SimTower (PC, 1994)

Playing SimTower, you are put in charge of the development of a mixed use skyscraper. You'll place a lobby, a garage, stores, office suites, condominiums, hotel rooms, and various support facilities in your building. You'll also build stairs, escalators, and the most important part of the simulation (according to developer Yoot Saito), the elevators.

Controlling the traffic flow inside the building is accomplished by determining the number, location, and run schedule of the elevators. The elevators come in three types: regular, service, and express. Only regular elevators may visit every kind of floor in the building, while service elevators may only visit those floors which have hotel rooms or garbage disposal units. The express elevators may only travel between sky lobbies and the ground lobby.

The interface is a tool bar with a set of drop down menus. The game runs inside a window on your desktop and will work with either Windows 3.1 or Windows 95. Though mostly an open-ended sim, the game's "goal" is to achieve a rating of five stars for your tower. This is accomplished by careful management of the tower and the construction of certain key elements at various stages of development.