About SimCity 2000
SimCity 2000 is a city-building simulation developed at Maxis by Will Wright and Fred Haslam. It is the successor to the first SimCity from 1989, later known as SimCity Classic. Maxis released it for the Macintosh in December 1993, and the MS-DOS version, which is the one DOS.Zone runs, followed in February 1994. Sue Kasper, Brian Conrad and Justin McCormick composed the music.
The game spread widely over the next few years. An Amiga version came out in late 1994 and a Windows version in February 1995. The Super NES version, made by HAL Laboratory, and the Sega Saturn version both arrived in 1995, and the PlayStation followed in 1996. Ports also reached the Nintendo 64 and the Game Boy Advance, and Krisalis Software brought the game to RISC OS. Like its predecessor, it’s a single-player game about building a city and keeping it growing, from laying out zones and infrastructure to collecting enough tax to pay for the next stage.
How it runs in your browser
When you press Play, dos.zone opens in a new tab and the game boots in an emulated PC. That emulator is js-dos, DOS.Zone’s open-source build of DOSBox for the browser, and it runs the original MS-DOS release of SimCity 2000 rather than a remake. The game files are fetched from DOS.Zone, so there’s no installer, no disk image to find and no account to create. DOS.Zone shows no ads.
Listings on DOS.Zone aren’t guaranteed to stay. The site has removed games when rights holders asked, as it did with GTA 1 and 2 after a request from Take-Two, so a listing like this one can disappear. DOS.Zone also doesn’t say whether your cities are kept between visits, so check the host’s page before you put hours into one.
Controls and devices
SimCity 2000 was designed for a keyboard and mouse on a desktop computer, and that’s still the way to play it here. The DOS.Zone listing mentions virtual controls for playing on mobile, but the game wasn’t built for touch, so a computer is the better fit. The key layout isn’t listed, so use the game’s own menus to find each tool. Chromebooks haven’t been confirmed to work.
Who it’s for
It’s for city-builder fans who want the 1993 game itself rather than a modern take on it, and for anyone curious about how the series grew after its first entry. If you’d like to go back one step further, Micropolis is the open-source release of the original SimCity and runs in a browser without emulation. For a different kind of management game from the same era, RollerCoaster Tycoon puts you in charge of an amusement park instead of a city.
Is SimCity 2000 Free, Safe and Official?
Can I play SimCity 2000 online for free?
Yes, in a browser. DOS.Zone runs the original MS-DOS version for free, with no account and nothing to install. It’s a single-player game, so there’s no online multiplayer.
Do I need the SimCity 2000 game files?
No. DOS.Zone loads the game files itself and runs them in an emulated PC through js-dos, so you don’t need a disc, a download or an emulator of your own.
Does SimCity 2000 work on a phone?
DOS.Zone mentions virtual controls for mobile, but SimCity 2000 was built for a keyboard and mouse, so a computer is the better fit.
