I remember being like 5 years old and watching my brother dress up as a rat to defend the world from an alien invasion. I've always wondered why that feature wasn't added to the other games.
What I recall most about this game was the pervasive and consuming sense of strange, X-Files flavoured dread as you wandered the desert, your sanity steadily dropping, searching for UFOs, Egyptian mummies, cow cultists and evil robots. A magnificent, entirely insane game.
This game i think about a lot. I wasnt able to beat it as a kid, a couple years back i emulated it and beat it. Was such good closure. I wish sims did other things like this weird one.
This was the only version of The Sims I owned as a kid, so when I finally got around to playing a more mainline Sims title the sheer NORMALCY of it all was quite a shock. Thanks for letting me revisit this fever-dream outta the past!
I was skeptical that this town even had a tourism industry, but when the only buildings are a sleazy hotel, a casino, a bar and a jail you know this place is a party destination.
Every day begins with you starting in a different establishment, and cycling through them over the course of the day. A good chunk of people start or end their day in the jail but you’d be surprised how many don’t!
so i guess the nuclear reactor in the hotel basement powers the whole town. i'm not sure if that makes more or less sense in the context of this game world.
At last, by popular demand, we've done it folks. Perhaps the most cursed Sims game. Thank you all for making this day happen. I'm guessing if you're reading this, this game meant something to you. I'm afraid if this one will get totally swept under the rug for obscurity, so I will shamelessly ask if you like and comment, it does boost the likelihood I'll cover more like this and do sequels. The rest of this game gets far weirder. Also too, shoutout to Loopy, who set me up with a fantastic DS recording setup. He does GREAT work and I highly recommend him.
@@ambiguousamphibian I’ve never played, heard nor seen this game before, but trust me, it gives me immense joy to discover Sims games through your channel! So never stop, no matter how obscure or odd! 💪🏻
I would LOVE to see you finish this, as i remember playing it and getting softlocked after the mobster kidnaps you and you have to do a social interaction to get past his guard, but i was entirely too weak to do so and never got to finish this gem. Also those ads, i stopped on a dime every time
Gotta admire the Sims 2 handhelds for just doing whatever they want. GBA does a reality TV show, DS does a hotel simulator, PSP does a Matrix plotline.
Different enough so people buy them while maintaining what people kind of expect to see on the devices, kind of miss that, especially as even the PS2/XBox/GameCube version differed from the PC version while technically being able to mostly make it the same - simply to make it overall more enjoyable for the target platform.
The urbz for DS was also different and was a sequel to the sims on gba haha, that one was also fun and crazy. The bit i remember most was guarding a graveyard so that a secret meeting of anti capitalists trying to overthrow the government and elites, ran by a gramma, could go ahead lmao
@@katierasburn9571 That game was so awesome. Unironically my favourite Sims-related game. I think one of the best ways to describe is "urban RPG with Sims-elements".
I actually have a core memory of this game, there were these really big buff bad guys who'd be in the hotel lobby's who'd try fighting you; and I remember they'd walk around and scream BOOBATISHNA
There's a false, but funny theory that came out of a bug from this game. The mayor Honest Jackson has a spawning bug that makes him disappear from the game completely after the first section. It just so happens that this occurs around the time the mob boss asks you to bury a wriggling chest in the desert. Many players won't visit Honest Jackson in the short window where he's still around after this event, which led to the theory that he's the one in the chest.
I've actually seen him dissapear once. I must have visited him at the exact right time for this; it was like the floor lost collision, because as he was walking through his office he suddenly sunk into the floor and disappeared from my save file forever. I believed this theory and thought this was how they got rid of him 😂
never knew that, I got really far in the game and sorta forgot about him. Looking on the wiki for this game theres an action replay cheat that fixes him from despawning.
This was my addiction back in the day. All the mini games, directly controlling my sim, the wackyness, playing music at the club, gambling, upgrading to the max, exploring the small map made larger via the sanity and time passage. Decorating end game was amazing. It was an extremely watered down experience but it was charming in its simplicity and did what it could with what it had. The music and setting giving off this liminal alien feel. I suggest unlocking everything, social interactions and rooms etc. Think it might be high time to play again.
Please do continue this game! Possibly my most played DS game, I still get urges to play it years later. Its just so unapologetically weird. I look forward to the resurgence of Ratman!
Ah yeah I like that term - describes it perfectly. Ironically it took only like 7 more years for them to be able to practically fully port these games over in many respects. Nowadays with wider availability on consoles and handhelds for higher-spec games, these spinoffs feel like these unusually high-effort ports which have this bizarre charm now. Granted, they didn't feel as good at the time to play (to me anyway) but they bring me back to this oddly familiar memory.
The thing I do like about the spinoffs is they tried to make them more story-based or thematic with objectives. The regular Sims games are a bit *too* much of a sandbox at times especially with Sims 4 being so stale because of it. Like Bustin Out was great because it had objectives to complete and move into a bigger/better home. Urbz was similar but had an urban theme and focus on reputation. Sims Medieval had the medieval theme and again objectives to do so it felt more guided and full of personality in my opinion. Sims 4 tries so hard to cater to everyone that it ends up feeling stale and lacking in personality.
@@Eventide215 Same, I feel like they tried to make the best they could and adapt it to the perceived audience of each device (or well, at least to a degree that would be useful). Especially for e.g. Sims 2 on consoles they could've done a normal port just like Age of Empires did, they however decided against it. Now it's more of a "Just port it over and make it work with controller" kind of deal, which ironically enough my girlfriend (who already doesn't like Sims 2 on PS2) dislikes even more than the previous versions as the "normal" game simply doesn't play well without mouse and keyboard (same issue Age of Empires had back then).
@@Unknown_Genius I think the problem with the "port it over and make it work with controller" thing is mostly due to the gaming community. For some reason console players expect to get the same exact games as PC players.. so we end up with things like Baldur's Gate 3 getting ported to consoles somehow. How that even works I can't even begin to imagine really.. that game is clearly designed for keyboard and mouse. What I liked about the spinoffs of Sims is that they did do as you said where they made the game for the console it was on. It also gave more of an objective focus so it felt like you had something to do. A really weird part of Sims 2 on DS though was how it was real time.. so if it said like a room takes 8 hours to build it will take 8 hours in real life. That works for games like Animal Crossing, but it didn't work here.. especially with the shop only getting new things *monthly*.
@@Eventide215 BG3 in console mode is actually wildly intuitive! Sims 4 on console is absolute garbage in comparison because the ui was just not compatible. Baldurs Gate games were already on console in the past, so it wasn't too out there for them to do that since it's the norm. :)
this video gave me a vivid memory of my cousin Alexander, he used to play this game with me before he passed. Honestly thought i had forgotten his face, thank you AA for that memory
Experiencing this again is surreal, every little sound effect and song from this gem and castaway live rent free in my head - especially the phone. Modern developers could learn a thing or two from this work of art.
Yeah for some reason these games were successful enough for them to release not one, but FOUR sequels/spinoffs: There was the Sims 2 Pets, The Sims 2 Apartment Pets, The Sims 2 Castaway, and the Sims 3. Not saying I didn't like it
@@ambiguousamphibian I forgot that The Sims 2 Pets on DS existed. Probably because I only played it for all of 15 minutes only to find that it was a busted and janky nightmare.
Fun fact about that (and all other DS Sims): There's no gays. Nintendo, being an Asian company, has a bit of a pissy view on *T H E B I G G A Y* in their games, so homosexual relations were denied in all DS ports.
I still play this on my DS lol, mostly to do alien autopsies, play the casino, and squirt water at people. 😂 Hint: you find a skill point, squirt it with water, take the point and leave the room. When reentering the room, the skill point is there again. Repeat so you can max it out!
This video unlocked a part of my childhood when I got this for Easter and played it a lot. Never finished it since I got stuck on something even though I looked every where in the game. Man what a weird rabbit hole this game was.
Bro same I don’t even know what part that was but I remember grinding this game struggling to find one item to continue the story until I gave up lmfao
@@Fluiddruid4k I bet it was the Mechanical skill requirement to fix the elevator, it comes out of nowhere right near the end, and is the ONLY use for mechanical skill in the entire damn game. And the skill points spawn one every hour in a set pattern and location, so it's basically an omega grind without a guide
@@traditionalsuki I don't know a single person that didn't use cheats and managed to finish the game as a kid, just because of that lmao, it was really dumb
I was (honestly? Still am) SO obsessed with this game because of how unabashedly bizarre it was. I gets super happy when I watch other people play it so thank you for today's serotonin boost
Played this game for too much time as a kid. Learned how to make tons of money from paintings. Oh and if you didn't befriend the Mayor before the end of....The first boss was it? There was a bug where he disappeared for the rest of the game. Take that trying to get 100%!
I remember my older sis playing this game, and me being scared of the green alien, and when I tried to play alone, I kept myself in the hotel because I was too scared to go outside. It was a great time Thanks for that nostalgic feeling, I needed that ❤️
I would love to see more of this game from you, AA! When I first saw Sims 2 for DS, I didn't remember, but as soon as I saw the hotel, the nuclear rods, the flying alien, it all came back. What a wild game with the Sims name on it.
from memory, I think I can guess the part. Was it when the robot locks the elevator? If so, that's the one part of the game where the skill upgrades actually matter and do anything. You need one specific skill at like, quite high. And you raise it by finding skill points. Which spawn at random times of the day, for about an hour, and it's entirely luck as to which skill point spawns on any given day, and where it will spawn. They're always in super out of the way places.
The skill point spawns are actually completely predetermined, the game had a mobile-game-like way of working with your DS system clock for the hotel guests and the day and time would determine the points that are available.
Thank you for giving this game the recognition it deserves! I remember playing this and TS2 Castaway on my sisters' DSes (said I didn't want one, wanted CDs and clothes--foolish) and I think about it all the time! Especially tipping cows for milkshakes...
He forgot about the best and weirdest part, you can milk the cow.. and get this.. if you tip the cow then milk it, you get a milkshake. Want weirder? If he gave the cow chocolate it turned brown and you can get chocolate milk/milkshakes.. to this day that was so weird and endearing it stuck with me for over a decade. P.S: I was so addicted I had 100% hotel score..
this game is my childhood, not only the erratic characters of the town, but the ratman suit and superhero missions, the cult of the cows, the dissection of aliens in the secret lab... man it was a weird game! Who would have thought that a vacuum cleaner could be such a powerful weapon?
commenting so that more people can hear about this game, which i 100% genuinely believe is one of the best entries into the sims games as a whole. spent so much of my time as a kid getting more done in my fake hotel instead of sleeping
I had no idea that a sims game had a madness meter. There *are* numerous eldritch abominations in the series, but I thought sims were already at peace with that.
@@katierasburn9571I mean, most of that *is* still in the mainline titles. Organized crime for the Criminal and Law Enforcement career tracks, aliens are a frequent(including becoming a playable choice, and alien babies are much a thing), Plumbots/Simbots, 3 featured mummies in World Adventures... Even all the way back in 1, you had Ghosts, and Makin' Magic added the occult into the mix, including raising dragons capable of burning down your home. There's also Bonehilda, a series staple at this point. Our beloved work of necromancy to clean our homes. Basically, The Sims has been weird from a *very* early point in the series.
I was so excited when this popped up on my feed! This game was a total obsession of mine, it's such a totally whacky game in almost all aspects. The mini games and unlockable items and plots were honestly awesome, and I still remember doing art for the gallery. Never managed to max my skills, but this was a formative game for me. Thanks for playing it!!
I'd love to see an episodic play-through of this game. I've always been a big sims fan from the moment my neighbor let me borrow and install all his Sims 1 expansions on my Gateway Pc. But unfortunately I never had a DS, or any sort of handheld, nor was able to get any of the weird console spinoffs, and these videos are scratching an itch I never knew I had. Keep it up!
I mean, when you consider that smartphones as a whole barely existed when this game released, these graphics are impressive. like, before this, it was just gba as far as portable gaming. lol we were still at a whole different level of computing power back then
I don't know what's so weird. I just keep my nuclear uranium rods lying in my basement as well. The kids have started growing extra arms, but that's the price you pay for convenience.
Honestly, that's basically what the aspiration meter is in the mainline Sims 2. If it drops too low your sim has a mental breakdown afterall. Also, the PSP version hangled sanity in a far more interesting way (as it's a far more interesting game)
I did love this game so much as a kid but I remember the game always crashed for me at on point, mostly going to the dessert at first but then later on it would crash more and more so I never got to see the full story unfortunately but seeing you finally play this is such a treat! Thank you AA, may the UA-cam algorithm feed you well today
Pfft, as if I didn't buy this used just a few years ago to prove to my therapist that it was something that actually existed and not one of my many delusions.
i loved this game but never got further than the robots coming. it got too overwhelming and no longer fun, so i took the game out, put it in my DS game pouch, and never looked back. that was almost 12 years ago lol
every time anyone covers this on youtube i lose my mind. i’m obsessed with it and i love seeing other people’s memories/opinions of it! thank you for bringing it to the front of people’s minds again
My childhood! I played this one soooo much, and eventually the card got damaged so it couldn't display images on the top screen. Since you interacted with everything on the bottom screen, I had to play like a blind person blindly stumbling around interacting with things. Even that was kind of fun.
I had this game briefly as a kid, it was very strange indeed. I say "briefly" because it inexplicably vanished one day. Still have no idea what happened to it. The cart and case just sorta disappeared. For years it made me wonder if I'd just imagined it all. I guess it was a fitting end to my The Sims 2 DS experience, all things considered.
My favorite goof was that you could gift a cow chocolate and they would turn brown, and then if you tipped them and milked them you’d get a chocolate milkshake in your pockets. 😂
I must have fallen asleep while watching this video and dreamed that The Sims 2 was not a Sims game at all but instead a bizarre nonsensical hotel simulator in which you sell nuclear fuel rods to random people, harass aliens, and build a casino.
The strangest Sims game of all time: The Sims 2. But really, The Sims 2 was already weird before being made portable. I steered clear of the portable Sims on account of how strange and confusing they were, now I feel like I missed out.
the sims console and mobile ports may be weird as hell, but i find them very charming, its not like theyre weird on accident, they intentionally made them weird
I LOVED THIS GAME SO MUCH it was incredibly random but I loved looking after the hotel and checking in guests. Replayed the whole thing a couple of years back, the ‘ending’ is super random af and the car never gets mentioned again but I loved it all the same
I played this SO much and loved it. It has made me feel so nolstalgic and happy to watch this. I loved how there were different guests in the penthouse suite that would have a plotline! I also used to make art to put up in the gallery in the atrium.
This brings me back! My older sister played this, and I inherited it. There were 2 save files. 1 was mine, which only got to the 1st penthouse enemy, and then there was my sister's, which had all the rooms, atrium, and basement stuff unlocked. I have no idea how to get from my save progress to my sister's progress point, but boy, I sure loved running around in a rat costume and selling some mad expensive pixel art. I'd love to see a full playthrough of this game if you got it in ya. It brings me much joy! Keep up the good work, Wojak❤
Loved the art gallery part. The quality of the piece was assigned totally at random so I’d just open a canvas and then scrap it until it was a masterpiece. Then an hour or so later walk into the gallery and it was full of sims either clapping at, yelling at, or crying in front of them. So much fun.
Man, I remember playing this as a kid, making most my progress on family trips. I loved the oddity and unusual rooms you could build of the hotel, especially when the ratscapades begin!!
Great video, please when you get the chance do another video of this game as you got me enthralled in possible story or what will happen next in this game. I need to know more of Wojacks adventure into the unknown dessert town.
“It’s gonna take a while, few days maybe” about fixing the car. Well I’ve got some bad news. 100% the game twenty years ago and the car is still not fixed Also fun fact, as a kid my mom was obsessed with the movie Legends Of The Fall. I saw it probably ten times before I was even in middle school. Anyway when first playing this game and meeting Tristan Legend I thought to myself, oh that’s funny. Tristan like the main character from that movie, and Legend like the title. Anyway it took fifteen years for me to look it up and guess what? His name actually IS a direct reference to that movie. Pretty funny!
The weird thing about this game is the only memories I seem to have are me constantly vacuuming and spending time at the casino.. I don't remember there being much else to really do.
I absolutely loved this game, had been binging all your past videos on The Sims 2 spinoffs and couldn't find it in there, thought it was just a fever dream. I am glad you are showing it off!
I adored this game as a child. It was my only exposure to the series as a kid, knowing nothing about the original top-down simulation style. I remember playing for months and months to open the whole hotel and buy all the fancy furniture that I wanted. It was like a wacko insane version of animal crossing
Sometimes the sims call you on your birthday and say cryptic shit like “enjoy it not too many to go now” and some sims can get kidnapped and held for ransom and you have to go pay them out. Crazy game but it’s childhood gem definitely darker than any other sims game I’ve played 😅
I'm so happy you managed to do a video about this game. I didn't have many games for my DS but this one was my favorite for trips. I'd basically just go into the casino and play mini-games the whole time.
I ADORED this game. I had a bovine shrine and got stuck metal detecting out in the wastelands and thats all i recall... that and pure bliss of the "ooh amarr" when greeting people in game.
I loved this game! I played it a lot when I was a child. And no other kid in my hometown knew this game. Everthing that happens in this game was "normal" for me. Seeing this game as an adult I finally understand why the other kids didn't want to play with me because I was talking weird stuff from this Sims game XD
Unironically one of my favourite handheld games of all time. Always was a bit sad that it was the only game of it's type from the series. Never really did find another game that scratched the itch the same.
This game scared me so much as a child! It was especially confusing since i didn't understand English!This game cursed me at the young age of 6 and I never recovered my sanity
This was one of my favorite games on the DS as a kid and the plot is so amazingly all over the place in classic Sims 2 fashion please please PLEASE do more episodes
I haven't played this since I got softlocked because my sanity kept running out and the toilet and shower were too far away when I respawned (from getting abducted by a ghost I think?), so I would go to jail for having no sanity and then respawn again only to collapse inches away from the toilet and get abducted again. I couldn't figure out how to get out of the cycle and it's been 10 years. Even now my sim stuck in the loop and the Strangetown economy is in shambles. Perfect game 10/10
I was absolutely hyper Fixated on this game, the music is amazing, the characters are insane and the aliens traumatized me as a child, such a charming weird game
I loved this game as a kid! I did eventually get 100%, but my game got cartridge got corrupted, and I can't go back to revisit my Strangetown. Totally worth picking up if you like the wacky Strangetown melo-drama, though.
The soundtrack for this game is burned into my brain from my childhood. My friend and I would always scream. "Oobadishna!!" when we met up at the bus stop because of this game.
As a nostalgic 27 y/o it's so weird when a video mentioned something I took care of. "Go back in time" Nah I look to my left and see NDS case of Sims 2 in perfect condition lmao, right inbetween my Pokéwalker and Digimon DVD box
This is one of the first sims games I ever played and also the first Nintendo DS game I ever played- before the Nintendo DS Lite was released. My teenage cousin brought her DS over and I was about 9 or so at the time and was fascinated by it- but this game scared me so bad I have repressed every memory of it. Thank you for sharing this gameplay! Love to see you back in my feed! :3
This game gets even more weird than "Aliens pop in once a week as a treat" I implore you to do more. It gets so so so much weirder.
I agree, as far as the plot is concerned, this is barely scratching the surface
Please go on !!! You triggered some core memories in me and I want more haha
Can’t wait till he notices the mayor just disappears out of nowhere but you can still call him
agreedwould love to watch a full playthrough
I remember being like 5 years old and watching my brother dress up as a rat to defend the world from an alien invasion. I've always wondered why that feature wasn't added to the other games.
What I recall most about this game was the pervasive and consuming sense of strange, X-Files flavoured dread as you wandered the desert, your sanity steadily dropping, searching for UFOs, Egyptian mummies, cow cultists and evil robots. A magnificent, entirely insane game.
So there ARE cultists in this game? No wonder the setting was giving me The Devil's Rain vibes.
You could also become a batman-like vigilante!
this is the one childhood game that i played way too much and cant remember jack Sh*t about
Who can after all?
I just remember the Catcave and becoming a superhero.
@@Battlefiel97 *Ratcave
I don’t remember anything from my childhood
This game i think about a lot. I wasnt able to beat it as a kid, a couple years back i emulated it and beat it. Was such good closure. I wish sims did other things like this weird one.
This was the only version of The Sims I owned as a kid, so when I finally got around to playing a more mainline Sims title the sheer NORMALCY of it all was quite a shock. Thanks for letting me revisit this fever-dream outta the past!
Tbf, the mainline sims 2 is by far the wackiest of the series, so this game just took that aspect and ran with it.
did you buy strangerville dlc, too? felt like coming home
Frankly, I miss the WEIRDNESS this era of Sims had.
I was skeptical that this town even had a tourism industry, but when the only buildings are a sleazy hotel, a casino, a bar and a jail you know this place is a party destination.
Every day begins with you starting in a different establishment, and cycling through them over the course of the day.
A good chunk of people start or end their day in the jail but you’d be surprised how many don’t!
so i guess the nuclear reactor in the hotel basement powers the whole town. i'm not sure if that makes more or less sense in the context of this game world.
@@SpooglecraftIt’s genius. The uranium 235 has an additional benefit! We can use it to make armor for the 37 M1A1 Abrahams behind the town!
At last, by popular demand, we've done it folks. Perhaps the most cursed Sims game. Thank you all for making this day happen.
I'm guessing if you're reading this, this game meant something to you. I'm afraid if this one will get totally swept under the rug for obscurity, so I will shamelessly ask if you like and comment, it does boost the likelihood I'll cover more like this and do sequels. The rest of this game gets far weirder.
Also too, shoutout to Loopy, who set me up with a fantastic DS recording setup. He does GREAT work and I highly recommend him.
I've watched probably all of your Sims videos, played this game with my cousin and I enjoyed seeing you play it
This was definitely a video
I do request a full playthrough if only to watch you slowly lose your mind
@@ambiguousamphibian I’ve never played, heard nor seen this game before, but trust me, it gives me immense joy to discover Sims games through your channel! So never stop, no matter how obscure or odd! 💪🏻
I would LOVE to see you finish this, as i remember playing it and getting softlocked after the mobster kidnaps you and you have to do a social interaction to get past his guard, but i was entirely too weak to do so and never got to finish this gem.
Also those ads, i stopped on a dime every time
Gotta admire the Sims 2 handhelds for just doing whatever they want.
GBA does a reality TV show, DS does a hotel simulator, PSP does a Matrix plotline.
Different enough so people buy them while maintaining what people kind of expect to see on the devices, kind of miss that, especially as even the PS2/XBox/GameCube version differed from the PC version while technically being able to mostly make it the same - simply to make it overall more enjoyable for the target platform.
The urbz for DS was also different and was a sequel to the sims on gba haha, that one was also fun and crazy. The bit i remember most was guarding a graveyard so that a secret meeting of anti capitalists trying to overthrow the government and elites, ran by a gramma, could go ahead lmao
@@katierasburn9571 That game was so awesome. Unironically my favourite Sims-related game. I think one of the best ways to describe is "urban RPG with Sims-elements".
So I wasn't imagining the TV Show one, good to know.
Yeah, I quite like the strangeness to the spinoffs. Sims 1 on console will always be a favorite for me. GBA Urbz was decently fun, too, as a kid.
I actually have a core memory of this game, there were these really big buff bad guys who'd be in the hotel lobby's who'd try fighting you; and I remember they'd walk around and scream BOOBATISHNA
Sounds like a job for the Rattinator
He's living the life
Walking around yelling BOOBASHTINA
There's a false, but funny theory that came out of a bug from this game.
The mayor Honest Jackson has a spawning bug that makes him disappear from the game completely after the first section. It just so happens that this occurs around the time the mob boss asks you to bury a wriggling chest in the desert. Many players won't visit Honest Jackson in the short window where he's still around after this event, which led to the theory that he's the one in the chest.
Love this random fact lol
I've actually seen him dissapear once. I must have visited him at the exact right time for this; it was like the floor lost collision, because as he was walking through his office he suddenly sunk into the floor and disappeared from my save file forever. I believed this theory and thought this was how they got rid of him 😂
never knew that, I got really far in the game and sorta forgot about him. Looking on the wiki for this game theres an action replay cheat that fixes him from despawning.
This was probably one of my favorite games for the DS back then
Just a great vibe
Wait that's a bug??? I replayed it recently and just assumed he was buried in the desert
This was my addiction back in the day. All the mini games, directly controlling my sim, the wackyness, playing music at the club, gambling, upgrading to the max, exploring the small map made larger via the sanity and time passage. Decorating end game was amazing. It was an extremely watered down experience but it was charming in its simplicity and did what it could with what it had. The music and setting giving off this liminal alien feel. I suggest unlocking everything, social interactions and rooms etc.
Think it might be high time to play again.
'decrepit collection of low-poly buildings' accurately describes 90%+ of rural main streets west of the Mississippi River.
Please do continue this game! Possibly my most played DS game, I still get urges to play it years later.
Its just so unapologetically weird.
I look forward to the resurgence of Ratman!
I have never stopped thinking about Ratman. They live on in our hearts forever.
I've always been fascinated by these kinds of games, which I call "compromise ports." At the very least, they make you appreciate the full game more.
Ah yeah I like that term - describes it perfectly. Ironically it took only like 7 more years for them to be able to practically fully port these games over in many respects. Nowadays with wider availability on consoles and handhelds for higher-spec games, these spinoffs feel like these unusually high-effort ports which have this bizarre charm now. Granted, they didn't feel as good at the time to play (to me anyway) but they bring me back to this oddly familiar memory.
The thing I do like about the spinoffs is they tried to make them more story-based or thematic with objectives. The regular Sims games are a bit *too* much of a sandbox at times especially with Sims 4 being so stale because of it. Like Bustin Out was great because it had objectives to complete and move into a bigger/better home. Urbz was similar but had an urban theme and focus on reputation. Sims Medieval had the medieval theme and again objectives to do so it felt more guided and full of personality in my opinion. Sims 4 tries so hard to cater to everyone that it ends up feeling stale and lacking in personality.
@@Eventide215 Same, I feel like they tried to make the best they could and adapt it to the perceived audience of each device (or well, at least to a degree that would be useful).
Especially for e.g. Sims 2 on consoles they could've done a normal port just like Age of Empires did, they however decided against it.
Now it's more of a "Just port it over and make it work with controller" kind of deal, which ironically enough my girlfriend (who already doesn't like Sims 2 on PS2) dislikes even more than the previous versions as the "normal" game simply doesn't play well without mouse and keyboard (same issue Age of Empires had back then).
@@Unknown_Genius I think the problem with the "port it over and make it work with controller" thing is mostly due to the gaming community. For some reason console players expect to get the same exact games as PC players.. so we end up with things like Baldur's Gate 3 getting ported to consoles somehow. How that even works I can't even begin to imagine really.. that game is clearly designed for keyboard and mouse.
What I liked about the spinoffs of Sims is that they did do as you said where they made the game for the console it was on. It also gave more of an objective focus so it felt like you had something to do.
A really weird part of Sims 2 on DS though was how it was real time.. so if it said like a room takes 8 hours to build it will take 8 hours in real life. That works for games like Animal Crossing, but it didn't work here.. especially with the shop only getting new things *monthly*.
@@Eventide215 BG3 in console mode is actually wildly intuitive! Sims 4 on console is absolute garbage in comparison because the ui was just not compatible. Baldurs Gate games were already on console in the past, so it wasn't too out there for them to do that since it's the norm. :)
So... The main character is definitely dead, right? This game takes place in silent hill.
pretty sure i checked pyramid head in once. great guy. didnt trash his room and left a 20% tip.
Begging you to do the whole game the plot just gets more and more insane
this video gave me a vivid memory of my cousin Alexander, he used to play this game with me before he passed. Honestly thought i had forgotten his face, thank you AA for that memory
the rat lair, printing money, the casino, the mummy who lives in that sarcophagus in your room.... damn. blast fro mthe past
this is one of my all time favorites! it brings back memories of sitting back in the car with the family when i was young, playing it on the DS
Ah yes, the only thing better than Nintendo DS was Nintendo DS in the car
Experiencing this again is surreal, every little sound effect and song from this gem and castaway live rent free in my head - especially the phone. Modern developers could learn a thing or two from this work of art.
The alien invasion jingle when the game caught on that you'd messed with the system clock...it's burned into my brain.
There's also The Sims 3 on DS, and it has an incredibly easy money duplication glitch I abused the hell out of.
Yeah for some reason these games were successful enough for them to release not one, but FOUR sequels/spinoffs: There was the Sims 2 Pets, The Sims 2 Apartment Pets, The Sims 2 Castaway, and the Sims 3. Not saying I didn't like it
@@ambiguousamphibian I forgot that The Sims 2 Pets on DS existed. Probably because I only played it for all of 15 minutes only to find that it was a busted and janky nightmare.
Fun fact about that (and all other DS Sims): There's no gays. Nintendo, being an Asian company, has a bit of a pissy view on *T H E B I G G A Y* in their games, so homosexual relations were denied in all DS ports.
Loved Sims 3 on DS, but even without that glitch it was wayyy too easy 😂
I found it so weird that The Sims 3 DS was considerably better than The Sims 3 3DS, despite releasing aroundabout the same time
I still play this on my DS lol, mostly to do alien autopsies, play the casino, and squirt water at people. 😂
Hint: you find a skill point, squirt it with water, take the point and leave the room. When reentering the room, the skill point is there again. Repeat so you can max it out!
keelhawlin’ cards SLAPS and I need someone to make a desktop version of it lol
Excuse me what?
Holy shit, I wish I knew this before grinding mechanical skill points through ds time travel ;-;
I did this last year for the last section. The mechanical points are the hardest to gather 😂
This video unlocked a part of my childhood when I got this for Easter and played it a lot. Never finished it since I got stuck on something even though I looked every where in the game. Man what a weird rabbit hole this game was.
Bro same I don’t even know what part that was but I remember grinding this game struggling to find one item to continue the story until I gave up lmfao
@@Fluiddruid4k I bet it was the Mechanical skill requirement to fix the elevator, it comes out of nowhere right near the end, and is the ONLY use for mechanical skill in the entire damn game. And the skill points spawn one every hour in a set pattern and location, so it's basically an omega grind without a guide
I got stuck alot, since I didn't understand English. This game cursed me at the young age of 6 and I never recovered my sanity
@@robovelcro oh my god. I think it was the elevator!
@@traditionalsuki I don't know a single person that didn't use cheats and managed to finish the game as a kid, just because of that lmao, it was really dumb
I was (honestly? Still am) SO obsessed with this game because of how unabashedly bizarre it was. I gets super happy when I watch other people play it so thank you for today's serotonin boost
Played this game for too much time as a kid. Learned how to make tons of money from paintings. Oh and if you didn't befriend the Mayor before the end of....The first boss was it? There was a bug where he disappeared for the rest of the game. Take that trying to get 100%!
It's a bug?? I honestly thought the guy had died or went into witness protection or something after his office got set on fire 😂😂
Making digital “paintings” is the only thing I remember about this game. That and the bad low poly graphics. It was the next best thing to MS paint.😅
I remember my older sis playing this game, and me being scared of the green alien, and when I tried to play alone, I kept myself in the hotel because I was too scared to go outside. It was a great time
Thanks for that nostalgic feeling, I needed that ❤️
I would love to see more of this game from you, AA! When I first saw Sims 2 for DS, I didn't remember, but as soon as I saw the hotel, the nuclear rods, the flying alien, it all came back. What a wild game with the Sims name on it.
i played so much of this back in the day and i only remember getting stuck at one point where I got so mad I threw my DS.
*Surprised pikachu face
from memory, I think I can guess the part.
Was it when the robot locks the elevator? If so, that's the one part of the game where the skill upgrades actually matter and do anything.
You need one specific skill at like, quite high. And you raise it by finding skill points. Which spawn at random times of the day, for about an hour, and it's entirely luck as to which skill point spawns on any given day, and where it will spawn. They're always in super out of the way places.
The skill point spawns are actually completely predetermined, the game had a mobile-game-like way of working with your DS system clock for the hotel guests and the day and time would determine the points that are available.
20:05 now I think I remember why my old save had no money, THE CASINO! 😂 that drunken sailor jingle haunts me
Thank you for giving this game the recognition it deserves! I remember playing this and TS2 Castaway on my sisters' DSes (said I didn't want one, wanted CDs and clothes--foolish) and I think about it all the time! Especially tipping cows for milkshakes...
He forgot about the best and weirdest part, you can milk the cow.. and get this.. if you tip the cow then milk it, you get a milkshake.
Want weirder? If he gave the cow chocolate it turned brown and you can get chocolate milk/milkshakes.. to this day that was so weird and endearing it stuck with me for over a decade.
P.S: I was so addicted I had 100% hotel score..
12:07 fun fact, I’m like 98% certain the first room is based off or a fun little nod to Old Boy. It looks eerily similar to the room he stays in.
this game is my childhood, not only the erratic characters of the town, but the ratman suit and superhero missions, the cult of the cows, the dissection of aliens in the secret lab... man it was a weird game! Who would have thought that a vacuum cleaner could be such a powerful weapon?
commenting so that more people can hear about this game, which i 100% genuinely believe is one of the best entries into the sims games as a whole. spent so much of my time as a kid getting more done in my fake hotel instead of sleeping
I had no idea that a sims game had a madness meter. There *are* numerous eldritch abominations in the series, but I thought sims were already at peace with that.
The content of this game makes the sanity meter make sense haha, theres aliens, the mafia, a cow cult, robots, egyptian mummies and a rat superhero
@@katierasburn9571I mean, most of that *is* still in the mainline titles.
Organized crime for the Criminal and Law Enforcement career tracks, aliens are a frequent(including becoming a playable choice, and alien babies are much a thing), Plumbots/Simbots, 3 featured mummies in World Adventures...
Even all the way back in 1, you had Ghosts, and Makin' Magic added the occult into the mix, including raising dragons capable of burning down your home.
There's also Bonehilda, a series staple at this point. Our beloved work of necromancy to clean our homes.
Basically, The Sims has been weird from a *very* early point in the series.
I was so excited when this popped up on my feed! This game was a total obsession of mine, it's such a totally whacky game in almost all aspects. The mini games and unlockable items and plots were honestly awesome, and I still remember doing art for the gallery. Never managed to max my skills, but this was a formative game for me.
Thanks for playing it!!
I'd love to see an episodic play-through of this game. I've always been a big sims fan from the moment my neighbor let me borrow and install all his Sims 1 expansions on my Gateway Pc. But unfortunately I never had a DS, or any sort of handheld, nor was able to get any of the weird console spinoffs, and these videos are scratching an itch I never knew I had. Keep it up!
As someone who has gone months without bathing, I can confirm that you do slowly lose your mind if you don't shower.
Holy hell I remember this game. I remember thinking it was amazing graphically and game play wise. Wow it has not aged well 😂
Yeah I felt that too. The graphics were amazing at the time lol
I mean, when you consider that smartphones as a whole barely existed when this game released, these graphics are impressive. like, before this, it was just gba as far as portable gaming. lol
we were still at a whole different level of computing power back then
“Today we’re turning the clock back to 2004”
Goo goo ga ga
same
I don't know what's so weird. I just keep my nuclear uranium rods lying in my basement as well.
The kids have started growing extra arms, but that's the price you pay for convenience.
Oh, the extra arms are just unripe rods. Hope your next harvest is bountiful :)
Great, that means they can carry more rods!
2:25 why is there a sanity meter in a sims game lol
Trust me, it was ridiculous. I remember this game vividly. That sanity bar was the absolute worst lol
Honestly, that's basically what the aspiration meter is in the mainline Sims 2. If it drops too low your sim has a mental breakdown afterall. Also, the PSP version hangled sanity in a far more interesting way (as it's a far more interesting game)
I did love this game so much as a kid but I remember the game always crashed for me at on point, mostly going to the dessert at first but then later on it would crash more and more so I never got to see the full story unfortunately but seeing you finally play this is such a treat!
Thank you AA, may the UA-cam algorithm feed you well today
Pfft, as if I didn't buy this used just a few years ago to prove to my therapist that it was something that actually existed and not one of my many delusions.
This video reminds me of a time when life was good and worth living
I hope it gets better for you.
But yeah I felt that - 2004 was awesome
@@ambiguousamphibian ❤️
i loved this game but never got further than the robots coming. it got too overwhelming and no longer fun, so i took the game out, put it in my DS game pouch, and never looked back. that was almost 12 years ago lol
every time anyone covers this on youtube i lose my mind. i’m obsessed with it and i love seeing other people’s memories/opinions of it! thank you for bringing it to the front of people’s minds again
This game has an vibe like no other. It's such an odd game.
My childhood! I played this one soooo much, and eventually the card got damaged so it couldn't display images on the top screen. Since you interacted with everything on the bottom screen, I had to play like a blind person blindly stumbling around interacting with things. Even that was kind of fun.
I had this game briefly as a kid, it was very strange indeed. I say "briefly" because it inexplicably vanished one day. Still have no idea what happened to it. The cart and case just sorta disappeared. For years it made me wonder if I'd just imagined it all. I guess it was a fitting end to my The Sims 2 DS experience, all things considered.
My favorite goof was that you could gift a cow chocolate and they would turn brown, and then if you tipped them and milked them you’d get a chocolate milkshake in your pockets. 😂
I used to play the pirate card game for hours, it was awesome. If you time skipped to get over cooldowns, aliens would appear everywhere
I must have fallen asleep while watching this video and dreamed that The Sims 2 was not a Sims game at all but instead a bizarre nonsensical hotel simulator in which you sell nuclear fuel rods to random people, harass aliens, and build a casino.
The strangest Sims game of all time: The Sims 2.
But really, The Sims 2 was already weird before being made portable. I steered clear of the portable Sims on account of how strange and confusing they were, now I feel like I missed out.
I played this game endlessly as a kid. Please please play more, you have no idea what is gonna happen and how wacky it'll be.
the sims console and mobile ports may be weird as hell, but i find them very charming, its not like theyre weird on accident, they intentionally made them weird
I LOVED THIS GAME SO MUCH it was incredibly random but I loved looking after the hotel and checking in guests. Replayed the whole thing a couple of years back, the ‘ending’ is super random af and the car never gets mentioned again but I loved it all the same
I played this SO much and loved it. It has made me feel so nolstalgic and happy to watch this. I loved how there were different guests in the penthouse suite that would have a plotline! I also used to make art to put up in the gallery in the atrium.
This brings me back! My older sister played this, and I inherited it. There were 2 save files. 1 was mine, which only got to the 1st penthouse enemy, and then there was my sister's, which had all the rooms, atrium, and basement stuff unlocked. I have no idea how to get from my save progress to my sister's progress point, but boy, I sure loved running around in a rat costume and selling some mad expensive pixel art.
I'd love to see a full playthrough of this game if you got it in ya. It brings me much joy! Keep up the good work, Wojak❤
Loved the art gallery part. The quality of the piece was assigned totally at random so I’d just open a canvas and then scrap it until it was a masterpiece. Then an hour or so later walk into the gallery and it was full of sims either clapping at, yelling at, or crying in front of them. So much fun.
"get hydrated, ya dingus!" good advice
Man, I remember playing this as a kid, making most my progress on family trips. I loved the oddity and unusual rooms you could build of the hotel, especially when the ratscapades begin!!
i haven't ever played this before but if it's true that the plot gets more, uh, creative, then I'd love to see more of it
Great video, please when you get the chance do another video of this game as you got me enthralled in possible story or what will happen next in this game. I need to know more of Wojacks adventure into the unknown dessert town.
“It’s gonna take a while, few days maybe” about fixing the car. Well I’ve got some bad news. 100% the game twenty years ago and the car is still not fixed
Also fun fact, as a kid my mom was obsessed with the movie Legends Of The Fall. I saw it probably ten times before I was even in middle school. Anyway when first playing this game and meeting Tristan Legend I thought to myself, oh that’s funny. Tristan like the main character from that movie, and Legend like the title. Anyway it took fifteen years for me to look it up and guess what? His name actually IS a direct reference to that movie. Pretty funny!
The weird thing about this game is the only memories I seem to have are me constantly vacuuming and spending time at the casino.. I don't remember there being much else to really do.
Every time I played this game as a child I felt I was in a different dimension which was seperate from our own
7:21 that does NOT look like a vacuum! 👀
I absolutely loved this game, had been binging all your past videos on The Sims 2 spinoffs and couldn't find it in there, thought it was just a fever dream. I am glad you are showing it off!
I would also like to see MySims Agents if you're going through all the Sims spin-offs. I loved that game as a kid.
I adored this game as a child. It was my only exposure to the series as a kid, knowing nothing about the original top-down simulation style. I remember playing for months and months to open the whole hotel and buy all the fancy furniture that I wanted. It was like a wacko insane version of animal crossing
Sometimes the sims call you on your birthday and say cryptic shit like “enjoy it not too many to go now” and some sims can get kidnapped and held for ransom and you have to go pay them out. Crazy game but it’s childhood gem definitely darker than any other sims game I’ve played 😅
Im so happy to see this, so extremely underrated. I was so fascinated with this game as a kid and seeing it as an adult on youtube is such a trip
God I loved this game growing up. The scratch off tickets were like an addiction.
I'm so happy you managed to do a video about this game. I didn't have many games for my DS but this one was my favorite for trips. I'd basically just go into the casino and play mini-games the whole time.
I always loved the goon with the red hair that would escape via shopping cart when he was threatened, while singing “Shooba Dooba Doo-bee~”
I ADORED this game. I had a bovine shrine and got stuck metal detecting out in the wastelands and thats all i recall... that and pure bliss of the "ooh amarr" when greeting people in game.
Do you remember the mummy that put people in a trance? “Hanni ah houd, hanni ah houd, hanni ah houd…..”
Sims for Gameboy has an alien shitting on your toilet
Back when Sims had a personality
Considering a monster stays at your hotel frequently, that vacuum probably should be in witness protection.
I loved this game! I played it a lot when I was a child. And no other kid in my hometown knew this game. Everthing that happens in this game was "normal" for me. Seeing this game as an adult I finally understand why the other kids didn't want to play with me because I was talking weird stuff from this Sims game XD
Unironically one of my favourite handheld games of all time. Always was a bit sad that it was the only game of it's type from the series. Never really did find another game that scratched the itch the same.
This game scared me so much as a child! It was especially confusing since i didn't understand English!This game cursed me at the young age of 6 and I never recovered my sanity
This was one of my favorite games on the DS as a kid and the plot is so amazingly all over the place in classic Sims 2 fashion please please PLEASE do more episodes
I haven't played this since I got softlocked because my sanity kept running out and the toilet and shower were too far away when I respawned (from getting abducted by a ghost I think?), so I would go to jail for having no sanity and then respawn again only to collapse inches away from the toilet and get abducted again. I couldn't figure out how to get out of the cycle and it's been 10 years. Even now my sim stuck in the loop and the Strangetown economy is in shambles. Perfect game 10/10
"Get hydrated, ya dingus!"
I was absolutely hyper Fixated on this game, the music is amazing, the characters are insane and the aliens traumatized me as a child, such a charming weird game
Me and my sister were OBSESSED with this game
I'm an avid Sims fan who hasn't seen most of these console spin-offs, so I'm really happy to see them!!
I loved this game as a kid! I did eventually get 100%, but my game got cartridge got corrupted, and I can't go back to revisit my Strangetown. Totally worth picking up if you like the wacky Strangetown melo-drama, though.
I've been playing this all week because of dreamyjellie's handheld sims video. I'm so obsessed with this weird ass game
Another banger from my childhood. Printing money. Becoming Ratman. Oh, the fever dream. Thank you for another great video!
I religiously watch all your videos, but Sims ones are my absolute favs. Please make this a series I BEG YOU AA
The soundtrack for this game is burned into my brain from my childhood. My friend and I would always scream. "Oobadishna!!" when we met up at the bus stop because of this game.
Your Sims vids are some of my favorites! I had no idea there were so many wacky Sims ports and spin offs for portable consoles!
PLEASE play more of this game, it’s unironically one of my top 5 games of all time!!
Yay! I love your Sims spinoff videos, it's so interesting to see the different directions these games take. :)
God, I Loved this game as a kid, so glad to see someone else experienced it and I didnt have an elongated fever dream
I didn’t play this one, but I did play a couple console Sims spinoffs when I was younger, and I love your coverage of them. More Strangetown please!
As a nostalgic 27 y/o it's so weird when a video mentioned something I took care of.
"Go back in time" Nah I look to my left and see NDS case of Sims 2 in perfect condition lmao, right inbetween my Pokéwalker and Digimon DVD box
I didn’t know this game even existed. How delightfully alarming! I’d love to see more.
This is one of the first sims games I ever played and also the first Nintendo DS game I ever played- before the Nintendo DS Lite was released. My teenage cousin brought her DS over and I was about 9 or so at the time and was fascinated by it- but this game scared me so bad I have repressed every memory of it. Thank you for sharing this gameplay! Love to see you back in my feed! :3