It's SimCity with brain-damage! We're scared of trains!
Never before have Sims been so terrifyingly stupid. Unless the town is constantly under construction the little pissants will move away, neutering an already low city income and robbing the city of more expensive and meaningful constructs. They will abandon homes in favor of newly-zoned squares rather than forming denser communities to spawn larger buildings. Sims also have an irritating habit of demanding what they already have. You can literally build a city comprised of police stations peppered with residential areas and the people will still demand police stations. They never seem to notice a lack of fire coverage until they are quite literally on fire but will endlessly prattle on about needing more men in blue. If you give into their demands to build a rail system they will refuse to use it. Even if you deny them roads the little buggers are petrified at the thought of riding the iron horses around and would rather walk.
The graphics and landscape in general took a decent hit in being made portable. There are eight maps in all. Four are purely for building your own towns and four are available as pre-built scenarios to conquer. Different elevations no longer exist and everything takes place on flat plains comprising of dirt, trees or water. The lack of hills means no waterfalls and the exclusion of the previously reliable hydro-electric plants. Disasters are the only thing in this game with any animation. It makes the entire game seem bereft of life and the only evidence of the cities being populated is by the changing building tiles or the popup banner with which the citizens use to nag you. By itself it looks respectable enough. You may examine the city at three levels of magnification and are allowed to rotate the city to get a new vantage point.
The dumbing down of city building isn't as bad as it could be. The most obvious change is the removal of the water system. No longer are water towers or pumps required to hydrate the citizens for they are all rabies sufferers and water scares them almost as much as trains do. You cannot reclaim land from the water, add more water or plant trees. Since pollution is a minor grievance in this game adding more greenery outside of parks just isn't required anymore. There is a dubiously helpful in-game 'hint' system which will tell you information you undoubtedly already know, such as needing to build a power plant to generate electricity. Thanks, Full-Fat!
The worst issue is with building roads. Frequently they will refuse to join together unless you spend an extra tile's worth of road to build over the old patch you're connecting to. The limited number of allowed directions can also lead to rails not being able to intersect with others because of passing too close to a road intersection. It is also entirely possible to throw money away re-zoning areas, even if you're laying down the same zone type as the original. You can also waste money if you accidently try placing a zone over a patch of road or rail. It doesn't have this problem with water though.
Aside from the frontend menu music the game is as silent as the deserted streets of your cities. There are minor sound effects for placing tiles or building invisible power lines. They're utterly minimal but there isn't anything wrong with them.
Ultimately this title turns out to be one of the weakest SimCity versions ever created. To compare it even to the original SimCity and its ports would do it no favors. The SNES port of the original SimCity outdoes this entry on all levels and included animated traffic which varied depending upon how clogged its roads were. Portable games usually have lowered expectations but even this falls far below acceptable levels.