SimCity 4 just celebrated its 20th anniversary. But in spite of being almost old enough to buy a drink, it remains an extremely fun game to play, even in 2023.
Cities: Skylines may be considered the current king of city-builders, but SimCity 4 has a lot to offer. Thanks to its thriving modding community and lightweight system requirements, SimCity 4 can still compete with all the modern Strategy games on macOS.
But what does it take to run this old classic? How well can your Mac run SimCity 4? Can it run on M1 Macs?
Can you play SimCity 4 on Mac?
You can absolutely play SimCity 4 on your Mac, including Intel and Apple Silicon Models. Even if the system requirements don’t mention M1 or M2 Macs, the game just received an official update to natively support Apple Silicon processors.
On January 12, 2023, SimCity 4: Deluxe Edition received an update to have Apple Silicon native support. As clearly stated on the game’s official App Store page:
SimCity 4 Deluxe Edition is now optimized for Mac with Apple Silicon.
| Art | Game | Genre | 64-bit? | 64-bit | API | M1 Support |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
 | SimCity 4 | Strategy | Yes |  | Metal | Native |
SimCity 4 Deluxe on Mac: Everything you need to know
If you’ve ever played a city-builder, SimCity 4’s basic gameplay elements should be familiar. You start with some land, create zones for residential, commercial, and industrial buildings, provide power and roads, and sit back and watch your sims move in. Obviously, that’s only the beginning. You’re the mayor of your city and are expected to provide all the other amenities your pesky citizens, or sims, demand: schools, fire & police protection, parks, etc.
And you do not have an unending supply of money to provide these things. How do you get more money? That’s right, it’s the government, so you get most of your money through property taxes. Balancing tax rates and providing services will soon become your main job.
Overall, SimCity 4 is a beloved game with strong reviews from critics and users alike. Even better, when looking at its recent reviews on Steam alone, the game has an 83% Positive score, which is extremely good.
SimCity 4: Deluxe Edition
On top of the already solid experience offered by the base game, SimCity 4: Deluxe Edition also includes the Rush Hour Expansion.
SimCity 4 Mac requirements
These are the game’s official Mac requirements:
| Requirements | |
| OS: | 10.11.6 |
| Processor: | 2.2 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo |
| Memory: | 4 GB RAM |
| Graphics: | NVIDIA Geforce 8800, AMD Radeon HD 3870, Intel HD 3000 |
| Video RAM | 256 MB |
| Hard Drive: | 2 GB |
| A 64-Bit OS and processor are required | |
⛔ Be warned that the following GPUs are NOT supported:
- ATI: Radeon X1000 series
- NVIDIA: GeForce 7000 series, 8600M
- Intel: HD 2000 series
How to play SimCity 4 on Mac
As mentioned before, SimCity 4 now runs natively on macOS, including Intel-based Macs and M1/M2 Macs.
This means SimCity 4 can run on macOS without requiring any third-party software. Therefore, we won’t waste your time talking about Parallels, Crossover (both excellent tools, but only useful for Windows-exclusive games…), or Streaming services.
Can you play SimCity 4 on Mac? Benchmarks
These are the SimCity 4 M1 benchmarks we have gathered so far:
| Game | Machine | Resolution | Settings | Other | FPS | Tester | Source |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| SimCity 4 | 💻 M1 MacBook Air 13", 7-core GPU, 8 GB | 1920x1080 | High | 60+ | Andrew Tsai | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oy-RymBSrws&ab_channel=AndrewTsai |
As a reminder, this is how we describe the different levels of performance:
- Below 20 FPS: Unplayable: Laggy gameplay, full of stutters and slowdowns.
- 20-30 FPS: Borderline: Can be OK in slow-paced games. Still, not optimal.
- 30-45 FPS: Playable: Acceptable for most (most gaming consoles do this).
- 45-60 FPS: Smooth: Fluid gameplay, with no perceivable stutters.
- 60+ FPS: Very Smooth: For hardcore and professional players, a luxury for most.
Into Strategy games? These are our favorites:
| Game | ★ Our Pick | Also Great | Best Value |
 Civilization 6 |  Crusader Kings 3 |  StarCraft 2 |
|
| Genre | Turn-based | Turn-based | Real-time |
| Release date | 2016 | 2020 | 2015 |
| Metascore | |||
| Our rating | ★★★★☆ Full Review | ★★★★☆ | ★★★★★ Full Review |
| Requirements | High | Medium | Low |
| Check Price |
Can you play SimCity 4 on a MacBook Pro?
As can be expected from a 20-year-old game that recently received a major performance update (kudos to developer Aspyr Media for the commitment), SimCity 4: Deluxe Edition runs great on modern machines, including MacBook Pros and MacBook Airs.
When tested on a base M1 MacBook Air, the game ran smoothly all around, even when the cities would start to get big.
Download SimCity 4 for Mac
You can download the game on Steam.
I believe to have exactly the same kind of iMac as you (27″i7-512mbVRAM-late 2009) and I agree about performance.
I like “Cities Skylines” a lot (being a similar game) but performance is quite poor for millions (?) of systems that are 3+ years old…
There is a nice market for really good games made years ago that can run at full specs on our respectable Mac… It should be a bonus for the OSX systems to get a lot of nice games that PC users have had for a long time….
Our Skylines review is coming soon but that game is definitely solid.
Regarding RAM, you should know that RAM doesn’t make a huge difference when it comes to games, unless your RAM is so low it becomes the bottleneck. That said it never hurts to have more and while pairing is optimum, you’re not obliged.. I would update first 2 slots with 8 GB each and update the remaining 2 once I get the money. Cheers!
Nice review of this classic. Personally, I am more than happy to see classic game releases get reviews too. I think it is entirely relevant to give attention to these games.
What would be very interesting is a review of the Aspyr port of the latest SimCity that is single player only and Mac App Store only vs. the poorly received EA Mac version only available on Origin so far as i know. I bought that on a sale (the MAS version), not that I have gotten around to it yet but knowing I am fine with single player only and expecting a quality port from Aspyr, I expect I will enjoy it. I have read up on what the game is and is not and that works for me personally. I’m okay with a more casual SimCity experience.
I’m not sure we will start systematically reviewing old classics but if a classic is remastered, hell yeah! In fact, there’s a review coming soon that will be a perfect example 😉
Regarding SimCity, that’s a good comment, will Aspyr’e port run better than EA’s? I certainly hope that part of the deal was that Aspyr removes bugs for all versions but can’t know for sure. I will ask Aspyr to get a comment here.
Looks like an awesome game. My only concern is will it work on a MacBook Pro (Mid-2012)? I currently have 4 GB 1600 MHz DDR3 memory, intel HD graphics 4000, and a 2.5 GHz intel core i5 processor. I just didn’t know if you needed a desktop to successfully run games or if a laptop would work. Would hate to spend the money to find out the game doesn’t work.
Hey there. Some laptops can easily play the latest games, however they do need a particularly good graphics card. That’s why they are much more expensive than their desktop counterparts and why people just say that laptops aren’t suited for games. Anyway, on your case, you should be able to run it in low to medium settings at 720p resolution. I say this because your Mac is powerful enough but your graphics card is getting older and could be a bottleneck.
Unfortunately, impossible to confirm without actually trying, but I’m optimistic for your config specially on an older game like this one.