SimCity

SimCity is an urban development simulation game released by Maxis in 1989 for the Commodore 64, Amiga, Macintosh, and other platforms. In 1991, it was co-developed with Nintendo and released for the Super Famicom / Super Nintendo Entertainment System. This article deals with the NES version, which was scheduled for release at the same time as the SNES version.

Overview
NES version of SimCity was scheduled to be released in the US only in the summer of 1991 at the same time as the SNES version. The SNES version was released in August 1991, but the NES version was only shown once, at the Winter Consumer Electronics Show in January 1991. This was the only time the NES version was shown to the public, and a short video of the game could be seen on the American television show Video Power. After this, the release of the NES version was cancelled and people never saw it again.

Prototype Released
In 2017, two prototype cartridges of the NES version of SimCity surfaced when they were brought in by the owner of a used video game store in Seattle. The owner brought both of these carts to the Portland Retro Game Expo, where one of the carts was eventually sold to a single private collector. The other remained in the hands of its original owner, who decided to bring back a digital copy of the game for verification, thanks to a donation from Steve Lin, executive director of the Video Game History Foundation.