A Trip Back to Pleasantview
Our community is the heart of The Sims franchise—full stop. From the 1950s-inspired whimsy of The Sims to the current excitement around the release of The Sims 4 Adventure Awaits. The love and creativity that The Sims has embodied within its playerbase has spanned almost three decades for a reason, because, despite any faults, it’s meant something. What it means, exactly, varies from person to person, but we can all say that this silly little LifeSim has touched us deeply. It embeds itself in our hearts and minds, and possibly was the start of each of our respective gaming journeys.
The iteration that could be argued to be the most meaningful is The Sims 2. The most foundational game of the lot, The Sims 2, has not only given us the brunt of iconic premades that still get Simmers hyped by their very mention, but also is the heart of a variety of features and story beats that continue on even in The Sims 4 today.
The Simstalgia: The Sims 2 Nostalgia Zine is available now, and hopefully, after this article, you’ll not only read it but also come to appreciate the effort and expression of those who’ve taken their time to help bring it to life.
Table of Contents
What is the Simstalgia: The Sims 2 Nostalgia Zine?
As the title implies, Simstalgia: The Sims 2 Nostalgia Zine is a zine (a fan-made, independent magazine) made to celebrate the lasting legacy of The Sims 2. The zine is heavily inspired by the 2000s, positively oozing Y2K teen magazine charm with additional homages to gaming guides of the era.
In my opinion, the zine is the perfect balance of Noughties cheese and genuine adoration for The Sims 2. It embodies those feelings of deep wistfulness that make you homesick for beige desktop towers and late nights in the glow of a CRT monitor. It makes you want to hear the “click!” of a disc drive, a brief moment of silence, and then the hiss of the whirring machinery. It’s the feeling of returning to something beloved and then, suddenly, realizing that love is reciprocated, and multiplied by a thousand by dozens of like-minded folks. All of which have had an array of different, but equally as happy experiences just like you.
Examples of the first few pages, no spoilers after that, ‘kay?
The many contributors to the first issue of the Simstalgia zine! The project drew in a variety of creatives—from simblr stars to YouTube giants, many members of our vast community came together to add their touch to the zine!
Though it wasn’t just influencers who put their hand in to this project. I was able to get in contact with the team behind the zine, who were kind enough to give us all a look behind the scenes.
Interview with the Simstalgia Team
How did the project start? Did you have any initial goals? Was it initially just “vibes”?
Microscotch: “I had briefly thought about it a few times, but wasn’t quite sure if I wanted to take on the responsibility and the degree of management a project like that would entail, even with help. In the middle of last December, though, after the thought came up again, I simply decided to go for it! Once I decide that I, in fact, want to do something and excite myself over it I immediately have to act on it, and within the span of probably 2-3 days already started asking and collecting people who might be interested in helping out in different areas. And with that, the application post for contributors was already up December 30th!”
Can I ask about the composition of the team? Did you start small and grow with interest, or something else entirely?
Microscoth: “I got everybody on from the start to ensure I wouldn’t get overwhelmed! And funnily enough, I still ended up practically managing the communication with every participant myself, few instances aside, simply ‘cause I realized I was able to and it somehow didn’t stress me out.”
“Pino helped me so much on the graphic design front (I especially love the UI adjacent elements she did a large chunk of!), and she kindly did the Instagram side of social media after she posted some sneak peeks and I proposed creating an account there to mirror Tumblr. Alelelesimz also designed a bunch of graphics (namely the feature with Marticore and Acottonsock, CrazySims, and Sammy Sundog!) Kamiiri served as the editor as it’s also her IRL job, and Lisspeed I had initially on to help a bit with server management, but our participants were, frankly, super well-behaved, so she was a little under-utilized, haha!”
Was the admin difficult initially? I imagine you had a lot of eager Simmers interested in the project, but otherwise unaware of the scope/responsibility required in its production?
“I will be very honest, it went much more smoothly than I anticipated. I checked a few guides on zine production, but other than that just went right in, and literally kept repeating to the other mods over the course of the project too that I was, indeed, shocked over how easy of a time I had managing it, especially because I didn’t divide communication with the participants amongst the mods, aside from a few cases who weren’t replying and asking Lisspeed to reach out, or the few who very belatedly expressed interest through Instagram which Pino managed. Were we entirely free from inconveniences? Or course not, but as I mentioned before, I cannot stress how cooperative 99% of participants were, I don’t think I could’ve pulled that off otherwise. Either way, I’m sure we will expand the amount of people we’re letting on next time, and in that case I WILL need more help managing emails and participant feedback! TL;DR: Absolute dream in terms of admin difficulty, I sure got some perspective reading different accounts over how time-consuming and taxing it can be and it genuinely makes me appreciate how good we had it with this run!”
The community aspect of the zine can’t be understated; did you anticipate the level of support you were given for the project?
“Absolutely not. I don’t think anyone could’ve, considering the proportions you’d normally think in with something so niche and fan-made, that outcome was almost inconceivable. The flipbook alone had 28k views in 17h and we’re over 100k now. The pdf briefly broke the drive link on release and we got tons of comments about it. I think once Strangetownie and Pino posted teaser mockups of their contributions and it effectively reached Instagram, (as Tumblr is definitely more closed-off), that’s where it took off, and we started receiving multiple messages and even emails!”
The Y2K aesthetic is out of this world! I’m aware that your inspo was teen/tween mags of the 2000s, but do you have any other inspirations you drew from in terms of composition?
“We wanted to connect the tween mag aesthetic with the in-game UI. That was sort of my main vision when I thought of it and started drafting up the guidelines!”
Was there anything you wished you could have done, but didn’t have the time/ability to add?
“Hm, not really. While we had a tight schedule for participants, we were considering this our only opportunity to do all these things! So whenever something crossed our minds, we pulled all the registers and still shoved it right in there!
You have some pretty big names in the community on your roster! Were you all a bit starstruck? How easy was it to communicate with bigger influencers like Juno Birch?
Juno was actually already mutuals with me (Microscotch) and Pino, so that definitely made it a little easier for my message to not get filtered out! I hadn’t talked to her before, but honestly just went ahead and asked. At worst I’d get an unanswered message, but she was all for it and replied within probably a minute! Our team as well as our participants were super excited!! But even with simfluencers I wasn’t mutuals with going in, again, I just went right ahead and asked, and everyone was immediately up for it! Lisspeed had requested an unrelated interview with Ian Stocker a long time ago, but due to health-related reasons, it took him some time to reply, and when it happened, it just conveniently fell right into our production time. After getting his blessing, we got to release it!
We were very lucky on all fronts, haha!
Do you (or any other members on the team) have any specific fond gameplay moments from TS2 you’d wish to share?
Micorscotch: “I had a brief period where I tried pulling off a lepacy with story progression and ACR (not a good idea with Strangetown’s limited gene pool) and Tycho Curious as well as the Beakers’ first-born daughter clearly had a thing for each other, but sensing the impending genetic doom I discouraged them wherever possible. That said, once they were shipped off to college with plenty of other young adults to choose from while I focused on raising the remaining siblings, they couldn’t be stopped and immediately got engaged off-screen, and also, once I played college with the siblings, married and procreated off-screen. The first time I checked in again, their child was already a toddler. I would now like to share with you what exactly I was facing when loading the lot:
Alelelesimz: “I remember that i was TERRIFIED of Emperor Xizzle and hated when he invaded Strangetown and YET I always changed the time on my DS so he would invade literally everywhere which made me cry cause I hated him so much, so I had to ask my neighbor’s older brother to defeat them for me otherwise I couldn’t keep playing.”
Lisspeed: “Back when I was a child who had just learned to read and had just gotten the game I had a rather unorthodox way of playing the game. One such case was not realizing children came back with homework. As a result the social worker would always show up sooner or later to retrieve my tiny crew. Unsure about how to fix this problem (and not really understanding most of the internet at the age of 7) I did the only logical thing…I moved my household every single time my kids’ grades got low. Somehow little me had figured out that by moving my family the grades would automatically reset, giving me more time to play with the kids until they got old enough to grow into teens. This of course was quite a hassle…Of course there eventually came a time where I had more reading comprehension and was able to look it up, but for a while this was how I kept the Social Worker away. I will never understand how my young mind worked, but it does give me a hilarious memory to look back on.”
Pinokokoshka: “So, I was filming one of my videos. It was about a female astronaut who crashed and got lost somewhere in space. I was shooting the scene with her husband, when he finds out about the tragedy from the news. It’s a very dramatic moment: he realizes what happened, starts crying, and then stops, turns to the camera, and smiles just like this.🙂 It looked exactly as if he was like, “WELL?? Did I do good? Am I a good actor?? Are you happy with this take?”
Kamiiri: “As a child, I would always come up with a bunch of stories and I’d make questionable machinimas and, of course, force my friends to watch them! This was a long-standing hobby though, so even in high school I still kept going and even had a pretty regular audience. Reading the comments made me so happy!”
Is it one and done for the Simstalgia zine, or do you anticipate a sequel…or perhaps, a TS3quel?
“Well, I kinda teased this earlier, didn’t I? We totally thought it was a one and done deal. Actually, the same way we thought this is going to be an e-zine and we will never make prints. Look at us now! Again, we really didn’t anticipate the love! So, of course, there will be a second edition!”
How Can The Community Support Simstalgia?
Is there anything the community at large can do to support you and your ongoing zine project? I see that you plan to sell physical copies of the zine at a no-profit (production and shipment only) price point, but do you have any other bigger plans for the zine?
Microscotch: “As of now we are mostly occupied with doing some formatting work to the physical versions. It will not be perfect since the zine, and thus some contributions, simply weren’t conceptualized that way and the degree to which we can edit them greatly varies, but with this one we’re genuinely glad we even made it to physical territory considering the initial scope. So honestly, we’re just happy over everybody following and sharing our project. Sharing is caring and that’ll help our footing next time we get a zine started. Then we can entertain the thought to also offer some merchandise and perhaps different “editions” with extra goodies for our next release!”
Where Can You Read the Zine?
Simstalgia: The Sims 2 Nostalgia Zine is out now and completely free to read online in flipbook form!
As mentioned above, the Simstalgia team plans to do a “no-profit” run of physical prints for the zine. No-profit, meaning that they plan to make no financial gain from the production. It’s the bare minimum to print and ship the zine out to those interested in owning physical copies. Be sure to keep an eye on their official Tumblr page for any more updates on their progress!
I hope you enjoyed that look behind the scenes of The Sims 2 Nostalgia Zine! Our community is stronger together, and efforts like this prove it. This zine not only touched many a seasoned Simmer, but also myself, and that’s why I wanted to share it with you all.
Did you know about the Simstalgia zine before this article, or did I introduce you to the project? Let me know in the comment section down below!
