Play SimCity 3000 in Your Browser

About SimCity 3000

SimCity 3000 is a city-building simulation released in 1999 and the third major game in the SimCity series. Maxis, the studio that created the series, developed it, and Electronic Arts published it. The Windows version came out in North America on February 1, 1999 and in Europe on February 13. A Mac OS version followed on July 30, 1999, and a Linux version arrived on July 19, 2000 through an arrangement with Loki Games. An iOS version came much later, in December 2008.

Jim Gasperini designed the game and Christine McGavran directed it. Six composers are credited with the music, among them Jerry Martin, Kent Jolly and Marc Russo. It is a single-player game. DOS.Zone’s description covers the core of it: you design a city and grow it into a metropolis, balance zoning, utilities and the budget, and negotiate with neighboring cities.

How it runs in your browser

Selecting Play takes you to the game’s page on dos.zone, in a new tab. SimCity 3000 came out on several systems, and DOS.Zone runs the original Windows version inside an emulated PC using js-dos, its open-source DOSBox build for browsers. Nothing gets installed on your computer: the game files load from DOS.Zone, you don’t provide a copy, and you don’t need an account. There are no ads on DOS.Zone.

The listing files the game under management, economic and strategy, among the site’s Windows 95 games, and shows a five-star average from 42 player reviews. It doesn’t say whether a city you build is kept from one visit to the next, so check the page before you put hours into a single map.

Controls and devices

You build with a keyboard and mouse. The host doesn’t list key bindings for this game, so look through the game’s own menus to find your way around. Click inside the game window after it loads so the emulator receives your input.

Phones get virtual on-screen controls on DOS.Zone, though SimCity 3000 was made for a mouse and keyboard, and a computer is the better fit. We haven’t checked it on a Chromebook.

Who it’s for

It suits players who grew up with SimCity 3000 and want to open it again without an old Windows machine, and anyone following the series from one game to the next. The 1993 predecessor, SimCity 2000, also runs on DOS.Zone in its MS-DOS version, and Micropolis, the open-source release of the original 1989 SimCity, plays in a browser tab too. If you’d like to see the genre in a different era, Impressions Games’ Caesar III has you building cities across the Roman Empire, and it also runs on DOS.Zone.