Jun 08, 2020 21:00:00

The phantom simulation game 'Sim Refinery' developed 18 years ago is being released to the Internet archive, you can play without installing from the browser

'

SimRefinery ' is a training simulation game created by a major oil company, Chevron, who commissioned Maxis to develop the ' Sim City ' series of city management simulation games. This Sim Refinery was a phantom game that appeared only in various documents, but a floppy disk containing the game body was excavated for 18 years and it was released to the Internet archive.

A lost Maxis “Sim” game has been discovered by an Ars reader, uploaded for all | Ars Technica
https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2020/06/a-lost-maxis-sim-game-has-been-discovered-by-an-ars-reader-uploaded-for-all/

A close look at SimRefinery | The Obscuritory
https://obscuritory.com/sim/simrefinery-analysis/

SimRefinery is, Phil Salvatore of retro game collectors were published in the May 19, 2020 to the blog media The Obscuritory article is now a hot topic at the opportunity. You can understand how 'Sim Refinery' was developed by reading the following article.

What is a phantom simulation game created by the success of 'Sim City'? -GIGAZINE

And when IT news media Ars Technica published an article introducing Sim Refinery on May 20, one reader who called himself 'postbebop' said, 'About this article, a chemical engineer who used to work at Chevron. I asked my friend if he knew anything. This is what he found.' with a picture of a 3.5-inch floppy disk from Sim Refinery, and a link to the internet archive where I uploaded the floppy disk data. Posted.

The archive of the published Sim Refinery is below. It is free and does not require installation, and you can play it on a web browser.

SimRefinery: Maxis Business Simulations: Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming: Internet Archive

https://archive.org/details/simrefinery

To play SimRefinery on your browser, click the power icon displayed on the floppy disk image.

The game data is downloaded and MS-DOS environment emulator

DOSBox is started.

Enter 'simref' and the command...

SimRefinery starts.

According to Salvatore, this Sim Refinery, which was first published in the Internet archive, is a prototype version used when internally testing whether Chevron can be used for training, and it is evaluated that there are many unfinished parts as a game. Of the following images, the left is the title screen of Sim Refinery released, and the right is the screenshot of the prototype version released by Maxis in 1993 (right).

Salvatore also pointed out that Sim Refinery has reused some graphics from the '

Sim Farm ' and 'Sim City' released by Maxis in 1993. For example, the shed (left) shown in the Sim Refinery map is side by side with the farm shed that appears in Sim Farm (right), and you can see that the colors have been changed using the graphics. Salvatore speculated that this Sim Refinery was probably the final version and was made at a low budget of $75,000 (about 9 million yen at the rate at the time), so it's probably a rough build.

The following is an overall map of the map for boarding Sim Refinery. This map seems to have been designed based on the Chevron refinery in Richmond, California. However, SimRefinery's instructions clearly state that 'it does not represent a specific refinery.' In addition, as a familiar disaster event in Sim City, 'high temperature oil fire', 'lightning strike', 'contamination with non-toxic substances', etc. will occur in Sim Refinery.

SimRefinery seems to be made roughly from the use of graphics, but one of the points that is clearly different from SimCity is that the essential oil that 'hydrocarbons with different molecular weights can be independently mixed' as shown in the image below. A system unique to facility simulation. 'Sim Refinery, which also has the side of being used for corporate training, would not be able to play satisfactorily without knowledge of petrochemistry,' said Salvatore.

Salvatore said that he had not proceeded with the development of Sim Refinery since he passed the final version of the prototype to Chevron, but he points out that Chevron may have continued to develop Sim Refinery independently of Maxis. 'If you want to play a full-fledged refinery simulation, you may be disappointed that the game is incomplete. However, the Sim Refinery released this time will give you a lot of learning about game development at the time. You can do that.'