I see a lot of people not knowingly repeat a rumor and I'm just here to clear it up. While The sims 1 was still being worked on they were also working on the sims 2 and announced the Sims 2 in may of 2003. Earlier videos showed what the game looked like and its completely different from what was released,not talking about the trailer because that was obviously a render. The videos showed the control panel being different that's because it was an early prototype. Along with the sims themselves and objects looking like they belong in the sims 1 and on an console. That was the early version i guess they updated the graphics as time passed because as 2004 approached everything was different,updated and tweaked for the final finished product. I mean think about it if they had really"lost EVERYTHING in an huge office fire" The Sims 2 probably would've been delayed for a few years. So no there was no office fire they just finished the product with updated graphics and added more to the game.
Check again. Not only was there a fire during the production of TS2 they had many power outages setting them back and many other problems but we never heard, it's hard and expensive.
ETA: Here you go:
Others, PC / MAC
The Sims 2 [Beta – PC/MAC]
U64 Staff & Contributors
25-06-2013
In 2001 Maxis began development of a successor to The Sims, due to the massive success of the game. The game had 2 development versions. Not many people know, but according to many users on “Mod The Sims” forums, almost all the games development data was lost during a small office server room fire, that resulted in most of the game being developed again from scratch (In addition to this, Maxis also at the time revealed that source codes for many other titles were also lost, such as the console games for example). Many things that were planned were cut due to that reason, such as weather in the base game, and scenarios (an early trailer actually shows that during a storm, the power can go out and you must fix it by pulling a breaker). Additionally, the beta basements were originally intended, but lost during the re-development.
The graphics in the original version look more like graphics seen in “The Urbz” and “The Sims Bustin Out”, which makes it possible the early version may of been using the same engine as those 2 titles, as they were pretty advanced for being console games.
Although the game went into redevelopment, alot of features from the lost build was restored, such as most of the furniture shown in the images and videos of the lost build, music and sounds. Additionally, Weather features like rain, was present in the lost build, but not in the final build. This feature was later restored in The Sims 2 Seasons.
The game was initially confirmed to release in early 2004. But due to the redevelopment the date was delayed until September 2004, which EA called “Final Touches”.
Hmmm guess they never heard of off site backup or was such an animal back then. However glad that the Sims got off the ground though.
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