Urbuz It’s a game that has saved most of the people I’ve mentioned. A bizarre spinoff of The Sims franchise, the game made its way to the GBA, GameCube, PS2, Xbox, and Nintendo DS in 2004. Today’s sim is 18 years old, but I’m still baffled by how many more people didn’t play it at some point.
Like several other games in the Sims franchise, The Urbz is weird because console games and handheld games are different. Now, no matter which version you’re playing, both versions of the game are proving to be pretty quirky. They’re games I look back on fondly, I don’t know about you, but I miss the days when Maxis had a ton of different spinoffs in the series. The handheld version of The Sims 2 has one of the most compelling stories in all of The Sims games – and let’s not forget The Sims, My Sims, and even the destruction of The Sims.
I mean, the soundtrack for the console version of The Urbz is actually a translation of the Black Eyed Peas music into Simlish. The group itself also appears in the game as a guest. As a bored kid I was just lucky enough to play this and have a strong interest in The Sims? I could swear black eyed peas were all the rage when I was a kid…or I had bad taste.
Anyway, what happens in the console version of The Urbz is that The Black Eyed Peas show up and help you get into the club. You’re new to SimCity, just escaped from the lair, and the club thinks they don’t like your dance moves. But that’s okay, because the Black Eyed Peas are here. After that, you basically befriend Darius, the most popular guy in town, and beat up some bad guys. The rest is history.
Ultimately, when you’re not taking care of your Sims’ needs, you spend most of your time socializing in The Urbz; you travel through each area of the Sims to satisfy their respective factions and bring them to their knees (literally, sometimes) and impose your friendship on them. Let’s just say, the Sims in The Urbz don’t seem to care that much about personal space, and you end up being the protagonist of the party.
Once you’ve befriended every social group and banished the three bad guys who wreaked havoc in the city, it’s no surprise that everyone loves you, and you’re a rising star in SimCity. Then Darius hands over the keys to his penthouse, and that’s it, you’ve reached the top.
As for the handheld version of the game, this is a sequel to the GBA version of The Sims Bustin’ Out. Unfortunately, this one doesn’t have the Black Eyed Peas, but you can end up building a big statue of yourself instead; I think that’s just as cool.
The handheld version of The Urbz is a more linear experience in which you follow a more complex story that involves foiling capitalism and time travel. It’s awesome, its pixel art style rem ains to this day and I’d still recommend it if you have an NDS or GBA somewhere.
Similarities between the handheld and console versions of the game are social and popularity, which are overarching themes in many The Sims games (with the exception of The Sims, where social is predictably difficult to achieve) . While the handheld version’s story is definitely more linear and detailed — whether you’ll meet more memorable villains like Urangoo McBain, Kiki Blunt, and Harry Snivel — it’s still about blending in, gaining the Sims’ trust, and being around Make friends with everyone in this town. You can also swallow swords, dance on dance mats, and boil enemy pee with stink bombs. I’m not kidding when I say this game is totally weird.
As a result, you fall into a plan to destroy capitalism — using time travel — which most games probably shy away from. But this is The Urbz, and nothing is too much for a lonely Sim far from home. Ultimately, you’ll be the hero of the town, saving Sim City’s King Tower from Papa Big Buck, and earning a respected place in the hearts of every Sim you’ve encountered so far. This is where the big statue of your Sims comes in.
The Sims franchise as a whole is a satire on consumer culture, which really shouldn’t come as a surprise to you. But this is most evident in The Urbz. With a consumer culture backed by money and materialism, it’s no surprise when Dad Bigbucks looks to take power in the town with a real estate acquisition. Or when villains like Urangoo McBain steal money and money from workers. Urbz actually gives players an opportunity to fight consumer culture, and it even paves the way for us to examine the countercultures of society as a whole and how they work.
Who would have thought The Urbz would end up being a major sociology course? As a spin-off to The Sims franchise, you can take a lot from The Urbz and all the socializing you’ve done to effect meaningful social change.
You can take this game with a grain of salt and consider it a wacky urban version of The Sims 1 and 2. Alternatively, you can look at the game from a more sociological perspective and find that Urban Man can actually teach us a thing about the importance of countercultures and how mainstream society needs them to hold unchallenged social paradigms accountable A half-decent lesson. Urbz is perhaps an important look at the world of The Sims – the dirt under the world’s fingernails that we can’t see in the sequel’s carefully curated suburban and communal utopias.
Either way, The Urbz has to be Maxis’ social satire at its best. But I’m not sure what black eyed peas have to do with all this.
