Low income, testy citizens, and disasters that leave you reeling are quite the intimidating side of this game.
Now, onto my reasoning. First of all, I should point out the money factor. Since everything is so expensive, you'd think that you'd be able to make a lot of money to compensate. But no, you get paid only a couple hundred dollars at most in the first five years, and in the next five it's not much more. Why? Because once you build fire stations and police stations, money is sucked out of you 3 times over from just paying road service costs. On top if that, you're only payed by either selling buildings for a fraction of what you payed for them, or by the taxes people pay you. Now, if you want to earn an extra 25 bucks a year, you increase the taxes to the full 20 percent, which forces people to move, which lowers tax payments, which further lowers your income. I remember that even after playing this irritating game for a full month, for 4 weeks, I was losing money fast, my citizens still wanted more from me in terms of police and fire stations, and my city was never bigger than a screen width and height. Nothing I did could turn it around, and sadly I was kicked out of office. I never played that game again after that.
The second factor that really jerked my chain the wrong way was the citizens themselves. With a city that could barely be bigger than 5 blocks by 5 blocks was still in demand for another fire station and another police station, even though I had two of each, and they were both fully funded. They complained about the taxes, even though they were only 9 percent, which was a small amount for what they could have been. People were moving out faster than they were moving in, and it didn't help that all the disasters were destroying my homes. What a city, eh?
Of course, going more in depth into the disasters.... I had quite a lot. Generally, I would get a disaster every half hour or so in real time, which was tolling for me, because reparation costs weren't covered within a half hour. It would have taken me at least two full hours to make up for all the costs of one natural disaster. I had bowser attacks, flooding, jet crashes later in my campaigns, I had tornadoes and earthquakes.... I tell you, there was more of a chance at succeeding as a real mayor than one in that game.
Another one of my fond memories was the campaign where I had to repair a nuclear disaster in... I think it was Boston, but I could be wrong. Anyways, I had to clear out an island of nuclear fall out before the end of a year or two. Not knowing how to do this, I asked my friends. They didn't know either. Now maybe someone does today, but back then, the internet wasn't exactly accessible nor was it as full of information about games as it is today. I doubt game spot was there in '91 to cover this game, and so it remained a mystery. I failed the mission after trying to build over the fall out, trying to bulldoze it, pave it with road, and more. I failed all the campaigns, in fact.
Now, I'm not giving this game a poor rating because I did poorly at it, nor am I giving it a poor rating because my friends did poorly at it. No, I'm criticizing this game because of it's user-friendliness, it's fun-factor, and it's main picture. The fun levels were far lower than the frustration levels, no one who wasn't of divinity could just pick it up and play it, let alone without frustration, and the main picture was rather poor at the time. Nowadays, almost everyone knows Sim City, and nowadays it's much easier. Back then, it was made so that you could be a real mayor easier than you could be a fake one. Despite the fact that it paved the way for the other Sim City games, it was a sheer pain in the neck for me and a lot of other people. Again, the idea is good for games now, but back when this was released, this game wasted that idea. By far, this was the worst game int he Sim City series, and one of the worst games on the SNES. I don't care about graphics, nor the music, because if the gameplay sucks, everything else follows suit, and they did.