Why, oh why, did you have to stop making games like this, Maxis?
You can do ANYTHING in this game. Do you want to build a farming community of 5,000 or a metropolis of a million? The options are there. You can run cities where you care about your residents, building schools, hospitals, and police to keep them happy and culture a complex, well developed city, with residents that live to 97 that are able to do vector calculus. Or you can stick 'em next to a coal power plant and watch them die at 50, having never quite figuring out what 2+16 equals (It's my age.)
The graphics still hold up in 2011; they are almost as good as Xbox 360 or PS3. Buildings are realistic, roads look like real roads, and construction is stylized, but can you really make construction look realistic in a 2003 game?
The music selection ranges from decent to "I could listen to this for hours."
It makes The Sim City Box a good value at $39.99.