The Globe and Mail

The Globe and Mail has outsold the National Post throughout the so-called "national newspaper war" and has begun to regain some of the lost ground as the Post's new owner, CanWest, has been reluctant to invest in expansion. However, he defended his position on The Sims 2 and expressed his opinion that because EA does not protect its copyright by stopping the mod community from making adult-oriented changes to the game, that they "lose their right to defend their copyright" in any way. Needham. In an Internet radio show interview that aired at ChatterBox Game Show, Thompson retracted his previous misstatements about "pubic hair" and other details about which he was misinformed. Other satirical nicknames for the paper include Mop and Pail or Grope and Flail, both of which were coined by longtime Globe and Mail humour columnist Richard J. (Woohoo/Play in Bed animations are not very realistic.). For this reason, critics sometimes refer to the paper as the Toronto Globe and Mail or as Toronto's National Newspaper. This includes mods that were made in the past for Sims 1 games, adding graphic sexual animations.

(A similar criticism is sometimes applied to The New York Times). Most makers of these mods have taken measures to prevent under-18 players from accessing them. As such it is sometimes popularly ridiculed as being too focused on the GTA, which could be seen as part of a wider humourous notion of Torontonians sometimes being blind to the wider concerns of the nation. In truth, several third-party mods, including custom meshes, are required to make nude sims have the features Thompson accused the game of having. Though promoted as a national paper and sold throughout Canada, The Globe and Mail also serves as a Toronto metropolitan paper, publishing several special sections in its Toronto edition which are not included in the national edition. Electronic Arts issued a statement correcting Thompson and pointing out that without the blur, there are no private parts, but that Sims are lacking in anatomical definition, like a child's dolls. Possibly due to this competition the paper has made other changes such as the introduction of colour photographs and the creation of the Review section on arts, entertainment and culture. The patch for the University Expansion Pack, coincidentally, removes the "intProp censorgridsize 0" cheat from the valid cheats recognized in the cheat console window, making it impossible for users to turn off the blur without third-party software, such as SeeThem 2.0.

In the 2006 Canadian election, the Globe and Mail endorsed the Conservative Party, endorsing a different party for the first time since 1988. Thompson claimed that "pubic hair", "labia", and other genital details were visible if the blur was removed. Following the tenure of chief editor Edward Greenspon in 2002, The Globe and Mail has been criticized for returning to its conservative tradition; its editorial cartoonist Brian Gable has mocked it as sensationalistic, and its columnist Lawrence Martin has called for the creation of a new national newspaper [1]. Jack Thompson claimed that The Sims 2 was "worse than Hot Coffee", because it featured nude Sims which were blurred out, yet the blur could be removed by a mod. Since the 1998 launch of rival conservative paper the National Post, the Globe has been seen as increasingly centrist or even liberal; however, no media studies have yet examined whether the editorial thrust of the paper has actually changed (as opposed to the zeitgeist changing around it) and recent anecdotal observations are typically made in comparison to the Post. On July 22, 2005, Florida attorney Jack Thompson attacked Electronic Arts and The Sims 2, after Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas' Hot Coffee scandal was settled. After 1993, the paper moved its electoral support to the Liberals. Less intrusive mods from the above add common fiction characters into game format, such as the X-Men, several Anime characters, and even horror movie characters like Jason Vorhees.

The paper was an ardent supporter of the now defunct Progressive Conservative party, being most pronounced in its many pro-free trade editorials during the election in 1988. There are no gender-defined differences in exact reactions they have to stimuli and social settings, etc.) With SimPE, the game can even be told to treat sims like the opposite of their native sex, making it possible to create many such situations. Editorially, The Globe and Mail has historically been seen as a conservative and business-oriented paper. Many modders have found ways to manipulate the weak gender difference distinctions that come standard with the game for the specific purpose of using the gender preference system this way.(E.g., men and women can both get pregnant (though men can only get pregnant through alien abduction). The network and paper are now owned by Bell Globemedia, of which the Thomson Corporation is the majority shareholder with 40%, while Bell, Torstar and the Ontario Teachers' Pension Plan control 20% each. Many hold this opinion strongly though. Long owned by Kenneth Thomson and his family, in 2001 control of the paper was sold to BCE Inc., also owners of the CTV network. Some in message boards have claimed that the gender preference system is a blanket endorsement of homosexual behavior by Maxis, but this has yet to be proven.

Report on Business Magazine, published by and carried in the newspaper, would follow, as would the specialty channel Report on Business Television. The gender preference system exists based on which genders sims trust most to converse with, namely, those they believe will give them the best likelihood of positive conversation. In 1962, the paper added its popular Report on Business section. There are also mods that exist to manipulate sims' gender preferences. As The Globe and Mail lost ground to the Star locally, the newspaper began to circulate nationally in search of subscribers, adopting the masthead slogan "Canada's National Newspaper" in the process. (An aspect of life that Sims have never had to worry about.) Several skilled modders like SirIgnitusBlowtorch have even been involved in researching ways to create fires that will not cause sims to panic, a feature that has existed since the original release of The Sims and has caused a lot of players to lose entire sim families more quickly than they intended to. Macdonald), the Globe became The Globe and Mail. Modders such as NikkiBailey have even tried to add laundry to the game.

In 1936, after a merger with The Mail and Empire (ironically, the Mail was the paper of Brown's arch-rival, Sir John A. Targa has, among other things, added ladders, which have never been common in Sims games up until this point. Through the late 19th and early 20th centuries the newspaper was strictly a Toronto-oriented daily, competing with the Toronto Star in a heated newspaper war. Revoye, Helaene, and others are renowned for creating more realistic skintones. Brown selected as the motto for the editorial page a quotation from Junius, "The subject who is truly loyal to the Chief Magistrate will neither advise nor submit to arbitrary measures." The quotation is carried on the editorial page daily to this day. JWoods' Animated Weather Windows and Doors allow some (crude) animations on doors and windows to help simulate rain, thunderstorms, and snow, all weather effects that Maxis had a difficult time including in the game due to program shortcomings. The paper was founded as The Globe in 1844 by George Brown, who was later a Father of Confederation. also made with Homecrafter Plus.

. Ilsimsamante, KalicoKat and many others have created new walls and floors etc. It bills itself as the newspaper of record in Canada. DumbBlonde's Trashed Set made with Homecrafter Plus adds the ability to create slums for low-income families. The Globe and Mail is a large Canadian English language national newspaper based in Toronto. Other mods, such as Oberkorn's Krepuscular Skyes Holoprojector and GunMod's Radiance Light System help flesh out the lighting and sky effects for the game, giving users more environment types to choose from. Ken Wiwa. More objects were made like Transporters and other useful objects.

Jan Wong. Hospitals are only for the Sims 1. Hugh Winsor. The mods for the Sims 2 are those were you could create prisons, hospitals, schools. Margaret Wente. SimLogical is ran by one Inge Jones who mods the Sims 2, she used to mod the Sims 1, but she doesn't have the game anymore. Bob Weeks. The InSiminator's alterations of teen relationships are further fleshed out with the InTeenimator, which can be a bother to some because it adds abortion to the game.

William Thorsell. Altering their memories and last names to match a user's re-writing of history requires the use of SimPE to edit game files. Norman Spector. It can also force resurrections without the University Expansion, can change the time of day, and can change which sims are related to which other sims. Russell Smith. Modders from various sites have been designing programs, most notably SimPE and SimLogical, to edit things from the game, such as recoloring objects which originally could not be recolored, extracting meshes of both clothing and objects, as well as changing different aspects of the game, like Teen Woohoo (Woohoo is the sims' version of sexual intercourse), and the InSiminator, which allows players to edit various attributes about sims, such as their mood, their relationships, or even make them pregnant with any sim on the lot, including the sim that will be pregnant. Jeffrey Simpson. Also the console games have 2 modes of control, direct control, the default mode which allows you to walk your sim directly, and classic, where you have a light tower starting above your sim, where you can move it to select objects to use; e.g: The PC.

Rick Salutin. The Nintendo DS version has a few mini games including painting a picture. Lorne Rubenstein. As with the port of the original The Sims to consoles, the game will most likely feature greatly different mechanics and goals as compared to the original computer version. Eric Reguly. At the moment it is Fall 2006 whether Untitled The Sims 1980s project will be ported to Xbox 360, PlayStation 3 and/or Nintendo Revolution. Rex Murphy. Namely, its addictive, entertaining gameplay." On several websites, the Sims 2 for PlayStation2 was considered an outrage and many people wanted their money back; saying that all the qualities from PC mode (getting pregnant, aging, etc.) had been taken away.

Leah McLaren. GameSpot gave all the console versions a 6.5, and said "The Sims 2 loses something in translation from PC to consoles. Heather Mallick. It made its debut to the console/handheld market during Q4, 2005 (source). Lawrence Martin. The Sims 2 was released on the following consoles and handhelds:. John Ibbitson. References to furniture and electronics.

Marcus Gee. Stations in The Sims 2 TV mirror those found in real-life TV networks. John Doyle. She can be found as a townie in Strangetown, and her picture appears on milk cartons seen while making cereal or other foods. Scott Colbourne. Bella Goth, the wife of Mortimer Goth, is absent from the family when the game begins. John Barber. [1].

Christie Blatchford. Lilith, the 'bad twin', is named Lilith because Lilith was supposedly the first wife of Adam, a seductress, and 'bad'. Angela, the 'good twin', is named Angela because of its similarity to 'Angel'. It may also bear relevance to the original The Sims, whereby there was a pre-packaged family named the Pleasants. This is probably a reference to the term "Mary Sue," which is used to describe an idealized character in a work of fan fiction.

One of the characters living in Pleasantview is named "Mary-Sue Pleasant". Only one person was in that family...a man named Michael. The Bachelor family was one of the pre-packaged families that came with the original The Sims. As it turns out, a "Michael Bachelor" is her brother (now deceased).

Should one take a look at the Goth family tree, they can find out more about Bella's branch of the tree. Cows are also seen in University. An alternative explanation is that this is paying homage to the work of Jeff Minter, a legendary games programmer who began programming games, featuring all sorts of fluffy animals, for the Vic-20 and Commodore 64 for his company Llamasoft. Speculation suggests that this is an in-joke due to one of the producer's love of Monty Python movies (specifically, Monty Python and the Holy Grail, where its opening credits credited llamas for the movie's production).

Llamas appear in The Sims (as it has in many Maxis titles). (E.g., Tybalt cannot kill Mercutio to initiate the conspiracy and suicide of Shakespeare's play, but can still laugh if he sees Mercutio die from a satellite falling on his head, etc...) Other names based on plays include King Lear, The Tempest, The "Hal plays", Othello, The Merchant of Venice, Julius Caesar, Antony and Cleopatra, Love's Labour's Lost, Measure for Measure, Macbeth, Hamlet, Much Ado About Nothing, and The Taming of the Shrew. Although these spoofs are supposed to parallel the plays they parody, the Romeo and Juliet parody is significantly less tragic than the actual play. Characters from other Shakespearean plays can be found in the family trees in Veronaville.

Her character (as well as a third family, the Summerdream family) was pulled from A Midsummer Night's Dream, another Shakespearean play. The other teens from either household are named after actual characters in Romeo and Juliet, except for Hermia. Just like in the play, there are two lovers from each family: Romeo and Juliette. Instead, Consort apparently conned Patrizio and the result was that Consort became a CEO and Patrizio got fired.

The memories of Consort Capp and Patrizio Monty suggest that the broken promise may have been to help Patrizio out in time of need. Supposedly (according to the story of the neighborhood) the conflict started when the leader of the Capp household broke a promise to the leader of the Monty household. In this neighborhood, there are two families who are supposedly conflicting with each other: the Capp family and the Monty family (obviously reflecting the Montague and Capulet families in the play). The neighborhood Veronaville is supposed to be a spoof of Verona (the Italian city in which Romeo and Juliet, a play by William Shakespeare, takes place).

. It will be released 28 February - 3 March. Players can choose to set up businesses like an electronics store, a restaurant, a beauty salon, a boutique shop, and much more. Create prized items to bring in top dollar or watch as things go haywire while they are making the next big thing.

They will be able to manage their staff and develop their talents. The Sims 2: Open for Business, the upcoming expansion pack for The Sims 2, will allow your sims to operate their own businesses. However, the pack on its own is available through European retailers in a CD-ROM. This comes alongside the limited-edition The Sims 2 Holiday Edition core game, which contains the Holiday Party Pack already in the core game with most bugs removed, in a way similar to the way that The Sims Deluxe Edition included both The Sims and The Sims: Livin' Large in a single package.

This adds over 40 new objects to the game, allowing for better depiction of holiday celebrations (mostly Christmas) by sims in decorative ways not possible with the standard game. The Sims 2: Holiday Party Pack (The Sims 2: Christmas Party Pack in Europe) is a semi-expansion available only through the EA Online Store, select Costco stores, and other video game retailers. Nightlife also added two new aspirations:. Vampires can be entirely avoided if the player does not want to play with them.

In addition, players can now own cars instead of taking the carpool. Players will now be able to see other lots in the neighborhood from inside a lot. Maxis has also added vampires that will bite sims, making them vampires as well. A new attraction system introduces turn-ons and turn-offs that cause Sims to be attracted to or disgusted by other Sims.

Based loosely on the original Sims expansion Hot Date, it includes entertainment options like nightclubs, restaurants for romantic dinners, and bowling alleys, in a new neighborhood type called Downtown (much like the University Town in the first expansion pack). The second expansion, The Sims 2: Nightlife, was released on September 13, 2005. A more minor introduction in University is the addition of "influence points" that can be used to influence others to do a certain thing. Sims that don't attend the university will skip Young Adult and become Adults, as in the original version of the game.

A "Teen" sim sent to the university will become a "Young Adult," a new age group introduced with this expansion, and that sim will become an "Adult" when it graduates or flunks out. In it, sims can be sent to college in a new neighborhood type called University. Maxis released the first expansion pack, called The Sims 2: University, on March 2, 2005 for PC and December 12, 2005 for Mac. These have been tackled with patches released in October 2005.

Bugs also surfaced relating to both expansion packs. Many of the bugs listed below have been corrected in a downloadable patch (Note: The installation of The Sims 2: University should correct most of the problems below). The Sims 2 contains a number of bugs. A similar complaint was levied against another Maxis game, SimCity 4, released more than a year and a half ago.

In fact, just the required (and not optimum) system specs meant that many PC's purchased as late as 2001 would not even be able to run it at all. At the time of release, many criticized The Sims 2 for needing extremely high system requirements. Mac. Windows.

The system requirements for The Sims 2 (from the official The Sims 2 website) are as follows:. This also means that while the game still has no set goals, there is a new strategic level to balancing a Sim's life as players now have a limited time in which to fulfill Aspirations, meet needs, progress in a career, socialize and possibly have a family. The Aspiration Meter also affects how long an elder will live for once they enter this phase of their life. If this aspiration reward is used before the Aspiration Meter reaches the gold level, however, it sometimes backfires and the Sim loses life days.

For example, the Elixir of Life aspiration reward allows a Sim to live longer. When the Aspiration Meter is high, aspiration rewards may be properly used. They may change on a daily basis, and are displayed graphically in slot-machine fashion on the toolbar. Wants and Fears are different for each sim depending on several factors including aspiration type, age and aspiration meter level.

The level is raised when a Sim fulfills a "Want", and is lowered when a "Fear" is realized. There are six levels to the aspiration meter: The highest is platinum, beneath that is gold, followed by two levels of green and two of red (red being negative aspiration and therefore an undesirable state). A sixth aspiration, that of growing up, is possessed by all sims when they are toddlers and children, and a seventh and an eighth aspiration, the Pleasure and Grilled Cheese aspirations, were included with the Nightlife expansion pack. The five aspirations are: Romance, Family, Knowledge, Popularity and Fortune.

Sims will each have an aspiration which is set either when they are created by the player, generated by the game (if they are an NPC), or chosen by the player when they become a teenager. Aspiration manifests itself in two ways: the aspiration which each Sim has, and the Aspiration Meter. The Sims 2 introduces a new aspect into the game: Aspiration. The Sims 2 Body Shop, a tool which allows a user to design a Sim's body, clothing, genetic features, etc., was available well before the game's release.

The graphics and house design engines have improved with more choices for houses, neighborhood design, food and clothes. Good and bad experiences are kept as memories and can affect the Sim's behaviour. Other unique events such as deaths, birthdays and a first kiss also take place in a Sim's lifetime. Sims are pregnant before having children (unlike in the previous version, where children just appeared).

In this installment of the series, Sims can have more realistic marriages with engagements and parties. As Sims age, get married and have children, these relationships are recorded in an extensive family tree. Family relationships are much more integral to this version of the Sims than the previous version. Unlike in the previous game, when children stayed children and there was little game progress, the stages of life encourage players to move the game along and create relationships between Sims.

Sims age through 6 unique stages: baby, toddler, child, teen, adult and elder (although another stage, 'young adult', was added with the University expansion pack and "preteen" might be added in future expansion packs). . A port to Mac OS X was done by Aspyr and was released on June 12, 2005. Customers who pre-ordered The Sims 2 received their copy on September 14, 2004.

The DVD-ROM version, called The Sims 2 Special DVD Edition, contains a Bonus Disc that carries extra content such as interviews and commercials of past Sim products. The game was officially released on September 17, 2004 in both CD-ROM and DVD-ROM formats. It is fully 3D, and, unlike in the first installment, characters age and have genetic traits that can be passed on to their children. It is a vast departure from the previous version and various updates.

The Sims 2 is a strategy/simulation computer game from Maxis and is the sequel to the popular game The Sims. SSX 3 - An actual game that made its apperance in computers and TV sets with the Maxis Game Simulator Console in The Sims 2. Soma - Is a referance to Sony. Moneywell - Is a referance to the Honeywell electronics conglomorate.

All the shows always cut to commercials when one of the sims on screen sets the kitchen on fire. The Yummy Channel - A comical parody of The Food Network. KidzTube - Is a reference to Nickelodeon, The Disney Channeland Cartoon Network, though the scenes are similar to the children's live action shows of the 1950s like Howdy Doody and Sesame Street in the 1970s. SimStation Dance - Is a reference to the music TV networks such as MTV, VH1, and most likely Fuse.

Sim Broadcasting Network - Is a reference to the major broadcasting networks such as NBC, ABC, CBS, and FOX. SimStation Sports - Is a reference to ESPN. After receiving this aspiration, your Sim will want nothing but things involving grilled cheese. Grilled Cheese: Accessed only by unsuccessfully using the ReNuYu Senso Orb.

Pleasure: Pleasure sims' wants are extremely variable as they seek only to enjoy life. Boddler Glitch: A dangerous bug that occurs when you don't save sims after they've switched from one age band to another, and then deleted them using the "moveobjects on" cheat. Another way of exploiting this clone technique for users without the Nightlife Expansion is to click on and move the sim, and hold down the shift key when placing. Your lot can then be filled with mindless clones of your sim, since the game doesn't know whether to make more sims or more doors.

When you let go of the camera, it will start making more sims, rather than more doors. Next, change the pitch of your camera. Move your sim to some other tile than where they currently are. Act like you're about to place a door on the lot, but then, hit the delete key.

Door-Clone Glitch: If you enter build mode with the moveobjects cheat enabled, go to the door creation tool. Can be fixed by moving the family to another lot. Carpool bug: All sims living on a lot refuse to enter cars, taxis, buses, etc, causing them to fail at their job or at school. This was fixed by the Maxis patch.

Also would float if use was cancelled during the talk-through action. Can be fixed by buying a new teddy bear. Floating Teddy: After a few uses, the object of the bear will float in the air and there will no longer be proper animation of use of the bear. Caused by proximity to other usable objects.

Unused objects designated as in use: Engine bug which makes unused objects appear as in-use, like doors that don't close. "Vanishing Family Members": Hardly anything is known about this glitch except that it occurs when a family member goes to work or school for the first time, they don't come back and vanish off the portraits of the family members on the left of the screen; there is no memory of the disappearance in any of the other family members. Solved by the Maxis patch. Invisible Colleagues: Graphics glitch involving colleagues visiting by helicopter, causing colleagues to be invisible.

Memory Leak: Memory leak, sometimes caused by hiring non-player characters, causing abnormal use of system resources. Solved by the Maxis patch. "Jump Out" Bug: Time-out/scripting bug, causing characters to abort ( "jump out of" ) certain animations and interactions. This problem has been fixed in the new version of ATI's drivers.

"Liney" Sims: Graphical glitch with ATI Radeon 9000 GPUs. you exited the house of Sim A, B, C+, opened CAS, then pressed the randomize button an arbitrary number more than twelve, it would restart the game's randomization engines, and subsequent children would share different genes. However, if before birth of Sim D, E, ect. If you opened the game again a day later, and Sim A, who gave birth to Sim C, gives birth to another Sim, Sim D, it would be an exact copy of Sim C, in both personality and appearance.

If your sims create a child without using the randomizing tool in CAS, it will be a certain combination of his or her parents' genes and personality. For instance, the first twelve 'randomly produced' sims could be recreated if you exited the Sims 2, then re-opened it, started up CAS, then clicked the randomize button. "Firstborn Clone": All sims produced in the game are random, but only to a certain point. At least 3 GB of hard drive space.

Mac OS X 10.3.8 or better. 256 RAM. (ATI) Radeon 9000 or better. PowerPC G4/G5.

1.2 GHz processor. At least 3.5 GB of hard drive space. Windows® XP, Windows ME, Windows 98 or Windows 2000 Operating System or better. 256 MB RAM.

2 GHz processor for systems without a T&L-capable video card with at least 32 MB of video RAM. 800 MHz processor for systems with a T&L-capable video card with at least 32 MB of video RAM.