SimCopter (thing)

An old, but still cool game from Maxis that involves flying a helicopter around a city, completing missions and earning money for new copters and accessories. The game's biggest asset is the fact that you can load any city from SimCity 2000 and fly around in it. This is immensely cool, to say the least, for any fan of SimCity 2000.

The game features a (very) rudimentary 3D engine for rendering the city, which would be MUCH cooler if it had a greater line of sight and better texture mapping. Helicopter physics are very decent, if simplified. Control is easy with the keyboard, and even easier if you have a joystick. One fun feature is the ability to land and get out of your copter, running around the city and talking to all the little polygon people. You can even land on top of buildings (like the llamadome) and walk around up there.

The missions you get include:

• Traffic - clearing up traffic jams by shouting at them
• Crime - directing and transporting police to catch runaway criminals and speeders, shouting at the criminals
• Fire - directing the fire trucks and putting out fires with a bucket or water cannon
• Escort - picking up passengers and taking them elsewhere
• Medical - dispatching ambulances, transporting EMT's, or airlifting victims yourself
• Rescue - rescuing victims on roofs, boats, even moving trains
• Riot - breaking up riots by shouting at them, dispatching police, hosing them with your water gun, or shooting them with a teargas launcher

The following choppers are available:

• Schweizer 300 - dinky little crop duster, seats 2
• Bell 225 Jetranger - news copter, seats 7
• McDonnell Douglas 520 Notar - NO TAil Rotor, seats 5
• McDonnell Douglas 500 - seats 6
• Bell 212 - big transport copter, seats 15
• Augusta A109 - fastest, seats 8
• Dauphin 2 - my favorite! Fast, long range, seats 13
• McDonnell Douglas Explorer - another NOTAR, seats 10
• Apache - sometimes available at military bases, or with the cheat code. Water cannon and teargas launcher replaced with machine gun an missile launcher

Here's the accessories you can buy for your chopper:

• Megaphone: comes with the chopper. Shout things like "The mayor send greetings to you all", "Return to your homes, loved ones, and favorite television shows!", "Does your mother know what you're doing?", and "Evacuate now, or you will all die, or worse!".
• Bambi Bucket: dip this bucket in a body of water to fill it up, then dump it on fires or rioters.
• Water Cannon: squirt water instead of dropping it.
• Rescue Harness: lower this to people who need to board your chopper, and you won't have to land.
• Tear Gas Launcher: Fun for the whole family. Put down riots, or just launch in to a crowd to create medical emergency missions.

As in all Maxis games, there's a bunch of fun cheat codes. Type Ctrl-Alt-x to bring up a dialog box.

• "Gas does grow on trees" - unlimited fuel
• "Shields up" - invincibility
• "Give me bucks or give me death - $x" - gives you x amount of money
• "superpowermultiply" - fly really fast when you hold down the shift key. Also turn into a fast dog when on the ground
• "I love my helicopter" - warps you to your copter
• "There's no place like home" - warps you (not your copter) back to the hanger
• "Been there, done that" - complete the current level automatically
• "The map, please" - show the map even when you're walking around
• "A megaphone in the hand is worth two in the bush" - use your megaphone while walking around
• "Warp me to career - x" - warp to career level x.
• "I'm the CEO of McDonnell Douglas" - get free helicopters in the catalog screen by pressing the number keys.
• "PAMCAREYGOLDMAN" - pastes a picture of the lead programmer's wife on all the billboards and drive-in theaters.
• "Out for a Sunday drive" - camera chases a random car
• "Lights, Camera, Action!" - play movies on the drive-in theaters.
• "Stop and ask for directions" - write the map as a text file (dump_bm.txt) to disk.
• "Gort" - play the movie that is shown when you beat the game
• "Radioactivity" - cause a nuclear meltdown, as if you had let a nuclear reactor burn down.