SimCity 2000

The unexpected and enduring success of the original SimCity, combined with the relative lack of success with other "Sim" titles, finally motivated the development of a sequel. SimCity 2000 was a major extension of the concept. It had a near-isometric dimetric view (similar to the earlier Maxis-published A-Train) instead of overhead, land could have different elevations, and underground layers were introduced for water pipes, subways and road tunnels.

New types of facilities include prisons, schools, libraries, museums, marinas, hospitals and arcologies. Players can build highways, roads, bus depots, railway tracks, subways, train depots and zone land for seaports and airports. There are a total of nine varieties of power plants in SimCity 2000, including coal, oil, natural gas, nuclear, wind turbines, hydroelectric dams (which can only be placed on waterfall tiles), solar and the futuristic fusion power and satellite microwave plants. Most types of power plants have a limited life span and must be rebuilt periodically. Players can build highways to neighboring cities to increase trade and the population.

Fred Haslam recalled being pitched on a sequel for SimCity at a Maxis company dinner in December 1990, just as he and Will Wright had finished SimEarth. Wright had spent five years working on the original game and did not want to work on the sequel, delegating the task to Haslam. Haslam spent the first 8 months of 1991 working on a top-down two-dimensional game. At that point, Maxis had contracted to work on the game A-Train, which used near-isometric dimetric projection to represent the landscape.

Maxis decided that the SimCity sequel should also use this graphical style. Haslam spent the next year trying to accomplish this task without success, at which point Will Wright joined the team.

In the United States, SimCity 2000 was the ninth best-selling computer game between 1993 and 1999, selling 1.4 million units. During 1996 alone, it achieved sales of 500,000 copies. According to PC Data, SimCity 2000 SE was the United States' 20th-best-selling computer game during the January–November 1998 period. According to Maxis's Lucy Bradshaw, SimCity 2000 achieved global sales of 3.4 million units across all platforms by January 2002.

Comparing its improvement over the first SimCity to "watching the part in The Wizard of Oz where the color kicks in", InfoWorld in 1993 praised SimCity 2000 for Macintosh as "basically the same game, but now it's the way you always wish it was when you played the first version". Computer Gaming World's reviewer, an author of a book on its predecessor, wrote in 1994 that SimCity 2000 for Macintosh offered "plenty of new challenges", fixed "virtually every criticism I leveled at the game" in the book, and "is without question a superior program". He concluded that it was "more fun than the original SimCity ... It's Sim-ply irresistible". The magazine said that the CD version's "multimedia enhancements make for a more accessible and enjoyable product".