24 years later, no one’s quite sure when The Sims came out

This weekend, The Sims series celebrates its 24th anniversary, which is a much-needed reminder to me that, as an avid Sims fan among you, I have a whole year to celebrate its 25th anniversary. Some interesting coverage planned for the anniversary (and I should probably use some as it’s time to come to terms with the official departure of the last vestiges of my youth, as someone who’s been playing golf almost since the beginning).

Turning 24 is certainly a milestone, but it doesn’t feel as monumental as a quarter of a century after all. Or maybe that’s just me speaking of myself in my advanced age. But it did occur to me that we could mark a small prelude to this grand celebration by settling one question once and for all: When exactly was The Sims first released?

Back in 2000, we didn’t have the same internet access as we do now, but it wasn’t exactly the Dark Ages, and it’s generally not too difficult to pinpoint cultural events with a high degree of accuracy using documents left over from 2000. time. That’s why it’s odd that the 2000 version of The Sims had two competing release dates for its original release date: January 31st and February 4th.

No, to address the obvious issue, I’m not confused by the fact that there were a few days between the game’s releases in different markets. In the pre-digital age of downloads, there was no need to worry about FOMO leading to fans piracy if they had to wait more than a few hours after their friends on other continents started playing the game, so many (if not most) games had staggered releases , and The Sims did actually launch in North America about a week earlier than in Europe (while other regions were at least about three months later). The argument here is that there are two almost equally reasonable candidates for the initial North American release date.

Supporters of the February 4th date include the unofficial Sims community website, the large fan site SimsVIP, and the fan-run Sims Wiki; as well as Wikipedia, IMDB, Encyclopedia Britannica, the History Channel, and our own sister site GamesIndustry. biz. And, it’s worth mentioning that a 2015 post on The Sims’ official Twitter account indicated that The Sims team itself believed February 4th was the correct date.

February 4th is a strong case, and well, it’s further reinforced by the fact that the European release date – everyone agrees – is February 11th, which makes for a nice one-week gap between the two. Got this. But nonetheless, many sites (that really should know the date) authoritatively list January 31st as the debut, including SimsVIP (in another article linked to above, just to show the depth of this confusion) as well as Metacritic , IGN, GameSpot, GameFAQs, and frankly most professional gaming sites have weighed in on the matter.

To complicate things further, a Google search for “When will The Sims 1 launch?” returns the incorrect answer of October 4, 2002. This actually dates the first compiled version of The Sims, The Sims Deluxe, which replaced the original base game by permanently bundling it with the content from the first expansion, but otherwise didn’t Nothing particularly noteworthy remains in the history of the series. This certainly wasn’t the beginning or end of the first generation of the series, with the last major add-on released in October 2003 and the eventual full series re-release in November 2005. So basically, Google isn’t offering any help in this regard. One, I will refrain from commenting further lest I succumb to temptation and bite the hand that feeds me.

Still, never one to waste an opportunity to cherry-pick details, I contacted EA for comment. While they didn’t have much to say about the difference other than to note that it was kind of funny, they did confirm to me the correct release date, so The Sims series’ official anniversary is February 4th.

So there you have it: mystery solved. I don’t think, at this point, we’ll ever be able to trace the origins of this disparity, but if you squint, you’ll get a simple sense that the urban legends spread through the early days of the internet still influence how we receive that information. The remnants of this information have become indisputable facts today, which may form the basis of some kind of modern cautionary tale.

But that’s not the point, is it? The point is, we’ve spent 24 years living out our most idealized lives and most twisted gremlins fantasies across four major installments (a long-awaited fifth is now confirmed to be in development), not to mention About two dozen derivatives. That’s a lot of flashbacks, a lot of expansions, and a lot of Sims drowning in swimming pools in the name of curiosity, cruelty, or just good old-fashioned dramatic storytelling. So how about we raise a glass of so-called “juice” (because calling it champagne raises the age rating) and share some of our favorite Sims memories in the comments to commemorate the big day?