A Spline-Tingling Encounter in SimCopter

If I have one enduring memory of the game SimCopter, it's the computerized female voice saying “Reticulating splines” as levels loaded.

If I have a second, it's the time I fought a demon in the game.

SimCopter was an expansion of the popular Sim City franchise, before whoever was in charge decided that the characters needed to be able to have sex.

For some reason, I adored the original game, to the point that I even bought a collectible card game based on it. OverPower – a card game featuring Marvel, DC and, briefly, Image comics characters – is one thing, but spending money to simulate municipal government activities is a truly special level of nerd. I don't think my friends and I played the game that much, but I do remember a session of “Dueling Suburbs,” where I played a tornado card on my buddy's town and left only a rock and a Methodist church standing.

Yeah, I still have them. So nerd AND hoarder.

I went Sega Genesis over Super Nintendo in the 16-bit wars (due almost exclusively to the first Sega X-Men game), so I had to play Sim City on my friend's SNES. Once we upgraded the family computer, I got my own copy of Sim City 2000.

I eventually added SimCopter, which allowed you to operate a helicopter for transit, law enforcement and firefighting missions in the very cities you'd built. The game also had a career mode where you flew missions in pre-made cities and built up your chopper and business.

from PCGamesN.com

Your helicopter could be fitted with a bucket or water cannon with which to fight fires. You were be called upon to help police by spotlighting a fleeing car or suspect until they were arrested. People in these cities also relied on helicopters as taxis or ambulances.

In one game, I got repeated fire calls, way more than usual. If memory serves, I was eventually dispatched to help the police find an arsonist. As I went to the spot on the map where the suspect was, I saw more flames. And they were coming from... a pixelated Sim flying in the air.

SimCopter was not, to my knowledge, a science fiction (or horror) game. But there was my firestarter, making like the Human Torch (kind of like over there on the cover of Fantastic Four #373, art by Paul Ryan). For some reason, I found this very unsettling.

I initially fired at him with the water cannon. When that failed to stop him, and the usual spotlight technique did not result in him being arrested, I took drastic measures and flew the chopper's blades right into him.

He immediately transformed from floating bystander to bandaged patient and plummeted to the ground. I received a request for a medical pickup at that location, landed and loaded him up. Then, I took off and, once I was high over the city, I used my mouse to drag him out of the chopper and dropped him, to make sure the evil was dead!

(OK, first I saved the game, so I could go back and deliver him to the hospital and continue career mode.)

from PCGamesN.com

I found an article at PCGamesN.com that talks about some of the odd Easter eggs in the game, including UFO encounters, but not this guy. Was my flying foe the harbinger of an alien invasion force? An emissary of evil? A ghost in the machine? The Super-Skrull?