With the announcement that The Sims’ Sim Your Summer campaign would be kicked off with a livestream featuring hit musician Megan Thee Stallion and actor Quen Blackwell, about all the collabs throughout the franchise’s history. So we thought it’d be most informative to put them together in a short history of Sims collabs starting with the original release!
While many of these collaborations have unfortunately had much of their promotional material (if any) lost to time, community resources such as The Sims Wiki have been instrumental in providing background information.
So with that in mind, let’s dig into the very early days of Sims collaborations, starting with the original The Sims!
The Good
The Sims: Superstar expansion from 2003 was where the majority of the appearances of well-known celebrities in the first game came from. And it’s practically a who’s who of early 2000s celebs, with Freddie Prinz Jr, Avril Lavigne, Richie Sambora, Christina Aguilera, Jon Bon Jovi, Sarah McLachlan and Reese Witherspoon’s Elle Woods of Legally Blonde fame.
As we go through successive entries in this series you’ll notice that despite being relatively star-packed there wasn’t much to do with these celebrities’ appearances. They were mostly set-dressing (almost literally) for the stardom-focused expansion, walking around and interacting on occasion. However, they weren’t the only notable names to make an appearance.
The Legally Indistinct
Surprisingly enough The Sims also featured three appearances by, shall we say, well-known but not necessarily legally-allowed individuals. Andy Warhol, 60s supermodel ‘Twiggy’ and Marilyn Monroe all make named appearances as in-game Sims. The wiki noted that there wasn’t any indication Maxis had gotten official permission from these respective individuals’ estates to use their likenesses, and a bit of digging around seemed to confirm that. The official Prima Guide, for example, doesn’t even reference either these celebs or the more ‘official’ ones.
Now, of course there’s the old ‘no resemblance to persons living or dead’ chestnut, but the fact they’re identified by name is a bit sticky. More than likely the fact these are historically well-known individuals more than likely made them just about safe enough for Maxis to use. And if they got cold feet they could always file the serial numbers off, so to speak, and call them something else entirely.
The Gepetto
Believe it or not there was a brief period in the late 90s and early 2000s when everybody’s favourite Whose Line host Drew Carey was a bona-fide superstar. And around the same time Drew Carey faced off with superstar wrestler (and current politician) Kane at the 2001 Royal Rumble, he also made an appearance in The Sims as a special celebrity guest that could appear at Sims’ parties.
Carey was part and parcel of The Sims: House Party expansion, and more than likely his appearance was a bit tongue-in-cheek considering he’s not known for being a party animal. Although there were some promotional videos produced which saw an episode of The Drew Carey Show reproduced in The Sims, and the cast of said show doing a scene entirely in ‘Simlish’ (in-fact just the words ‘blah blah blah’ on repeat).
As you might have expected this article covering the early days of the Sims’ collaboration history is pretty brief. These were very early days for the franchise after all. But regardless the fact so many then-popular celebrities decided to throw their names and likenesses into this up-and-coming series is demonstrative of the already wide reach Maxis’ life sim had cultivated.
What’s most notable is that these celebrities don’t really do anything except occasionally interact with superstar Sims, with the exception of Drew of course. Mainly they seem to be there to have name recognition, which is also pretty telling of how video games were viewed in a promotional sense back in the day. When just a name on the back of the box was considered enough to entice potential players.
But even so, this is just a taster of what was to come. There were of course follow-ups including the rather bizarre spin-off called The Urbz, but if you want to find out more about them you’re just going to have to keep your eyes open for upcoming entries in this series!
