling the needs of the
Sims, these are: Hunger, Social, Fun, Comfort, Hygiene, Bladder, Room and Energy.
These needs are filled by activities in the daily agenda of the Sims such as using
the toilet and eating food from a fridge. If the simulated humans do not perform
the proper amount of maintenance, they will sicken and die. Not fulfilling these
needs has other negative side effects, for example if a Sim has lowered their
energy need they will pass out where they stand which will lower their comfort
need, and if they pass out in a swimming pool they will die. Furthermore, Sims need
to have fun; if they don't, the fun level bar eventually lowers and they become
depressed, but however depressed they become, they are unable to commit suicide
(they are not programmed to do so). They are, however, able to be nasty to other
Sim characters by insulting them, slapping them, and even attacking them. This has
more to do with their relationship score than their mood, though. Sims in a bad
mood are more likely to ignore player input and autonomously seek an activity that
will increase their mood. For example, if a Sim's fun level bar is too low, they
may refuse to look for a job or pay the bills and instead sit and watch TV.

Careers and finances

In the beginning all families have a §20,000 limit to buy a house or build and
furnish a house from scratch. Money can be gained by sending the Sims to find jobs
and going to work. Promotions are earned by fulfilling the required skills and
befriending sims. A good job performance will increase chances of getting a
promotion. A sim will receive a warning if they miss one day of work, and get fired
if they miss work for two consecutive days. If Sim has the creativity skill they
can paint paintings and sell them for some additional money. Bills have to be paid
occasionally and failure to do so results in the repo-man repossessing some of the
household's items.

School
Children need to attend school every day. Children will need to study at home and
go to school with a good mood in order for their grades to go up; this has
advantages because relatives will occasionally call children up and give them §100
for having very high grades. However, if a Sim has F Grades in school for seven
consecutive days they will be sent to military school, thus erasing them from the
game forever, never bringing them back again.

Failure
While there is no eventual objective to the game, states of failure do exist in The
Sims. One is that Sims may die: Types of death include starvation, drowning,
perishing in a fire, electrocution, and with expansion packs, by a virus
(contracted from a pet guinea pig, which can happen when its cage is left dirty).
In this case, the ghost of the deceased Sim may haunt the building where it died.
In addition, Sims can leave a household for good and never return: Two adult Sims
with a bad relationship may brawl, eventually resulting in one of them moving out
of the neighborhood forever; babies can be removed by a social worker if they are
neglected, and child Sims can be banished to military school. Although considered
states of failure, many players occasionally deliberately mistreat their Sims to
observe the reactions and for entertainment. This can be done with no consequences
if the game state isn't saved.

Notes
The Sims runs on some Windows 2000, XP, Vista, 7, 8/8.1, 10 and 11 operating
systems despite being unsupported, although a large majority of players have
problems with the game running on 8, 8.1, 10 and 11. Later releases of the base
game and expansions before and after the release of The Sims: Hot Date support
Windows XP.
The Sims is known to be glitchy on Windows 10; only The Sims Complete Collection
has been observed to install without problems. The game can be run in both
fullscreen and windowed mode, although switching away from the game in the former
has been known to freeze the game or cause heavy graphical corruption. [2] These
issues are caused by bugged DirectDraw emulation, and by installing a DirectDraw
wrapper, these issues can be corrected. [3]
The Sims and its expansion packs are protected with SafeDisc, which is not
supported by Windows since 2015.
The Sims requires the user to be logged in as an administrator but it is possible
to run Sims.exe as an administrator by using "Run as". If this is not done, the
game will not run correctly as it cannot save progress, resulting in issues such as
the expansion pack installation looping endlessly.
The Sims uses a combination of 3D and 2D graphics techniques. The Sims themselves
are rendered as high-poly-count 3D objects, but a house, and all its objects, are
pre-rendered, and displayed isometrically.
Some Windows 8/8.1 users have multiple errors with The Sims, such as the game
crashing, the Create a Family window not appearing and a created family
disappearing when moved in. Otherwise, escaping to the desktop will result in
glitchy graphics and freezing for all users.
It is possible to use custom resolution for playing The Sims, however it is
considered incomplete and buggy. There is a solution to this, involving tweaking
the game data.
Copies of The Sims were discontinued after the release of The Sims Deluxe Edition,
which bundled the base game and The Sims: Livin' Large.
The Sims, its expansions and its console versions are no longer available for
purchase at retail stores in most countries, such as Australia, and are now
considered abandonware. However, copies can still be purchased at second-hand
stores such as charity stores, pawnbrokers or any store that sells second-hand
video games as well as being available to purchase on online shopping sites such as
eBay, Amazon or Facebook Marketplace.
Although The Sims fully supports Windows 95, it is interesting to note that some
later releases do not have Windows 95 listed on the system requirements section on
the case. This is the same case with The Sims 2, with some cases not listing
Windows 98 or Windows ME despite fully supporting these two operating systems.
Trivia
In The Sims 4 there's a computer game on every computer named "Sims Forever" that
contains footage from The Sims, with music playing and Simlish language. Mortimer
and Bella can even be seen kissing in a hot tub for one scene. It largely uses
footage from The Sims: Vacation.
The Sims is the only Sims game that was not released on Origin.
To launch The Sims in China, the Criminal career had to be renamed, being
transformed into a mime career. All content had to be moved to a mime theme.[4]
To launch The Sims in Japan, the game had to be renamed to SimPeople, and the
premade Sims and Lots had their appearences changed to a more Asian look.[5]
This is the only game in the main The Sims series to not be fully 3D.
The Sims is the only game in the franchise that can be run on Windows 95.
The Sims is the only game in the franchise that had none of its expansions ported
onto console, unlike The Sims 2 and The Sims 3, which often had pets as a console
game, until The Sims 4 offered PC similar gameplay.
Legacy bug
A rare bug has been found that prevented users from installing any of The Sims
products (such as expansion packs) if they reinstall an expansion pack. EA made the
Sims Eraser to fix the problem. Users also experienced errors when installing The
Sims expansion packs, since then SimsEraser.exe was included on newer disks.

This only occurs on the PC version.

Compilations and Expansions

Expansion Packs
The Sims spawned 7 Expansion packs (EPs).

The Sims: Livin' Large (UK title: Livin' It Up)

The Sims: House Party
The Sims: Hot Date
The Sims: Vacation (UK title: On Holiday)
The Sims: Unleashed
The Sims: Superstar
The Sims: Makin' Magic
Compilations with the original The Sims game
The Sims has now been repackaged in numerous editions. These editions are not
expansions in themselves, but rather a compilation of the basic game plus pre-
existing expansion packs and additional game content. These editions include:

North American releases

The Sims Deluxe Edition: Core game; The Sims: Livin' Large; The Sims Creator;
exclusive contents.
The Sims Double Deluxe: The Sims Deluxe Edition; The Sims: House Party; bonus
content.
The Sims Mega Deluxe: The Sims Double Deluxe; The Sims: Hot Date.
The Sims Complete Collection: Core game; all seven expansion packs; The Sims Deluxe
Edition exclusive content; The Sims Double Deluxe bonus content; The Sims Creator.
Releases in other regions
The Sims Collector's Edition (United Kingdom): The Sims; The Sims: Livin' It Up
(Livin' Large)
The Sims & The Sims House Party Party Pack (United Kingdom): The Sims; The Sims:
House Party
The Sims Party Pack (United Kingdom): The Sims Double Deluxe, The Sims: Hot Date.
The Sims Collector's Edition 2 (Australia): The Sims Deluxe Edition; The Sims: Hot
Date; The Sims: Vacation
The Sims Triple Deluxe (United Kingdom): The Sims Double Deluxe; The Sims: On
Holiday(Vacation).
The Complete Collection of The Sims (United Kingdom): Core game; The Sims Deluxe
Edition exclusive content; all seven expansion packs; The Sims Creator.
The Sims: Full House (Australia; New Zealand; South Africa): Core game; all seven
expansion packs.
The Sims 8 in 1 (Europe) Core game; all seven expansion packs.
The Sims Commemorative Edition (Brazil): The Sims Deluxe Edition; The Sims: House
Party; The Sims: Hot Date; The Sims: Vacation; The Sims: Unleashed.
Compilations of expansion packs
An expansion collection series was released in 2005. These were compilations of
expansion packs without the base game.

The Sims: Expansion Collection Volume One consists of The Sims: Unleashed and The
Sims: House Party.
The Sims: Expansion Collection Volume Two consists of The Sims: Hot Date and The
Sims: Makin' Magic.
The Sims: Expansion Collection Volume Three consists of The Sims: Vacation and The
Sims: Superstar.
Another expansion collection series was also released in 2005:

The Sims: Expansion Three-Pack Volume 1 consists of The Sims: Unleashed, The Sims:
Superstar, and The Sims: House Party.
The Sims: Expansion Three-Pack Volume 2 consists of The Sims: Hot Date, The Sims:
Vacation, and The Sims: Makin' Magic.
Custom Content
Main article: Custom content
The Sims was designed to allow players to customize their experience with
additional skins and buy/build mode items available from the official Sims website,
The Sims Creator or third party fan sites.

Custom Content support was also included in The Sims 2, The Sims Stories, The Sims
3 and The Sims 4.

Gallery
Screenshots
Videos
Box art
Project X screenshot
The Sims in one of its earliest stages, then still known as Project X[6]
Sylvia and Diane
Sylvia Marie Mashuga and Diane Pleasant
Ts1 Bob and Betty Newbie eating dinner
Bob and Betty Newbie dining
TS1 Bella and Morty
Bella and Mortimer cuddling
The Sims Sloppy Sim
A sloppy and lazy Sim
Needs TS1
The Need System
The Sims 1 Plumbob
The PlumbBob
TS1 ingame screenshot
Neighborhood 1
Neighborhood 2
Sims1pic1jpeg
Sims1pic2
Sims1pic3
Sims1pic4
Sims1pic5
Thesims1pic5
Sims1pic6
Sims1pic7
Sims1pic8
Sims1pic9
Sims1pic10
Sims1pic11
Media
Audio
Track Real-world preview!
The Sims Theme
See also
Comparison between The Sims base games
Comparison between The Sims and The Sims 2
References
"The Sims Franchise Celebrates Its Fifth Anniversary and Continues to Break
Records". Retrieved on 2 October 2014.
http://simscommunity.info/2015/07/30/all-of-the-sims-games-work-on-windows-10/
https://pcgamingwiki.com/wiki/The_Sims#Low_frame-rate_and_graphical_glitches
https://web.archive.org/web/20160206022510/http://www.ea.com/news/celebrate-the-
sims-sweet-sixteen-then-and-now
https://tcrf.net/The_Sims_(Windows)/Regional_Differences#Japanese_Version_Changes
https://onedrive.live.com/?authkey=
%21ADVZNFn8ChjphhQ&cid=BCD859A0F5230691&id=BCD859A0F5230691%219934&parId=BCD859A0F5
230691%211961&o=OneUp