The Sims 1 & 2 re-release receives new update fixing recurring issues

The Sims 1 & 2 Legacy Collections have received a new patch, which includes bug fixes to a lot of issues players have experienced.

The Sims community was immensely excited when EA started dropping teasers hinting at the possible return of older games before the franchise’s 25th birthday. After all, getting these games to run on newer hardware has been a pain for so long.

So, when the Sims 1 and Sims 2 Legacy Collections were finally released, many were eager to take a trip down memory lane. Unfortunately, however, many players have since been reporting a plethora of issues when taking that nostalgic trip.

From bugs and crashes to the DirectX 9.0c error, the experience of playing these games wasn’t exactly the smoothest. EA responded to the issue, and now they’ve rolled out fixes in a new update.

The Sims 1 & 2 re-release February 4 patch notes

Some of the most recurring and frustrating issues players have experienced in the re-release were crashing after creating a family and being unable to launch the game without setting it to windowed mode. 

These have been included in the list of fixed issues in the game’s newest update, among other known problems, which you can check out below:

The Sims 1

Fixed Issues:

• Alt+Tab or Alt+Enter can sometimes cause a crash
• Alt+Enter can sometimes cause the Windows title bar to be hidden
• Alt+Enter can sometimes not toggle between full-screen and windowed modes
• On some systems, The Sims can appear to launch and then immediately exit (no splash screen displayed)
  • The Sims should now launch in most situations
  • In some cases where there is an underlying graphics issue, The Sims will display a message
• Some players are unable to click on various parts of the neighborhood map
• The travel screen, when traveling between neighborhoods/worlds, can sometimes appear garbled or glitched
• The Sims might crash if you are not on the default neighborhood, interact with another Sim, and then save
• When using Alt+Enter to cycle window and zoom sizes, the HUD could be clipped. At this zoom level, The Sims will now instead clip from the top of the screen.
• In some situations in windowed mode the title bar might not be visible
• The Family friends counter could sometimes not be visible

General Notes:

• Several players have had problems (e.g. walls, floors, objects not showing up; game not launching; other oddities) that are addressed by updating graphics drivers to the latest versions. Please make sure your drivers are up to date.
• The Sims game window is of a fixed size that can’t have its basic properties changed after it has launched. Moving the window from a monitor to another with a different, lesser resolution can lead to unexpected results, possibly even crashes. If you want to run The Sims on that second monitor please use the option “-monitor:
• In some situations, players have noted that music only plays in Live mode. Please check your computer sound options and make sure that everything is properly configured (e.g. on a 5.1 surround system make sure that your center speaker is functioning).
• You might be prompted to “Enable the help system” every time you return to a house. This is the game trying to have you complete the tutorial. This will continue to happen until you complete the tutorial.

The Sims 2

Fixed Issues:

• Alt-Tab or Alt+Enter can sometimes cause a crash
• Some players on EA App received an error message indicating that certain needed files were corrupt
• The game would sometimes crash after creating a family
• The game sometimes launched at a small resolution (800×600) and then scaled that small format to fill the entire monitor
• In certain situations the game will launch and then immediately show a “DirectX” error, requiring use of the “-w” option to work around the problem
• Sometimes a Sim (or multiple Sims) would disappear after the player moves to another lot or neighborhood, or after leaving and rejoining the game despite saving
• Sometimes non-adult Sims (children, pets) would disappear
• Some interactions that result in a transferable reward (e.g. a dog returns from work) can cause the game to crash
• Addressed some infinite loading screen issues

General Notes:

• Several players have had problems that are addressed by updating graphics drivers to the latest versions. Please make sure your drivers are up to date.
• Remember that the “boolProp testingCheatsEnabled” cheat will cause the game to periodically show various dialogue boxes with debugging information in them. The cheat is working as expected.
• We are investigating an issue where during certain cinematic events (such as Alien Abduction), the Sim can be reset and the event fails. While we are investigating this, you can work around the issue by making certain there are no other Sims on the lot to observe the event.

The team has also mentioned that some problems that may not be included in the list may still be “in the process of being addressed.”

“Some topics can require an extended investigation on our end, so even though these fixes may be in active review, it’s not a guarantee that we’ll have an immediate fix for it in the upcoming patch,” they added.