By Martin Hutchinson BBC News Online

Be a good mayor and they'll build a statue

The latest incarnation, SimCity 4, must satisfy two markets, with enough of the new and improved for crusty old veterans, without boosting its complexity beyond the reach of first-timers like myself.

The premise of the game is simple enough - in the role of mayor, you must build and run a city designed entirely to your specification.

The job involves laying down the infrastructure for your city to flourish - power, water, roads and rail - and then watching as businesses and virtual people, called Sims, flock in.

You will have to balance budgets but make sure that your residents are educated, policed and kept healthy.

It might all sound a bit prosaic, but it is not. After just a few hours play, keeping your Sims happy might seem the most important thing in the world.

One of the delights of the game is the way you can gaze down on the day to day hustle bustle of your city, zooming in to see individual Sims strolling down pavements, caught up in traffic or even getting beaten up by muggers.

Too easy?

Despite the complexity of the game, it's easy to pick up the basics - there is a panel of "city advisers" who will point out the error of your ways before things get too bad.

How smelly is your city?

In fact, one of the surprising elements was how difficult it was to do really badly.

Despite being a SimCity "virgin", it seemed virtually impossible to put my mayor rating into the red.

But the real devil is in the detail. You will need an immense amount of processing power to run a big city at decent speed.

My 800Mhz chip and 128MB of RAM was nowhere near enough.

The makers of the game says the minimum specs are a 500MHz chip and 128 MB of RAM.

Build or destroy

SimCity fans will be entertained by the two biggest changes - the inclusion of neighbouring cities, raising the possibility of trade.

You can also bring characters from sister game The Sims into the wider world.

Your favourite creations can be transplanted into houses in your city, and will report back on conditions there.

And if the responsibilities of office become too much?

It may have taken you weeks to build, but wrecking it takes only minutes - with meteor strikes, volcanoes and even giant alien robots at your command.