hen EA announced it was bringing SimCity to the DS, a rush of excitement and concern blasted through the series’ fan base. The opportunity to bring your city anywhere you go was offset by concerns that the display would be too small to effectively interact with. Fortunately, EA’s Japan-based studio has designed a control scheme that works surprisingly well.

In building mode an isometric view of the city appears on the top screen, while a simple black and white grid shows up on the bottom. Residential, commercial, and industrial zones appear as bright orange, purple, and red boxes, respectively. Players can use the stylus to place buildings or draw in roads and railroads with relative ease. Occasionally, I’d accidentally draw a kink at the end of a road or expand a zone a little farther than I was planning, but this can easily be remedied with the view zoom. Cartoony, bigheaded advisors will guide you along and facilitate meetings with your a-hole citizens. Seriously, old lady Agnes won’t be satisfied until you build a hospital for every person in town.

SimCity DS contains 20 different maps ranging from $10,000 to $100,000 in starting cash. Unfortunately, if you want to try a new map, you have to delete your current city. Super lame! Saves and loads can also take a bit of time, which is strange for a cartridge-based game.  Several more complex elements of the franchise have been removed for this version, including terraforming and sewer pipes, but it’s probably best to keep things simpler on the DS for space concerns and general interface.

Outside of working away on your city, several disaster scenarios await the quick-thinking city planner. Progress in these challenges cannot be saved, so be sure to block out enough time to quiet riots or restore a city from earthquake damage. I found these scenarios to be mostly about trial and error due to the strict rule sets and lack of any suggestions from your usually chatty advisor.

Though SimCity DS isn’t perfect, it liberally taps that latent SimCity addiction found in everyone’s brain. If you own a DS and have ever liked the series, this is definitely worth a look.