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The Urbz: Sims in the City (GameCube, PlayStation 2, Xbox)

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Title Screen

The Urbz: Sims in the City

Also known as: Los Urbz: Sims en la ciudad (ES), Dosiui Simjeu (KO), The Urbz: Sims og Singelliv (NO), The Urbz: Simowie w Mieście (PL)
Developer: Maxis
Publisher: EA Games
Platforms: GameCube, PlayStation 2, Xbox
Released in JP: January 13, 2005
Released in US: November 12, 2004
Released in EU: November 9, 2004
Released in KR: December 7, 2004 (PS2/Xbox)


ObjectIcon.png This game has unused objects.
GraphicsIcon.png This game has unused graphics.
ModelsIcon.png This game has unused models.
ItemsIcon.png This game has unused items.
MusicIcon.png This game has unused music.
TextIcon.png This game has unused text.
DebugIcon.png This game has debugging material.
RegionIcon.png This game has regional differences.


PrereleaseIcon.png This game has a prerelease article

This cactus is UNDER CONSTRUCTION
This article is a work in progress.
...Well, all the articles here are, in a way. But this one moreso, and the article may contain incomplete information and editor's notes.

The Urbz: Sims in the City changes up the usual suburban lifestyle of The Sims and puts all the action into a city with workable jobs, unlockable (and crazy!) social interactions, an infectious soundtrack, and stereotypical caricatures. Also, The Black Eyed Peas make an appearance.

It's so ambitious that the game was even planned to start a sub-franchise for the series, but it never came to be due to overall poor sales. Despite the game being semi-forgotten, several elements be revisited in future Sims titles, most notably in The Sims 2: Nightlife with the city setting and The Sims 3: Late Night with the reworked reputation system, bars, and bouncers.

Hmmm...
To do:
  • Unused graphics.
  • Unused or console-exclusive accessories.
  • Unseen text on items.
  • Scrapped Woohoo functions?
  • Development oversights

Sub-Pages

Read about prerelease information and/or media for this game.
Prerelease Info
Sims2PS2-FIN floor editoggler.png
Developer Options
URBZ locked action queue.png
The Sims: Bustin' Out Leftovers
Believe it or not -- same engine!

Build Tags

Platform Sandbox Version
GameCube (USA) 0.mainline_SKU1.0.126
GameCube (EUR) 0.mainline_SKU2.0.119
GameCube (JPN) 0.mainline_SKU3.0.101
PlayStation 2 (USA) 0.mainline_SKU1.0.125
PlayStation 2 (EUR) 0.mainline_SKU2.0.124
PlayStation 2 (JPN) 0.mainline_SKU3.0.101
PlayStation 2 (ASIA) 0.mainline_SKU4.0.92
PlayStation 2 (KOR) 0.mainline_SKU5.0.34

Unused Audio

Interestingly many of the following unused sounds are left unused in later console games up to Castaway.

Elevator Load Loops

load_loop_elevator1, load_loop_elevator2 and load_loop_elevator3 were likely intended to be used when the player accesses a district with an elevator, such as Diamond Heights and Blankwood Towers considering the used sound effects sound similar in style, but the regular loading screen theme plays instead.

XAM Sounds

Filename Sample Notes
cellphone_dial1
Earlier and simpler sounds for the XAM before they were replaced with realistic cellphone sounds.
cellphone_dial2
cellphone_dial3
cellphone_ringtone2
An alternative and earlier version of the Cozmo Street Ringtone with a jingle present over the morse code message. cellphone_ringtone is used as the generic ringtone sound.
cellphone_ringtone3
The same as above, except without the morse code message, sounding like a generic ringtone.

Unlock Sounds

Filename Sample Notes
ui_unlock_social
ui_unlock_level
Unused unlock sound effects for new areas and social options.

Menu Sounds

Filename Sample Notes
UI_accept
Unused generic menu sound effects. Would be used as a placeholder for sound effect entries.
UI_back

Unused SFX Data

There are over a dozen of sound entries that all use the same UI_accept sound effect played above, including leftovers from the previous games.

Filename Notes
ui_action_menu_browse
ui_action_menu_close
ui_action_menu_open
ui_action_menu_select
UI_cancel
ui_bm_fail Unknown what "bm" stands for.
ui_bm_succeed
ui_browse_kbd Unknown what "kbd" stands for.
ui_cac_cyclehead Unknown what cyclehead means.
ui_cas_accept Cut sound for accepting something in Create-An-Urb.
ui_cas_browse_category Cut sound for browsing through object categories in Create-An-Urb.
ui_cas_browse_item Cut sound for browsing items in Create-An-Urb
ui_cas_close Cut sound for closing a menu in Create-An-Urb.
ui_cas_kboard_backspace Cut unique sounds for typing out Urb names on the keyboard in Create-An-Urb.
ui_cas_kboard_char
ui_cas_kboard_done
ui_cas_kboard_end
ui_cas_kboard_key
ui_cas_kboard_shift
ui_cas_kboard_space
ui_cas_open Cut sounds for Create-An-Urb.
ui_cas_rotate
Ui_help Cut sound for help UI.
UI_move Placeholder sound for moving stuff.
UI_NHOOD_BULLDOZE_DEMOLISH Sound entry leftovers from The Sims Console and Bustin' Out.
UI_NHOOD_CLICK
UI_OBJECT_MONEYBACK
UI_OBJECT_MOVE_PLACE
UI_PLACE
UI_ROTATE
ui_open_sub Cut sound for sub-menu.
ui_pda_close Cut sounds for the XAM, including that of EyeToy features.
ui_pda_eyetoy_delete
ui_pda_eyetoy_save
ui_pda_open
ui_phone_call1
ui_phone_call2
ui_pda_submenu_browse Cut sub-menu sounds for the XAM.
ui_pda_submenu_close
ui_pda_submenu_open_side
ui_pda_submenu_open_top
UI_PIEMENU_APPEAR Sound entry leftovers from The Sims Console and Bustin' Out.
UI_PIEMENU_HIGHLIGHT
UI_PIEMENU_SELECT
UI_QUEUE_DELETE
UI_QUEUED
ui_rotate
UI_SPEED_1TO2 Sound entry leftovers from The Sims Console and Bustin' Out. Final uses lowercase equivalents.
UI_SPEED_2TO1
UI_SPEED_2TOP
ui_unlock_money Sound entry leftovers from Bustin' Out.
ui_unlock_objects
ui_unlock_services
ui_unlock_skins

Unfinished Chinese and Korean Localization

While The Urbz: Sims in the City was released in Taiwan and Korea, they were never translated and are only playable in English.

There are two duplicates of the game's English logo with those languages which are ui_logo256_kor_dark and ui_logo256_tchinese_dark.

Hmmm...
To do:
Are these different from the ones used in Bustin' Out?

There's also unused Chinese and Korean text in the files, different from Bustin' Out.

Chinese
Sims2PS2-FIN font china s24 p0.png
Sims2PS2-FIN font china s24 p1.png
Sims2PS2-FIN font china s24 p2.png
Sims2PS2-FIN font china s24 p3.png
font_china_s24_p0 font_china_s24_p1 font_china_s24_p2 font_china_s24_p3
Sims2PS2-FIN font china s24 p4.png
Sims2PS2-FIN font china s24 p5.png
Sims2PS2-FIN font china s24 p6.png
Sims2PS2-FIN font china s24 p7.png
font_china_s24_p4 font_china_s24_p5 font_china_s24_p6 font_china_s24_p7
Sims2PS2-FIN font china s24 p8.png
Sims2PS2-FIN font china s24 p9.png
Sims2PS2-FIN font china s24 p10.png
Sims2PS2-FIN font china s24 p11.png
font_china_s24_p8 font_china_s24_p9 font_china_s24_p10 font_china_s24_p11
Sims2PS2-FIN font china s24 p12.png
Sims2PS2-FIN font china s24 p13.png
Sims2PS2-FIN font china s24 p14.png
Sims2PS2-FIN font china s24 p15.png
font_china_s24_p12 font_china_s24_p13 font_china_s24_p14 font_china_s24_p15

Development Oversights

Hmmm...
To do:
So much more....
  • Object icons not matching final.
    • HygiElite Luxury Shower Stall icon not matching model.
    • Neon Nights dresser using different icon.
    • Sexi Plexi Window using wrong icon.
    • Manhole Cover, Sidewalk Grate and Newspaper Box using placeholder icons.
  • "Neon Nights" dresser using Diamond Heights dresser icon instead.

Overwitten Song

Pootie's Top 40 (the station in Diamond Heights) is the only radio station to have three songs, in comparison to four on other stations. This is because Pop One (music_24_celebs1) is accidentally duplicated over music_24_celebs2, therefore having a chance of the song being played twice in a row in some instances. There was supposed to be a fourth song for the Station, which is called I Wanna Be Bad, but it was only playable on the official website before its shutdown. The song is sampled in the XAM Shot Power Social and on a XAM ringtone that can be listened to below as (xam_ringtone_celebs).

Filename Oddities

ui_sm_meter appear as blank, implying there were originally sounds.

Team Photo

UrbzPS4-team picture1234.png

A secret graphic of developers that worked on the game can be found by pressing Up, Down, X, Up, Down at the credits screen.

Regional Differences

Hmmm...
To do:
More...
  • Cover the removed Red Bull product placement in the European and Japanese versions.

Default Create-An-Urb Preset

The Asian releases have a different Urb given to you as the default when starting a new game.

International Japanese, Korean, Rest-of-Asia
UrbzPS2-FIN CAU-Intl-F.png UrbzPS2-FIN CAU-Jpn-F.png
UrbzPS2-FIN CAU-Intl-M.png UrbzPS2-FIN CAU-Jpn-M.png

Platform Differences

Language Select

The European PS2 and Xbox versions have a language select menu and Xbox happens to have fewer languages available. It's missing Polish, Danish, Norwegian, and Finnish.

PlayStation 2 Xbox
UrbzPS2-FIN LangSelect.png UrbzXBOX-FIN LangSelect.png

Create-An-Urb

The Create-An-Urb for the GameCube version has a much brighter background than in the PlayStation 2 and Xbox versions.

PlayStation 2 & Xbox GameCube
UrbzXBOX-FIN CAU-Intl-F.png UrbzGCN-FIN CAU-Intl-F.png

Xbox Loading Screens

The Xbox version has unique loading screen backgrounds that can be seen. These textures also exist in the PS2 and GameCube versions, however they are 8×8 in size, and even if it's shown in-game there, there's no way it can be seen at that small of a size.

PS2 & GCN Xbox PS2 & GCN Xbox
UrbzPS2-FIN house load0.png UrbzXBOX-FIN house load0.png UrbzPS2-FIN house load1.png UrbzXBOX-FIN house load1.png
house_load0 house_load1
UrbzPS2-FIN house load2.png UrbzXBOX-FIN house load2.png UrbzPS2-FIN house load3.png UrbzXBOX-FIN house load3.png
house_load2 house_load3
UrbzPS2-FIN house load4.png UrbzXBOX-FIN house load4.png UrbzPS2-FIN house load5.png UrbzXBOX-FIN house load5.png
house_load4 house_load5
UrbzPS2-FIN house load6.png UrbzXBOX-FIN house load6.png UrbzPS2-FIN house load7.png UrbzXBOX-FIN house load7.png
house_load6 house_load7
UrbzPS2-FIN house load8.png UrbzXBOX-FIN house load8.png UrbzPS2-FIN house load9.png UrbzXBOX-FIN house load9.png
house_load8 house_load9
UrbzPS2-FIN house load10.png UrbzXBOX-FIN house load10.png
house_load10

Oddities

Unplugged Controller Screen Background

When the controller screen is unplugged, a light-blue gradient background with text on it reminds the player to plug it back in. It's actually reused from Bustin' Out, with the only difference being the font. It would later remain in the rest of the Sims console games, with the respective menu font being used.