The Rise & Fall of Sim City

The 90’s and early 2000’s were a paradise of simulation games. Games that enabled the players creativity while also allowing them to balance a large number of spreadsheets and spinning plates were all the rage. Within the last few years this genre has begun a renaissance, games like Planet Coaster, Prison Architect and Cities Skylines have taken the games of old and thrust them into the modern day. One of the titles that has fallen by the way side after many years as a best seller and fan favourite is Sim City. So what happened to it? In this video we will take a look at the rise and fall of Sim City.

In 1989, American video game designer Will Wright released SimCity. He was inspired after creating his first game, Raid on Bungeling Bay, a top down war shooter. The game was designed to fit into the existing market. Wright used conventional mechanics and themes to build a game like others on the market. The game was built using a technical trick. Upon moving from the Apple 2 to the commodore 64, Wright learnt a method for scrolling smoothly over what appeared to be a single massive background image and enabled the system to look like it could load a great deal more than it really could.

The game was sold to Broderbund software, who published the title in 1984, selling a reasonable 30,000 copies. It’d have been a decent number had the story ended there, but it did not. Hudson Soft, a Japanese publisher bought the rights to Raid on Bungeling Bay from Broderbund so they could release it on the NES. Supposedly the game sold an incredible 750,000 copies on the NES. This amazing success gave Will Wright a steady income so that he was able to invest more time into his next project. It enabled him to take some risks and not rely on making a game that was guaranteed to sell. A game that would break the mold and offer players a brand new experience.

Wright found that he enjoyed designing and creating the locations within the game, more than the combat mechanics that the title offered. He theorised that players would also love the ability to create their own cities and thus the extremely basic looking SimCity, initially called Micropolis was released on the Commodore Amiga and Macintosh. Sim City was the first of its kind. Wright had taken the leap to create a game that he loved and he hoped would find an audience. He initially struggled to find a publisher for the game as most publishers including Broderbund, doubted that a game with no win or loss conditions would go down well with the fans. So instead he decided alongside an acquaintance he’d met at a pizza party, Jeff Braun, that they’d found their own publisher to release Sim City under, and thus Maxis was born. However these little company could not go it alone. They needed help, they need a distrubitor. So Will Wright went back to Broderbund and asked for help. Broderbund convinced Maxis to add a set of optional scenarious to the game. A number of time-limited challenges that the player could meet or fail and thus giving the game definitive win and loss conditions. With this implementation, Broderbund happily agreed to become Maxis’s distributor and look after them in the cut throat games industry.

The game was a smash hit and took the world by storm. Wright looked as his game not as a conventional gaming experience, but more akin to a doll house or a train set. An open-ended interactive experience that put the power in the players hands and left the fun up to them to create. The term the community would later adopt for this being the term ‘sandbox’.

Will wrights passion project had become a sensation. It’d launched a new genre of video games and taken over the world. In 1991 SimCity celebrated it’s second anniversary on the market while still topping the charts as the pest selling computer game on the market. Five years after it’s initial release, the follow up Sim City 2000 released and expanded upon the winning formula, introducing a range of new features and a new look isometric view to replace the top down view of the original. The follow up was a more series and more complicated simulation game, with less focus on the win conditions that he’d been forced to implement with the original. The release of sequels did not however slow the sales for the initial title. Maxis renamed Simcity to SimCity Classic and continued to sell and support the title. In total the original SimCity sold half a million copies on the PC with the Super Nintendo version selling a further half a million copies. When you add in the Commodore 64 figures it was clear that SimCity was one of the biggest titles to hit gaming in a long time… and it was here to stay.

However, all good things falter at some point and SimCity was no exception. Maxis pumped out more and more SimCity titles as the years went on. SimCity in 1989 was followed by SimCity 2000 in 1993, then SimCity 3,000 in 1999, Sim City 64 in 2000 then a further 2 Sim City’s in 2003. Games became more and more frequent and less and less inspired and ambitious. The community began to lose trust in Maxis as each new version of the game offered very little in terms of developments and improvements. I’d argue that part of SimCity’s problem is that it was so influential, it inspired many of it’s contemporaries… not just in the sim builder genre but in vastly different genre’s as well. The inclusion of a focus on creativity and player led gaming can be felt around the industry. When asked in 2008 to name the three most important innovations in the history of electronic gaming, Sid Meier listed one of them as Sim City saying ‘ You can see traces of SimCity in many if not most of the games we play today, from casual social games to hardcore CRPG and strategy titles’.

Maxis first went public in 1995 and for a time, between its public offering and the sales of SimCity 2000, the company prospered. However after a number of failures and poor business decisions, the company found itself in dire straits and needed saving.

The company pinned its hopes on SimCity 3000 to save them. The game would unfortunately release disastrously as SimCity’s first foray into the realm of 3D led to computers being unable to generate the power to run the title. After a disastrous E3 in 1997 and on the brink of financial ruin, Maxis began to search for a buyer. Electronic Arts came to their aid and spend $125 million in a stock swap to save them. Following this purchase, EA began removing upper management in the months following the purchase as they found a company with low morale sitting on a gold mine, so they took to trying to right the sinking ship as they worked towards their next release, SimCity 4.

SimCity held the title at the top of the urban simulation video game genre for over 2 decades. Sim City, Sim City 2000 and Sim City 3000 were huge global successes and Sim City 4 released in 2003 gave players even more creativity, enabling them to develop mods and custom designs into the game, essentially giving the title an almost endless life span. And that’s how the series sat for 14 years. The community kept SimCity 4 alive, with modders and designers on websites such as Simtropolis and SimCity devotion numbering in the hundreds of thousands and the custom creations in their millions. The community was happy with what they had and kept with the game from 2003 while the rest of the industry moved on. 9 years later in 2012, Maxis and EA announced SimCity, a rebrand of the series using the Glassbox engine and bringing SimCity into the modern day. Buzz was everywhere and everyone was excited for the new king of sandbox games. However excitement turned to bitter disappointment as more and more changes were announced by the studio. Modding support was severely discouraged and unsupported, the ability to create custom buildings was removed, the game would be online online and maps would be locked at the size of 4 square kilometers, which was around the size of the smallest maps in SimCity 4.

With so much controversy around the game in the lead up to the release. It was imperative for EA and Maxis to be prepared for launch day and have a smooth launch to ease fans frustrations. Especially considering the title was coming out just after Diablo 3 which had suffered from the same controversy and had had a disastrous launch. Unfortunately 2013’s Sim City suffered the same fate. Servers did not work on the games release day. For many players it took up to a week to be able to even play the game they had paid $60 for, and EA had to further neuter the game and remove features just to get it to work.

Fans were not happy. The official forums were full of angry critics writing long and well crafted complaints analysing the new features within SimCity and specifying why they were a mistake. Unfortunately the developer refused to buckle to community pressure and make any changes whatsoever. Maxis and EA made a great number of mistakes on 2013’s Sim City. Mistakes on what fans wanted, overestimating their game engine and a lack of polish left fans angry and disheartened. However I feel the biggest mistake they made was not supporting their modding community. Maxis’s Sim City 4 had been kept alive by the dedicated modders continually pumping out new free content to fans, and I think Maxis underestimated the impact this had on the game success. They had one of the most talented modding communities in gaming and they essentially threw them to the curb. Maxis would pay the price for these mistakes. A mere months after the games release, the studio in Emeryville that developed the title closed its doors.

Things went from bad to worse for Maxis when a competitor saw the angry community of loyal fans and decided to capitalise on Maxi’s mistakes and provide fans what they wanted. The small developer from Finland named Colossal Order announced Cities Skylines a year after the release of Sim City. The developer announced that Cities Skylines would be able to be played offline and that it would offer support for the modding community on launch day. Colossal Order and the games publisher Paradox are far smaller than Maxis and EA, but it didn’t matter. Cities Skylines became a success overnight and sold half a million copies in the first week and more than 6 million copies since. Collosal Order keep things new and exciting, with a new DLC every roughly 6 months for the past 5 years and most importantly a dedicated modding community that has kept the game fun to play since launch day with hundreds of thousands of items to download and use for free. Cities Skylines saw an opportunity and they took it, and now they are the undisputed kings of the Urban simulation video game genre. Sim City is all but dead and whether we will get a follow up title remains to be seen… but looks unlikely.

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Aha! 10 Fascinating Facts – Episode 10 – Geography!

Welcome to Episode 10 of Aha 10 Fascinating Facts. This episode will be focused around geography!. I hope you enjoy and please do comment down below and subscribe to the channel.

 

1 The continents shift and grind each other constantly. The speed they do this at is minute. The continents move roughly at the same rate as the speed in which your fingernails grow.

 

2 The distance between Russia and the USA is only 2.4 miles. The diomede islands lie between Alaska and Russia.With big diomedes being A Russiand Island and diomedes an American island. During the winter period it is sometimes possible to walk between the two due to the water freezing in the Bering straight.

 

3 Mount Everest, the world’s tallest mountain, can fit inside the Marianas Trench, the deepest part of the ocean.

 

4 Nauru is the only nation that has no official capital.

 

5 Los Angeles full name is El Pueblo de Nuestra Señora la Reina de los Ángeles del Río Porciúncula” (in English, “town of our lady the Queen of Angels of the River Porciúncula”).

 

6 Instanbul is the only city situation over two continents. Europe and Asia.

 

7 . RENO, NEVADA, IS WEST OF LOS ANGELES.

Even though it is in Nevada and nearly 300 miles from the ocean, Reno is roughly 86 miles farther west than the coastal city Los Angeles.

 

8 AUSTRALIA MAY BE SURROUNDED BY WATER, BUT IT DOESN’T HAVE THE WORLD’S LONGEST COASTLINE.

Being completely surrounded by water, you would have thought Australia would easily have the honor of being the country with the longest coastline. However, that title goes to Canada. Canada has 152,100 miles of coastline, in comparison to just 16,000 miles for Australia.

 

9  Russia is so large that it spreads over 11 different time zones. When one side of Russia has a morning breakfast at 7 am; the other side enjoys evening snacks at 6 pm.

10 the driest place on earth is McMurdo dry Valleys in Antarctica where it hasn’t rained for 2 million years. Only anaerobic bacteria are able to survive in the extreme conditions. Scientists also consider the area terrestrially closest to Mars on earth.

Aha! 10 Fascinating Facts – Episode 9 – Science!

 

Welcome to Episode 9 of Aha 10 Fascinating Facts, and the first episode to be themed. Each episode will featured 10 facts around a singular theme, starting with Science. I hope you enjoy and please do comment down below and subscirbe to the channel.

 

1 the Himba tribe in Namibia has no word for the color blue. In research, when shown 11 green squares and 1 blue, they couldn’t pick out which was different. The research suggests that without a way of identifying the color as different, it’s harder for our eyes to notice it.

 

2 The “Flynn Effect” shows the average IQ is rising steadily with each generation. IQ tests are continually made harder to keep the average at 100. Today’s children that take tests from past decades are averaging significantly higher than 100

 

3 Probiotics can evolve inside the body and have the potential to become less effective and sometimes even harmful.

 

Researchers studying a strain of E. coli which had been sold in Europe as an anti-diarrheal probiotic, found that the bacteria’s DNA changed after living in mice’s intestines for a few weeks and caused distress

 

4 As temperatures continue to rise due to global warming, an estimated 1 billion people are likely to be opened upto the risks of new diseases like dengue fever that currently are restricted to hotter climates.

 

5 A Woman with ‘mutant’ gene who feels no pain and heals without scarring was recently discovered by scientists. She reported numerous burns and cuts without pain, often smelling her burning flesh before noticing any injury, as published in the British Journal of Anaesthesia, and could open door to new treatments.

 

6 Doing just 10 min to 1 hour of leisure time physical activity such as dancing, walking, or gardening each week is associated with an 18 percent lower risk of death. All exercise, even the smallest, easiest amount, can have lasting benefits.

 

7 Scientists studied a “super-smeller” who claimed to smell Parkinson’s disease. In a test, she smelled patients clothes and flagged just one false positive – who turned out to be undiagnosed. The study identified subtle volatile compounds that may make it easier for machines to diagnose Parkinson’s.

 

8 In 2010, OxyContin was reformulated to deter misuse of the drug. As a result, opioid mortality declined. But heroin mortality increased, as OxyContin abusers switched to heroin. There was no reduction in combined heroin/opioid mortality: each prevented opioid death was replaced with a heroin death.

 

9 The success of an environmental charge on plastic bags in supermarkets. Before the introduction of the bag charge, 48% of shoppers in England used single-use plastic bags, while less than a year after the charge introduction, their share decreased to 17%
10 Risks for autism and depression are higher if one’s mother was in hospital with an infection during pregnancy. This is shown by a major Swedish observational study of nearly 1.8 million children. The increase in risk was 79 percent for autism and 24 percent for depression.

The Berlin Airlift & The Candy Bomber

Following the end of the second world war, the German capital of Berlin was divided into allied controlled regions, with the British, the Americans and the French dividing West Berlin between them and the Soviets controlling East Berlin. As time progressed relations between the east and west began to deteoriate as the cold war got into full swing. In the 1960’s the Soviets cut off access to east berlin via the construction of a large wall dividing the capital with a non mans zone police by the military. The wall came up overnight on 13th August 1961  and left thousands cut off from friends and family for decades. However tensions had been building before that and this wasn’t the first conflict between east and west Berlin. On 24th June 1948, the Berlin Blockage began. This blockade was caused by the Soviets who blocked the western allies trade route access, meaning the west were unable to send goods to their people by rail, road or canal. The soviets demanded that the west remove the newly introduced deutsche mark, in favour of the eastern deutsch mark which was known as the Ostmark.

 

The Berlin blockage was one of the very first crises of the cold war. Rail, Road and Canal routes into the city were blocked and this left only one solution. Air. A coaltion of airforces incuding the US Air Fairce, Britains Royal Air Force, The French Air Fiorce, The Canadian Air Force, The Royal Australian Air Force, the Royal New Zealand Air Force and the South African Air Force combined to drop care packages to the people of Berlin. These packages contained everything they would need to survive. Food and Fuel. The soviets did not intervene or attempt to shoot down any of the allied plans for fear of causing war between both sides. The day the soviets began the blockade, west Germany had enough food to feed their population for 36 days and enough coal to last them 45 days. It was clear that the allies would need to act fast.

 

US commander General Clay approached the British air force commander Sir Brian Robertson to begin an airlift, only to find out that the British had already set one up and were airlifting aid to British troops stuck inside Berlin. The Royal Air Force had already been dropping a sizeable chunk of goods before the joint expedition but those numbers would have to increase drastically. The US calculated that to support the city with a daily ration of 1,990 kilocalories it’d need to deliver daily supplies of 646 tons of flour and wheat, 125 tons of cereal, 64 tons of fat, 109 tons of meat and fish, 180 tons of dehydrated potatoes, 180 tons of sugar, 11 tons of coffee, 19 tons of powdered milk, 5 tons of whole milk for children, 3 tons of fresh yeast for baking, 144 tons of dehydrated vegetables, 38 tons of salt and 10 tons of cheese. In all, 1,534 tons were required each day to sustain the over two million people of Berlin. Also for heat and power, 3,475 tons of coal, diesel and petrol were also required daily. Due to the postwar shrinkage of the militaries, both sides scrambled to get enough aircraft to deliver the massive number of goods needed by the people of Berlin.

On 25 June 1948 General Clay gave the order to launch Operation Vittles, the name the airlift was known by. The following day 32 C-47s lifted off for Berlin hauling 80 tons of cargo, including milk, flour, and medicine. The first British aircraft flew on 28 June. At that time, the airlift was expected to last three weeks, it would last almost a year.

 

Hundreds of planes were arriving in Berlin from neighbouring airports. The US flights would come in from Rhein-Main Air base and Wisebaden, while the British airports flew in from Hamburg. This caused a logistical nightmare to avoid crashes and a complex system was created known as the block system was put in place. It involved three 8 hour shifts of C-54’s flying into Berlin followed by a shift of C-47’s. The airstrip was scheduled to see a plane take off every four minutes and planes were expected to fly 1,000 feet higher than the flight in front.

 

The airlift started off slow, delivering only 90 tonnes a day during its first week, but this would rise tenfold to 1,000 tonnes by the second week. 6 weeks into the operation, a new commander from the US camp would be sent in to take over the airlift. Major General William H Tunner was embarassed by the inadequacy of the setup of the airlift and began making major changes. This became known as Black Friday and Tunner noted that it was from this date that the airlift became a success.

 

By the end of August 1948, a month after Tunners Black Friday changes, the airlift saw more than 1,500 flights a day and 4,500 tonnes of cargo delivered, which was enough to keep west Berlin supplied. By January of the following year this improved to 5,000 tonnes a day. The allies had refused to bow to the Soviets demands and were keeping their people alive at all costs.

 

One of the most notable stories to come from the Berlin Airlift is that of the Candy Bomber.

A US Air Force pilot named Gail Halvorsen decided to use his off time from work to fly into Berlin and try to make movies using his hand held camera. On the 17th July 1948 he arrived at Berlin airport and was greeted by a large group of children. They were curious about the aircraft and Gail took the time to answer all of their questions. He gave the children two packs of his Wrigleys Doublemint gum and was so moved by the childrends generosity and graittude as they divided the gum into the smallest pieces they could to provide everyone a piece, that he promised he’d return to drop off more. Before take off one of the children asked him how they would know it was him. He replied that he’d wiggle his wings.

 

The next day on his approach to Berlin, he wiggled the aircraft and dropped some chocolate bars attached to a handkerchief parachute to the children waiting below. Each day the crowd of awaiting children grew larger and larger. The US Air Force base began recieving stacks of thank you mail addressed to “Uncle Wiggly Wings”, “The Chocolate Uncle” and “The Chocolate Flier”.

Halvorsens commanding officer was upset when the story appeared in the newspaper, but when Major General Tunner heard about it, he approved of the gesture and immediately expanded it into “Operation Little Vittles”. Other pilots joined in and began to drop their own care packages to the children of Berlin, and when news reached the US shores, children all over the country sent in their own candy to help out. Soon, major candy manufacturers joined in the effort and over twenty three tons of candy were dropped on Berlin.

 

Things carried on this way until the 15th of April 1949 when the Soviet news agency Tass announced a willingness for the end of the blockade. The four powers immediately began negotiations and by 1 minute to midnight on 12th of May 1949 the blockade was lifted. The first truck carrying supplies entered the city seconds later and the first cargo train arrived at 5:32am. The airlift didn’t stop as it was essential for the city to build up a comfortable surplus, should something similar happen again in the future. By the end of the airlift on the 30th of September 1949, a total of 2,326,406 tonnes of goods have been delivered by the airlift. 101 fatalities were recorded as a result of the operation, including 40 Brits and 31 Americans, mostly as a result of non flying accidents. One Australian air force member was killed in an aircraft crash as well as seventeen Americans and eight Brits that also lost their lives in crashes.

 

The cost of the airlift split between the US, the UK and Germany was estimated to have been between $224 million and $500 million, which equates to $2.6 billion and $5.27 billion adjusted for inflation. However the saviour of two million lives as well as an early defeat for the soviets in the cold war was well worth the cost to the taxpayer.

 

Thanks for watching the video, I hope you enjoyed this little slice of history. Again it’s something a bit different to the content most of you are here for, but it’s something I enjoy making and will make more of. If you want to support me then please do subscribe to the channel and ring the bell to be notified when I go live. If you want to support me financially then i’ve setup a Patreon. I have grand plans for the channel with the eventually goal of doing this full time and increasing the quality of my videos, but both of those things cost money. I’ll see you next time bye!  

Aha! 10 Fascinating Facts – Episode 8

1 physicist Nikola Tesla once paid an overdue hotel bill with a box containing a working model of his ‘death beam‘, warning employees never to open it because of the danger. They hid the box & when it was discovered years later & opened, found to contain old (harmless) electrial parts.

 

2 Paul McCartney, as a vegetarian and animal rights activist, only agreed to appear on The Simpsons if Lisa’s decision to become a vegetarian in that episode was made permanent. He is literally the only reason Lisa is still a vegetarian.

 

3 Communist leader Stalins grandaughter is an alternative, buddhist that runs an antique store in Portland Oregon.

 

4 the Queen logo, called the Queen crest, was designed by Freddie Mercury himself, who held a degree in graphic design. The logo combines the zodiac signs of the four band members.

 

5 ‘kangaroo words’, that is, a word that contains a synonym inside it, i.e MAscuLinE, BLOssOM, cHickEN or hoNOuraBLE.

 

6 The bezel on a dive watch only turns counterclockwise so that if the bezel is bumped accidentally during a dive it will only move in one direction, subtracting time from the dive and prompting the diver to surface early rather than staying under for too long.

 

7 John Scott, a pro hockey player who got voted by the people (as a joke) to be the captain of the All Star team. The NHL didn’t want him to play, so he got sent to the Minor Leagues. There wasn’t a rule against a minor leaguer playing in it though, so he played, scored twice and won MVP.

 

8 before Paris was liberated from the Nazis, Hitler ordered military governor Dietrich von Choltitzthe to demolish the Eiffel Tower and other major landmarks. He refused this direct order, and surrendered to the Allies instead, saving the tower.

 

9 When babies are born in Thailand, it is common for people to say the baby is ugly. There is a superstition that attractive babies will be taken by evil spirits. It is impolite to say positive things about the baby.
10 bees dance to each other in the hive to tell each other where to find good pollen. The angle of the dance is the angle relative to the sun, the tempo of dance is the distance, the duration of dance is the quality of the pollen, and the dancer hands out free samples to whoever’s watching!

What we know about the Final Fantasy 7 Remake?

Final Fantasy 7 is consistently in the conversation for the best game of all time alongside Zelda’s Ocarina of Time and Metal Gear Solid. All 3 games are more than 2 decades old now and look quite dated in comparison to the games of today. Both Link and Solid Snakes adventures have been followed up in subsequent titles but as the Final Fantasy series features a new cast of characters in each game, Cloud and friends tale seems to be forever relegated to the block graphics of the late 90’s. That is until the FF7 remake hits shelves. Something most Final Fantasy fans are eagerly awaiting.

 

So what do we know about the FF7 remake? Well… not all that much really. Square Enix has kept its cards close to it’s chest when it comes to this project. The game was revealed to fans back in 2015 at E3 and everything revealed since then has come in drips and drabs. A reveal trailer was dropped in 2015 alongside the initial reveal, a further trailer featuring gameplay came ast PSX 2015 and since then all we’ve had is a number of screenshots.

 

4 of the original key staff members from Final Fantasy 7 have returned to work on the remake. Original character designer Tetsuya Nomura returned as both director and main character designer, original director Yoshinori Kitase acted as producer, Kazushige Nojima returned to write the script, and composer Nobuo Uematsu is also involved.

 

The new Final Fantasy 7 is a remake and not just a remaster. So what does that mean exactly? Well the game will likely not be a carbon copy with new graphics but instead it’ll be a retelling of the classic 1997 story but with some changes to accomodate the appetites of a modern audience. Additional content is to be expected as well as some adjustments to the original character designs. The biggest change is likely to come from changes to the combat. For those of us that adore the old school turn based combat of the original then it’s likely to be bad news. The combat is very likely to be more action focused and in a similar vein to Final Fantasy 15, whose engine the remake is also using. The story is likely to recieve a bit of an update as well due to the expansion of the FF7 lore in subsequent spin off titles and animated films.

 

The game will be episodic. Square Enix decided to release the game in three seperate parts so as to not cut any content from the original game. While the specifics have not been announced there are 2 different methods that Square Enix could use for this. Telltales episodic style has shown huge success with titles such as the walking dead or with dontnod entertainments life is strange. These games were included under 1 price tag and would unlock for the player every couple of months. Square Enix previously attempted this style of game with the Hitman reboot, but they abandoned this model for the sequel which could be telling in their decision for the FF7 remake. The other potential style could be the one they went with for Final Fantasy 13, which saw 3 seperate games released in different years and required a full price purchase for each one.

The final and most disappointing thing is that we have no idea when this game will release. After an announcement in 2015, it was expected that the game will be dropped by 2018, however initial leaked conversations between producer Yoshinori Kitase and development lead Naoki Hamaguchi have suggested that it could be as late as 2023 before we finally get our hands on the FF7 remake. The conversation stated that the aim was to have the game released before the 35th anniversary of the company.  Another reason for the delay is that it’s been confirmed that the game will be a PS4 exclusive… at least first. Given that the current gen is reaching the end of its life cycle, it might be that the FF7 remake will hold out until next gen.

 

But could we be getting it earlier…? Maybe. Square Enix recently released their latest financial projections, which revealed that they are expecting a big increase in revenue for the 3rd and 4th quarters of the 2019 financial year. This would be between October and December 2019. With nothing currently announced to release between this period… could it be FF7? Only time will tell.

Aha! 10 Fascinating Facts – Episode 7

1 A castle in portugal was under siege in Moncao during the 14th century as the Spanish tried to starve out the inhabiants. Using the last of their flour supplies, a local woman baked some cakes and had it thrown over the castle walls exclaiming ‘if you need anymore, just let us know’. The bluff worked and the Spanish, fearing a long term siege withdrew from the battle. You can still buy the cakes in the town today.

 

2 The word Anti social is often mis-used to describe someone that is reclusive and keeps to themselves. The correct term for this is a-social. Someone that is antisocial is disruptive and maniupulative.

 

3 Benedict Cumberbatch who plays Sherlock saved a cyclist from attempted robbery by fighting off a gang of muggers in London. He was traveling by Uber when he spied the muggers assaulting a delivery cyclist. He jumped out of the car screaming obscenities at the attackers while dragging them off the victim… badass.

 

4 In 2008 Blink 182 Drummer Travis Barker was tragically involved in a plane crash that saw 4 of the 6 people on board perish. Travis Barker suffered 2nd and 3rd degree burns among other injuries. In the year that followed his pain was so intense that he repeatedly offered friends a million dollars if they would assist him in ending his life. Eventually hospital staff had to confiscate his phone.

 

5 In LA Libraries there is a program called the great read away program that allows children to read additional books to clear any late fee’s they may have. The first six months after the programs inception saw 3,500 accounts had been cleared and reportedly parents were 80% more likely to let their kids go to the library.

 

6 The Gretzky brothers of hockey fame hold the NHL record for the most combined points by two brothers (2,857 for Wayne and 4 for Brent)

 

7 Van Halen singer Sammy Hagar made more money on the stock market than he ever did from music. He sold his 80% share in the Cabo Wabo Tequila company to Gruppo Campari for $91 million

 

8 Most representations of neanderthals depict them as hunch backed or at least hunched over. This is because the first neanderthal skeleton found was arthritic.

 

9 in 1981 a man named Roger Fischer had an idea for a volunteer to have nuclear launch codes put in their chest cavity. In the event of an emergency, the volunteer would carry a knife to be killed with. It was meant to force the personal killing of one man to start the impersonal killing of millions.

 

10 if My Name Is Earl had not been prematurely canceled the creator planned to end it with Earl being unable to finish his list but realizing that his original list had started a chain reaction of good in the world

Why is Washington D.C. the capital of the USA?

Los Angeles, New York, Chicago, Boston and Philadelphia. These are all cities you might expect to be the capital of the United States if you were only just introduced to the nation. Cities that have had huge impact and importance throughout the life cycle of the USA with New York and Philly being important at the beginning of the nations life, New York especially. However the capital is instead a small piece of land in between Virginia and Maryland. Why is that?

In the late 18th century when the country was young, important political meetings where carried out in New York and Philidelphia. This was a problem for many of the southern leaders such as Thomas Jefferson who owned slave plantations in the south which required them to frequently travel back and forward between Virginia and the northern states. A trip that took quite some time before the train and plane were invented.

 

So why did the congress change the capital from two established areas that had been active during the revolution and change it to a completely new piece of land ceded from Maryland and Virginia? Well there are a number of reasons. An act during 1783 created discontent between congress and the state of Philidelphia. The nation had issues paying the continental soldiers who’d been active in the revoluotnary war. Tensions built and things came to a head as a crisis broke out known as the Philidelphia mutiny of 1783. 400 Soldiers marches on the Independence Hall and barricaded the doors, locking those inside until they were paid. A young political leader who’d been a soldier himself and was known for his quick wit and golden tongue was dispatched to deal with the situation. Alexander Hamilton met with the troops and convinced them to stand down and to allow the congress some time to resolve the matter and pay the troops. They agreed to this but instead of carrying out what they had promised, congress got out of dodge and moved to Princeton, New Jersey. Over the next few years they’d move to Trenton, New Jersey, Annapolis, Maryland and New York City.

 

While all this moving about was going on, the French ambassador for the United States and one of the key figures in securing funding and troops for the revolutionary war, Thomas Jefferson had returned to the United States. Jefferson was a southern leader much like president Washington and owned ranches and plantations in Virginia. Virginia was at that time arguably the most important state, holding half a million of the 2.5 million Americans at the time and holding a great deal of its wealth. Alexander Hamilton believed however that the future of America’s wealth was not in exporting products but in borrowing from other nations. He wanted to found the first bank of America but did not have enough backing from other congressman. Although Jefferson was not a fan of Hamilton, he and close friend James Madison felt that they could swing the votes in Hamiltons favour if he agreed to back their bid to move the capital from the North to a new plot of land near Virginia and Maryland along the Potomac river. What was said for the two groups who notably had bad blood between them is not known as, nobody else was in the room where it happens.

In 1790 Congress passed the Residence act which gave both parties what they wanted. Jefferson and Madison had the capital moved to a new piece of land taken from both Virginia and Maryland and named Washington after president washington and the the District being named Columbia after Christopher Columbus. While Hamilton was allowed to pass the Assumption bill that would allow him to found the first bank of America and assume control of all states debts.

 

Both plans worked out rather well as Washington DC grew into a thriving city that boasts global renown and relevance and America benefited greatly from their new financial systems and over the following two hundred years they were able to become the financial powerhouse of the world.

 

I hope you liked the video. It’s something a little different to the content I usually post but it’s something that interests me and i’d like to keep doing. Leave me your thoughts and opinions down below and please do make sure to subscribe!

Top 10 Fascinating Facts about Apex legends

Apex Legends is without a doubt one of the biggest suprises in the gaming industry during recent times. Hitting the industry like a rocket in the last couple of weeks,  the game has topped the Twitch viewership charts, hit 8 figure account creations and has recieved universal positive acclaim. We are going to take a quick look at 10 things you may not know about Apex Legends. Don’t forget to Subscribe and ring that bell to be notified of my upcoming content.

 

10 – Apex Legends is the first game in the history of the industry to release as it was announced. This extremely risky marketing move has been carried out in the tech industry but has never been carried out by a games developer. The stars aligned for Apex and I worry that this success may lead others to try and replicate the games release hype but may not yield similar results.

 

9 – In addition to the previous point, it’s almost impossible to keep a game secret during development. EA and Respawn somehow managed this, not even alluding to a secret project or an unnamed game.

 

8 – The game has seemingly blended two of the most popular genres of FPS into one to create something new and unique. The addition of the battle royale genre alongside the hero class shooter genre has meshed well together for a new experience for many players.

 

7 – Apex Legends is created by Respawn, the developers of TitanFall 2. While it’s not extremely obvious due to the lack of giant robots, wall running and smart pistols. Apex Legends is set in the same world as Titanfall and can be viewed as a spiritual successor to Titanfall 2.

 

6 – Squad based gametypes have generally always been between 4 – 6 in competitive game modes. Very few games have gone below this number as it can be difficult to develop enough team synergy and cohesion with only three players. Shootmania was one of the only games to use the 3 man squad party size… and we all know how that game panned out.

 

5 – TitanFall 3 may still be coming. Respawn CEO Vince Zampella has tweeted out that more Titanfall is coming later in the year. While many are hoping this is another stellar single player Titanfall experience, akin to that delivered in TItanfall 2. This remains to be seen as Respawn are releasing Star Wars Jedi Fallen Order later in 2019 and 3 full fledged games for the studio may be a little ambitious. Let’s just hope it’s not a crappy mobile game.

 

4 – The world is deceptively detailed and content rich. Each character has a backstory and a place within the world around Apex Legends. The Apex Games themselves have a reason for existing and although not revealed yet, i’m sure will feed into Titanfall game lore. It wouldn’t surprise me if we see a number of animated shorts to further flesh out the characters and world like Blizzard have done with Overwatch.

 

3 – More maps are coming! It was a great sign when I booted up Apex Legends for the first time and saw that the map had a name. Unlike fortnight it would appear that more maps are coming eventually, which will help to keep the game fresh and interesting as time goes on.

 

2 – Cross Platform support is likely coming to the game. Like fortnight, it is likely that Respawn will follow that route and allow for PS4, Xbox 1 & PC players to compete together for those wins.

 

1 – New Legends are coming! According to the 2019 Apex legends Roadmap, we will see new guns, new loot and most importantly new legends join the game as time goes on. We can expect new legends to appear in Season 2 which starts in June. Perhaps they’ll even introduce one in March’s Season.

I realised there was a few key cities i’d not yet included on my lists so i’m back with episode 6. I’ll be taking a look at 10 of the best creations within Cities Skylines. Keep in mind that these are my thoughts and if you disagree or think something else should have made the list then please do say in the comments down below. Also to note that the list is unranked as the quality on offer is too close to call, so the list is in a random order. 

Aha! 10 Fascinating Facts – Episode 6

1 John Cena is proficient in Mandarin and was able to live there for a 6 month stint during 2018. Learning the language was encouraged by WWE management as they are trying to make a big push into the chinese market.

 

2 A company in Japan has awarded it’s non-smoking employee’s with 6 days of extra anual leave a year to make up for the frequent smoke breaks that their smoking colleagues take.

 

3 planned obsolescence is illegal in France; it is a crime to intentionally shorten the lifespan of a product with the aim of making customers replace it. In early 2018, French authorities used this law to investigate reports that Apple deliberately slowed down older iPhones via software updates.

 

4 in the 1950’s, donut shops were some of the first food businesses commonly open late at night. They became hot spots for police working the night shift since it gave them a place to grab a snack, fill out paper work, or even just take a break. This is why donuts became associated with cops.

 

5 here’s a restaurant in New York that doesn’t employ chefs; they employ grandmas. Every day, a different grandma from around the world designs her own menu.

 

6

Prince William and Prince Harry pulled a prank on their grandmother the Queen in their teen years , by changing her voicemail answering message to say, “Hey wassup! This is Liz. Sorry I’m away from the throne. For a hotline to Philip, press one. For Charles, press two. And for the corgis, press three.

 

7 a group of undercover Detroit police posing as drug dealers tried to arrest another group of undercover police posing as drug buyers.

 

8 that in 1825 painter Samuel Morse received a letter which read that his wife was sick. The day after that a new one said that she was dead. When 2 days later he went to his wife, he discovered that she was already buried. Pissed off for the slowness of communications, he invented the Morse code.

 

9 Grand Theft Auto V cost $265 million to make — the largest budget of any video game at that time — but turned around and made $1 billion in its first 72 hours

 

10 when pimps get arrested, their cash can legally be confiscated but not their jewelry. This is why pimps wear lots of jewelry so that they can “re-pawn” it for bail money.