Yoot Tower: The Sequel to SimTower
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Date: 2022-04-14
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Comments and reviews: 10
gtech
This was a fun game back in the day. I played the Sega Saturn version (japan, Simtower, and Yoot tower (English and Japan. The Saturn version had many of the features of Yoot Tower, but limited some of the items you could micromanage and had some features not found in the PC/Mac ports. If I recall, the shops were random. You built a shop and the game would randomly select the business occupant. Also there were no restrooms and cigarette machines. The biggest difference that I noticed is that Saturn version included short animations for each type of unit. You could click on an office and see executives have meetings or answering phones. In late night hours, you may see an office employee sitting in front a computer working overtime. The restaurants would show occupants and employees doing their thing. I remember one restaurant would have a ghost floating by when you click on it in the late night hours. Also, the advertisements on the outside of the tower was a mega TV screen that would play cheesy commercials.
The best thing about PC/Mac ports was the smooth game speed and options to set the speed. I think simtower was the only one that had the options to fast forward at some ridiculous speed. The saturn version had a locked game speed that was fairly fast, but as your tower grows, the game lags and the clock moves very slow. This was probably due to the limitations in the saturn hardware. The lag mostly affected panning the camera, so the mini-map helped a lot with navigation. Since the clock moved slower in late game, I would leave the game on and come back hours later when tenants paid fees or rent through a few time cycles.
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This was a fun game back in the day. I played the Sega Saturn version (japan, Simtower, and Yoot tower (English and Japan. The Saturn version had many of the features of Yoot Tower, but limited some of the items you could micromanage and had some features not found in the PC/Mac ports. If I recall, the shops were random. You built a shop and the game would randomly select the business occupant. Also there were no restrooms and cigarette machines. The biggest difference that I noticed is that Saturn version included short animations for each type of unit. You could click on an office and see executives have meetings or answering phones. In late night hours, you may see an office employee sitting in front a computer working overtime. The restaurants would show occupants and employees doing their thing. I remember one restaurant would have a ghost floating by when you click on it in the late night hours. Also, the advertisements on the outside of the tower was a mega TV screen that would play cheesy commercials.
The best thing about PC/Mac ports was the smooth game speed and options to set the speed. I think simtower was the only one that had the options to fast forward at some ridiculous speed. The saturn version had a locked game speed that was fairly fast, but as your tower grows, the game lags and the clock moves very slow. This was probably due to the limitations in the saturn hardware. The lag mostly affected panning the camera, so the mini-map helped a lot with navigation. Since the clock moved slower in late game, I would leave the game on and come back hours later when tenants paid fees or rent through a few time cycles.
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dmulvey2
Just putting this here for anyone who had as many problems as I did getting this to run right in Win10. After editing the T2. exe compatibility section to run in 256 color mode, if you run into issues where the games UI elements start disappearing. literally, whole windows don't populate, the text on command buttons disappears, the game clock stops running and eventually, when you try to open a new UI element like speed control or the finance's window for instance, the game freezes and you must reboot the computer. the workaround is to run the Windows Compatibility troubleshooter. Amazing as it is, Windows will actually fix the problem and the game runs perfectly. This was the only solution that worked for me, I try running in different versions of windows under compatibility mode. nothing worked until I ran the troubleshooter. No clue what causes this very odd issue but my best guess is the game uses old activeX elements that are no longer supported and some sort of memory handling/overflow occurs as a result. I really don't know but that's the only way I could picture how the games UI could slowly vanish throughout play.
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Just putting this here for anyone who had as many problems as I did getting this to run right in Win10. After editing the T2. exe compatibility section to run in 256 color mode, if you run into issues where the games UI elements start disappearing. literally, whole windows don't populate, the text on command buttons disappears, the game clock stops running and eventually, when you try to open a new UI element like speed control or the finance's window for instance, the game freezes and you must reboot the computer. the workaround is to run the Windows Compatibility troubleshooter. Amazing as it is, Windows will actually fix the problem and the game runs perfectly. This was the only solution that worked for me, I try running in different versions of windows under compatibility mode. nothing worked until I ran the troubleshooter. No clue what causes this very odd issue but my best guess is the game uses old activeX elements that are no longer supported and some sort of memory handling/overflow occurs as a result. I really don't know but that's the only way I could picture how the games UI could slowly vanish throughout play.
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Josh
I did not expect to see this video at all, let alone the fact that it's recent! I used to love SimTower when I was like 7, I'd leave it running all night to make enough money so I could build the next large section of tower. It was probably the first game I ever beat as a kid and virtually no one really knew about it from what it seemed.
Then like a decade later I somehow found out about Yoot Tower, but I remember there being basically nothing about it online and it felt super obscure. It felt kind of broken and I didn't give it much attention. Thennnn fast forward to 2020 and I see this video, coupled with the comment on here by the guy who translated the Japanese release exe and now after all these years I can give this one a fair shot!
It's nice to see this and know I wasn't the only one who loved the obscure tower games!
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I did not expect to see this video at all, let alone the fact that it's recent! I used to love SimTower when I was like 7, I'd leave it running all night to make enough money so I could build the next large section of tower. It was probably the first game I ever beat as a kid and virtually no one really knew about it from what it seemed.
Then like a decade later I somehow found out about Yoot Tower, but I remember there being basically nothing about it online and it felt super obscure. It felt kind of broken and I didn't give it much attention. Thennnn fast forward to 2020 and I see this video, coupled with the comment on here by the guy who translated the Japanese release exe and now after all these years I can give this one a fair shot!
It's nice to see this and know I wasn't the only one who loved the obscure tower games!
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Autian
Man your intro is so damn awesome I had to start from 0: 00 several times
Edit: to add some comment to the original SimTower, I hit performance constrains pretty quick as well. Since 64 bit is now the standard, one would usually end up running SimTower inside a virtual machine because 64 bit versions of Windows can't run 16 bit programs. For a while I was able to run SimTower under Linux (64 bit) basically natively using Wine until the Linux kernel devs disabled the execution of 16 bit code for security concerns (or something along these lines. I could recompile myself such a kernel with the 16 bit feature enabled for myself but I'm too lazy for that. The game still ran too slow for me anyway with big buildings, as much patience as I usually have.
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Man your intro is so damn awesome I had to start from 0: 00 several times
Edit: to add some comment to the original SimTower, I hit performance constrains pretty quick as well. Since 64 bit is now the standard, one would usually end up running SimTower inside a virtual machine because 64 bit versions of Windows can't run 16 bit programs. For a while I was able to run SimTower under Linux (64 bit) basically natively using Wine until the Linux kernel devs disabled the execution of 16 bit code for security concerns (or something along these lines. I could recompile myself such a kernel with the 16 bit feature enabled for myself but I'm too lazy for that. The game still ran too slow for me anyway with big buildings, as much patience as I usually have.
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EThan
Hello there lgr I live around Dallas and I'm currently in the process of getting my hands on something really cool it's known as Knights Ferry Larrabee it's a prototype graphics card that was never put into mass production I'm about to get my hands on a fully functioning what can I only assume is a demo unit I would be more than happy to lend you the card to make a video about and perhaps preserve it and the cards bios onboard no other cards that I know about to have the BIOS on board so no one's been able to really test it or make any videos about it you would be the first it would be my pleasure to let you borrow the card I know that you would take care of it
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Hello there lgr I live around Dallas and I'm currently in the process of getting my hands on something really cool it's known as Knights Ferry Larrabee it's a prototype graphics card that was never put into mass production I'm about to get my hands on a fully functioning what can I only assume is a demo unit I would be more than happy to lend you the card to make a video about and perhaps preserve it and the cards bios onboard no other cards that I know about to have the BIOS on board so no one's been able to really test it or make any videos about it you would be the first it would be my pleasure to let you borrow the card I know that you would take care of it
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George
I once bought a shovelware cd packed with video-games (technically, more than once, but where I live, pirated CDs were a norm, and on it were Sim Town and Sim Tower. My only prior experience with the Sims franchise was Sim City 4, so I was curious. Yes, the games were old, and the graphics were dated (how else would they pack all those games on a single CD, but the the playing was so much fun! Never knew (Sim) Tower had a sequel. Pretty interesting stuff indeed.
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I once bought a shovelware cd packed with video-games (technically, more than once, but where I live, pirated CDs were a norm, and on it were Sim Town and Sim Tower. My only prior experience with the Sims franchise was Sim City 4, so I was curious. Yes, the games were old, and the graphics were dated (how else would they pack all those games on a single CD, but the the playing was so much fun! Never knew (Sim) Tower had a sequel. Pretty interesting stuff indeed.
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BBfanfun
i can remember playing SimCity on the Mac IIfx when the computer lab in college had them brand new!
the interface was so clean & neat! ( compared to my DOS/Win 3. 1 version at home )
could this version also be ported to Sega Saturn /3DO like previous game?
maybe resolution is more DreamCast/PlayStation range?
any thoughts?
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i can remember playing SimCity on the Mac IIfx when the computer lab in college had them brand new!
the interface was so clean & neat! ( compared to my DOS/Win 3. 1 version at home )
could this version also be ported to Sega Saturn /3DO like previous game?
maybe resolution is more DreamCast/PlayStation range?
any thoughts?
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Authur
I think there needs to be a fan sequel to both The Tower games that combines a lot of features from both games that are great and adds a lot more stuff like the Japanese Mac version of the second game did. And modding support so people can meme.
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I think there needs to be a fan sequel to both The Tower games that combines a lot of features from both games that are great and adds a lot more stuff like the Japanese Mac version of the second game did. And modding support so people can meme.
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TGITBIB
I loved Sim Tower and yoot tower.
A few years ago a nee game was released called Project Highrise which is very similar.
Have it on PC and Android.
Amazing game but just not Sim/yoot tower.
They had more detail and management.
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I loved Sim Tower and yoot tower.
A few years ago a nee game was released called Project Highrise which is very similar.
Have it on PC and Android.
Amazing game but just not Sim/yoot tower.
They had more detail and management.
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Zhong
oh those nostalgic sounds. I wish Project Tower would have come close to offering what Sim Tower did, but it feels hollow in comparison. The underlying simulation in Sim and Yoot tower is unmatched even today and frankly that's just sad.
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oh those nostalgic sounds. I wish Project Tower would have come close to offering what Sim Tower did, but it feels hollow in comparison. The underlying simulation in Sim and Yoot tower is unmatched even today and frankly that's just sad.
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