Reverse Engineering SimTower (phulin.me)

It would be great for the movie theater to be able to play any video synchronized across multiple players so you can watch it together, like the awesome movie theater in Cursor Camp. Then we could all watch the extremely weird original SimTower movies together, in their 8-bit error diffusion dithered glory:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qq8o7gg87k4

Condom Duck:

https://youtu.be/qq8o7gg87k4?t=211

Psycho Party:

https://youtu.be/qq8o7gg87k4?t=381

Cursor Camp (recent hn discussion and neil.fun link):

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47949939

https://neal.fun/cursor-camp/

Also, LGR did these great reviews of SimTower and Yoot Tower, which he truly loves, so he disclaims that they are not exactly non-biased:

LGR - SimTower - PC Game Review (15 years ago):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_4ToEDrhxo0

LGR - Yoot Tower: The Sequel to SimTower (5 years ago):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CqNECXCd9iU

Yoot interviewed many interesting people for MACWORLD Japan, like Joanna Hoffman, Bill Atkinson, Steve Wozniak, Douglas Engelbart, and Alan Kay. Here's a transcript of Yoot Saito's interview of Alan Kay that he shared with me and I cleaned up and linked out:

https://github.com/YootTowerManagement/YootTower/blob/main/Y...

A Journey Through Computing History with Yoot Saito and Alan Kay

  Yoot towers wisely,
  Alan constructs the future --
  foundations of change.

Introduction

In this captivating interview from 1993, recently unearthed and previously published only in Japan, renowned game designer Yutaka "Yoot" Saito of MACWORLD Japan engages with computing pioneer Alan Kay in a deep exploration of technology's past and future. This dialogue, captured on a cassette tape and transcribed, spans the evolution of personal computing, highlighting groundbreaking advancements and visionary ideas that have shaped modern technology. Yoot Saito, celebrated for his innovative approach to game design, and Alan Kay, known for his seminal contributions such as the development of the graphical user interface and the concept of the Dynabook, offer profound insights into both the historical trajectory and the potential futures of the digital world. This interview serves as a treasure trove of historical anecdotes, philosophical reflections, and forward-looking innovations, capturing a moment when two brilliant minds discussed the dynamics of technological progress.

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I'd love to find all of Yoot's original interviews published in MacWorld Japan. Yoot was very active introducing and working with technology and researchers from the US with Japan in the early days of the Mac, and he pioneered psychological chat based AI games using voice recognition and synthesis, like Seaman.

Seaman - Sega's Strangest Expedition Into Artificial Intelligence:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VV0zpPSXOx4

Yoot Saito on His Classic Sega Game Where You Take Abuse from a Fish:

[–] schnebbau 2mo ago ↗

Oh my gosh, this really brought me back. Haven't played that game in 30 years. What a great use of AI. Thanks for the trip down memory lane.

Wow!

There was a little-known sequel to SimTower called Yoot Tower (named after Yoot Saito). It was a commercial flop, but I played it in the 2000s and again in the 2010s and very much enjoyed it! It had a lot of added customizability (more choices of restaurants and shops, for one thing). I would love to see that game recreated.

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Can you still build a garage in the bottom corner to get more starting money??

Just a fyi for anyone that doesn't know: A few years back Don Hopkins got the permission from Yoot Saito to open source Yoot Tower, SimTower's sequel: https://github.com/YootTowerManagement/YootTower

...however I don't think that the source was ever published anywhere, considering that the repository still doesn't have the source code yet. ("Please check out the YootTower repo, where I'll publish the source code once it's cleaned up, reviewed and approved by Yoot, and relicensed with the MIT licensed.")

First of all, super cool. I have a soft spot for SimTower as well. :)

> I didn’t want to do a function-by-function port. First, APIs may be copyrightable - and copying a binary that closely might implicate copyright more than an approach closer to clean-room design. But it was clear that I needed some level of feedback from the ground-truth binary in order to provide a hill for the LLM to climb on the reimplementation.

Interesting, but isn't this what, say, the Ocarina of Time reverse engineer port does[1]? I imagine the fact that this hasn't been served a takedown notice from Nintendo is a proof that it's defensible? Or at least that there's precedent, ha.

Anyway, this is really cool. I genuinely think the only thing that's missing for me to waste an afternoon here is the sound effects!

[1]: https://github.com/zeldaret/oot

I love SimTower, and one of the reasons I keep my SheepShaver environment working is so I can still play it on Mac OS 9.

I’ll have to check this out!

I remember that SimTower (Windows 3.1 version) would briefly draw the dialog boxes in Japanese, then immediately redraw it in English. This was on a computer without any Japanese fonts.

I sunk ages into "the world's most brutal elevator simulator" - how does the game model elevator demand? I always wondered if it was some sort of Poisson distribution.

Can you talk about how you actually disassembled the EXE and reverse-engineered it?

I played when I was a kid. I figured out you could just build condos like crazy and make money pause build more, and repeat, get tons of money, build all the way up. But I couldn't figure out how to get people to the top level for that achievement.

I'm gonna Google that and see what I got wrong

> This project used an absolutely ridiculous number of tokens. I had to upgrade to the Claude Code $200/month plan and carefully avoid usage in the 8 AM-2 PM 2x peak window.

that doesnt sound too terrible to be honest. TIL that 8am-2pm is 2x usage.

> First, the AI makes premature conclusions about subsystems, records them, and then struggles to figure out when to abandon its earlier guesses.

This perfectly describes what feels off to me about Opus 4.7 (unsure if that’s what you are using). It seems to go down an incorrect path, I correct it, but it still references things from it. Trying to direct it back becomes a mess.

Has anyone experience this as well or am I going crazy? Doesn’t happen with 4.6 for me.

Heh, I have four different games I am currently experimenting with, luckily I skipped this one as I am still expecting the original/Yoot source will be published (hopefully DonHopkins sees this and it nudges him to get it uploaded!).

I love you this was the best sim game when I was a kid and now I’ll spend my weekend on your site!

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I want someone to do this with SimCopter. I loved that game but I don't think it was very popular

It is missing the most important function.

If the first tile you build is a lobby in the bottom left corner, it is supposed to double your starting money. :)