Sim City DS features Japanese castles

Reticulating splines… Ah the joys of playing games from Maxis Software. Let us hope that Maxis, though it’s only a private division of Electronic Arts, never loses that “Maxis touch”.

Sim City was announced for the DS back in August of 2006 (and we went oooh and aaah over the Famitsu scan). A few screenshots followed a month after that. Now there’s more news from Famitsu: the game features Japanese castles.

The ones we are familiar with are:

• venerable Himeji castle, one of the oldest structures from medieval Japan
• Nagoya castle, which was burned down in WWII but rebuilt in 1959
• beautiful Osaka castle, this author’s personal favorite
• impressive Edo castle, of Chiyoda, Tokyo (formerly Edo of Musashi Province)

There are two more castles. According to different translated sources like Go Nintendo, they are:

• Azuchi castle (if this is true, then the Sim City version is a reconstruction: to the best of our knowledge, the real Azuchi castle burned down during the lifetime of Tokugawa, and all you can visit now is the stairsteps)
• Morioka castle

So cool. It’d be nice if there were options for castles from other nations, too. Still, we hope they keep the Japanese castles if this game comes to the US (oh very well, we’ll also tie omikuji in the trees and hope the gods release this game for North America, Europe, and Australia, and the rest of the Sim-City-loving world too).

February 22, 2007, is the release date for Sim City DS. In Japan. For now?

More images after the jump.

Reticulating splines… Ah the joys of playing games from Maxis Software. Let us hope that Maxis, though it’s only a private division of Electronic Arts, never loses that “Maxis touch”.

Sim City was announced for the DS back in August of 2006 (and we went oooh and aaah over the Famitsu scan). A few screenshots followed a month after that. Now there’s more news from Famitsu: the game features Japanese castles.

The ones we are familiar with are:

• venerable Himeji castle, one of the oldest structures from medieval Japan
• Nagoya castle, which was burned down in WWII but rebuilt in 1959
• beautiful Osaka castle, this author’s personal favorite
• impressive Edo castle, of Chiyoda, Tokyo (formerly Edo of Musashi Province)

There are two more castles. According to different translated sources like Go Nintendo, they are:

• Azuchi castle (if this is true, then the Sim City version is a reconstruction: to the best of our knowledge, the real Azuchi castle burned down during the lifetime of Tokugawa, and all you can visit now is the stairsteps)
• Morioka castle

So cool. It’d be nice if there were options for castles from other nations, too. Still, we hope they keep the Japanese castles if this game comes to the US (oh very well, we’ll also tie omikuji in the trees and hope the gods release this game for North America, Europe, and Australia, and the rest of the Sim-City-loving world too).

February 22, 2007, is the release date for Sim City DS. In Japan. For now?