Did you know that The Sims 2 will be 10 years old tomorrow? Yep, the game was released on September 14, 2004!

So what were you doing on release day? Did you get the game right away or discover it later? What was the very first thing you did in game?

I got the game on that same day. I was so excited! I drove two hours to get the game from the Big City and two hours back. I put the game in and played and played. I really needed the game at that time in my life, to be honest. I made my recent ex-boyfriend and I in game and had us have a happy life. We had a beautiful baby. I played slowly, never going to fast speed unless they were sleeping. I had tried to play The Sims 1 and did not like it (!) I remember thinking: "What do you do in this game? There is nothing to do!" I actually returned it to the store. :-/

But I loved the Sims 2. Loved it. It was a perfect fit for my storytelling imagination. I have been playing it, with some small breaks here and there for ten years. My hood, Acanthop Isle, is so wonderful and so rich with story and fun.

So umm, yeah. What about you?

I actually won the game in a contest on EA's Norwegian Sims-forum. So that was a pretty cool day for me.

I was getting into my second month of being a senior in high school and my little sister 5 years younger than me had been given the game for good grades. We addictively sat around the computer watching each other play after school at our dad's work (since his work computer was the only one that could run it at the time)

Ah memories! I remember going to my local shopping centre with my dad to pick Sims 2 up when it came out! I remember having issues with the game because, being young and naive I didn't realise my computer wasn't quite up to the specs! I remember creating a family in CAS only for the game to crash everytime I tried to finish. I was so guttered, but ended up getting a new PC out of it!

I didn't start playing the game until just before Freetime was released, so sometime in mid-Januaryish, 2008. So, no day-of-release excitement for me. My daughter played it for a number of years before I did, though. One of her friends owned it, so she was always over at her house, playing with a bunch of little-girl friends, doing giggly and slightly creepy little-girl things with it, making self-sims and sims of boys they had a crush on or celebrities they had crushes on and pairing themselves up and that kind of stuff. She eventually decided to buy it herself, though, and then through her teens she got heavily into medieval Simming, since medieval history became a huge interest of hers. She still plays sometimes, although now that she's in college in a pretty demanding program (Medieval studies, unsurprisingly), she doesn't really have time to do so. And I still play in my dorky, middle-aged way.

Unfortunately, I wasn't able to play them on my crappy computer at the time so I would go to my friend's house and play there. It wasn't until a while after it came out that I was able to finally own it.

I would play every morning before work while drinking my coffee for about 30 minutes. Then I would run like a maniac to catch the bus to work and look up what was new on MTS2 while talking to customers at the IT call center I was working at. What a dead end job that was. TS2 kept me from going nuts.

I can't believe it's been 10 years since it was released! it only seems like 3 years ago to me :\ time goes by too fast as soon as you hit 17, i'm 24 now but still... it's gone way too quick.

Yay, TS2

Not realizing it at the time, buying TS2 would be the best money I ever spent on a game. Every spare moment I played it. Then about 3 years ago I had a 2 hour lay over in Atlanta, GA. I took my laptop out and started playing TS2. The airport was crowded and this cute little thing came and sat in the empty seat next to me. When she noticed I was playing TS2, she started talking to me about the game. When it was time to board my plane, I had her phone number in my hand. A year later we moved in together. Another year later our son was born. If it was not for TS2 I would not have the love of my life and our son.

Aww yep little things like that can bring people together in so many ways, even a love of vampire programmes and movies i more or less love them, i know a couple of people who met at concerts of their fave bands or at conventions too, i love these love stories they are really sweet.

My hubby got me TS1 Hot Date as an engagement present.... :lovestruc

I got the game on the day it was released in Europe which was a few days after September 14th. I immediately stopped playing TS1 - not because I hated it (quite the contrary) but because TS2 was such a magical step up. It's a testament to the game, I think, that it is still very playable 10 years later. Says a lot that does.

I bought Sims 2 from Game the day it came out, I'd had it on pre-order. I was so excited that I called up my only friend who I knew who liked the sims, even though I hadn't spoken to her for about a year at this point, just to go "YAY OMG I AM HOLDING THE SIMS 2 IN MY HAND" (she was not actually as excited as me )

Installed it when I got home - I remember the quiz game thing, it took forever to install, my sister and I were just sat watching it. I can't remember what the first thing I did in game was, though. I remember spending a really long time in CAS and this song in particular takes me right back (even though I disabled the music years ago) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XBppHIYJ3bs <--- still my favourite sims 2 song, I think.

I had been a Sims 1 player from the beginning, and couldn't wait for the Sims 2 to come out.

So, on that day I was anxiously awaiting the UPS delivery guy to make it to my local game shop, where I'd planned on buying it on the release day. My friend/co-worker and I used our lunch hour to grab a bite to eat, and then hightailed it to the shop the moment the game was in and on the shelves.

Once back at the office, we both installed the game on our work computers, because waiting until we got home...just wasn't going to happen. Luckily, our boss was willing to accept that we were taking an in-house vacation day...sort of. After a day or two, we took a couple of days off each, just to stay at home and play the game.

She and I would catch one another up on the progress we'd made, once Monday morning rolled around and we were back at work.

This ritual continued with pretty much every EP (after awhile we started just pre-ordering the games and having them shipped to the office), until Apartment Life came out. By then, I was on long break and not playing the game at all. My friend bought it right away, but I waited until Mansion and Garden was released and got them together, just to complete the collection.

I swear on weekends, I used to lose an entire day, just playing this awesome game. Good times. Good times. :lovestruc

Results of today’s livestream celebrating The Sims 2’s 10th anniversary:

Paying homage to the original playa, we invited Don Lothario into Acanthop to make his way with the ladiez. He was rejected 7 times but managed to make some successful woohoo with two of the women at the Easter House - on the same couch. YUCK.



Then we went out to the local dive bar, Hazel’s Hellhole, to see if we could get some more skirt. Don hit on Hazel, the owner, who - I might add - is very pregnant and newly, happily married. She rejected him and decided to stick her bouncer on him, one Captain Tiberius Horngold, late of now grounded pirate ship, The Ahoy.



Tiberius decided Don needed some “energizing” and stuck him in the Energetic Energizer - TWICE.



To our surprise, Don lived to woohoo another day even after walking through fire to get the toilet we conveniently placed for him!



So we decided that Don should live - but with consequences for being such a cad. We impregnated him with not one, but TWO alien babies. Can single fatherhood make this once happy-go-lucky playboy change his ways?

HAPPY 10th Anniversary, The Sims 2! Here’s to ten more years of torturing Don Lothario!

We had a great time at Live Streaming!

Although I want to see those babies Jessa.

My siblings and I had been playing SIms 1 before the first expansion was released, but a few months before my parents bought a new computer and lots of Sims 1 disc codes had got lost somewhere in the interim... we had moved to the other side of the world in between, so I suppose it wasn't surprising. So I hadn't played any sims for a few months, and I was really looking forward to TS2.

I'd just started my second last year at school, and negotiated a monthly allowance that was big enough to actually buy stuff, so I could buy TS2 myself. I got a lift into the nearest town with Dad on release day (in Europe, so the Friday), and bought it from a sort of newsagent, I think. I was really looking forward to playing all weekend, but some friends of Dad's were staying and I wasn't allowed! I think Mum and Dad let me use the computer for an hour or so, but it took so long to install there wasn't time to actually play it.

Ten years. Wow. Why are all the old games better than the newer ones? Is it an art form that's being lost?

I can't actually remember if I got Sims 2 when it came out or later, but I must have liked it because I went back for all the expansions. XD I did play Sims 1, so I must have known it was coming out. I remember trying the premades, then trying to recreate anime chars in Veronaville because I liked the houses. I had a six person family in one of those big detached houses. Then I discovered CC. XD I still intend to recreate the anime neighbourhood I got halfway through making then decided to start over. *cracks whip*

I didn't know such a thing existed on release

I refused to buy it.

I was a die-hard TS1 fan, had been playing it since it first came out in 2000, and I thought it would be a cold day in hell before I would ever give up my beloved TS1 for this newcomer. Then, at Christmas (three months after release) my well-meaning husband bought me TS2 as a gift. The next day I figured I'd install it, mostly out of vague curiosity and politeness, I didn't want to seem ungrateful for my gift. I figured, I'll give it an hour or two tops, no harm in that, right?

Yeah, right. That hour or two turned into four or five hours, as the realisation gradually sank in that TS2 was actually pretty bloody brilliant. After playing it for about a week, I uninstalled TS1, feeling slightly guilty that I'd left my TS1 families in limbo. That guilt lasted as long as it took a vanilla TS2 to load up, and I've never looked back.

It was exactly the same for me klapaucius. My hubby bought it for me for Christmas, I was skeptical but loved it and after a short while uninstalled sims 1 feeling guilty about the families I was getting rid of.

When I saw The Sims advertised on TV when I was a kid, I begged my uncle (who lived with us/raised me like a father) to get a PC so that I could play it. We couldn't really afford it but we had a PlayStation 2 and he brought me The Sims console edition. I loved it so much. I played on it non-stop.

Then one day I got home from school and my uncle had bought us a PC, AND we had home internet! When I could, I went and bought The Sims for the PC and became obsessed.
I met a girl in foreign language class who also played Sims and we'd talk about it all lesson and became best friends outside of class. THEN the news of The Sims 2 came.
When they opened the Exchange, my friend and I would use the school PCs every lunch and dinner break to just look for information about Sims 2.
And when it came out, it was bought for me! I had it on release! I was so happy!!

... But my PC was too old and didn't have a good enough graphics card... I was devastated.
When he could afford it, my uncle went out and bought me a new graphics card and I was finally able to play it a month or so after release!
But in the gap while I waited, I filled the void by looking at sims and reading the stories on the Exchange every lunch and dinner time at school.

I recreated all my TS1 sims in Little Carping. They've been quite happy there. Well, actually, happy is not a word I would use for some of them but they're there anyway.

Happy Birthday, Sims 2! :lovestruc

I've actually not been playing it long. I was chatting with my (amazing) grandfather about... 2/3 years ago. He asked me if I was into The Sims, because he had the Double Deluxe disks at his house. I said yes.
Next time he came round, he bought it along. I was the first one to install it and play it out of my three sisters. My younger one followed afterwards, and then my older sister decided to. I had a friend at school who played Sims 2 as well, so we chatted about it a lot.
Fun times, until I corrupted my original install with CC.
(NOTE TO SELF. NEVER EXTRACT FILES STRAIGHT INTO THE DOWNLOAD FOLDER.)

In February (this year), I got a computer for my birthday which I was planning to use Vocaloid on if I get it for Christmas (fingers crossed I get it!!!) and my little sister encouraged me to start playing Sims again after she got the University EP in a used game shop for £5. I installed it on my computer and was re-enlightened.
A while after, we got Seasons, and here I am now!

Edit: I've been into it almost as long as I have anime. That seems hilarious.