The Tower SP (Game Boy Advance)

CNET editors' rating: 2.5 stars OK
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Overall score: 5.3 (2.5 stars)
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Product summary

Gamespot editors' review

• Reviewed by: Frank Provo
• Reviewed on: 04/07/2006
• Updated on:05/17/2006
• Released on: 03/21/2006

Ron Popeil's slogan for his Showtime Rotisserie Grill is "set it and forget it." That's also an appropriate way to describe The Tower SP, Sega's skyscraper management simulator for the Game Boy Advance. There's plenty to do early in your building's life, what with installing elevators, leasing out offices, opening food courts, and hiring staff to upkeep the premises, but once you've put together a working layout, you'll find yourself literally watching the game play itself.

In The Tower SP, you build and manage your own skyscraper.

The Tower SP is basically SimCity in an office-building setting. In fact, the game was previously titled SimTower when it was released on the PC platform more than a decade ago. The office spaces and elevators in The Tower SP are analogous to the plots of land and highways in SimCity. Instead of building the largest city possible, however, here you're trying to build the tallest building possible and fill it with tenants.

For the first three hours or so, the game is fairly hands-on. You can bring tenants into the building by leasing offices, selling condos, and renting out hotel rooms. In turn, the needs of tenants and guests have to be tended to, which means installing bathrooms, hiring housekeepers and security staff, and opening various restaurants and shops. Following suit, those housekeepers and security guards will keep cockroaches and thieves out of the building, while those restaurants and shops will attract revenue-bearing shoppers into the building. Also, you'll have to manage traffic throughout the building by installing elevators, parking areas, and subway ramps. It's all tied together really well, and for those first three hours or so, you'll enjoy the groove that develops as you earn money one day and redirect it toward additional upgrades the next, gradually watching your custom skyscraper grow ever taller.

Despite putting numerous menu choices and informational screens at the player's fingertips, the game's controls aren't all that complicated. That's a pleasant surprise considering the game's PC-based ancestry. In the PC game, players used the mouse and keyboard to move the pointer and make selections. In the GBA game, you use the directional pad to move the pointer, the R button to bring up menus, the select button to bring up informational screens, and the A and B buttons to make or cancel selections. The GBA's so-called lack of buttons isn't an issue. If anything, the GBA game offers more interaction than the PC game did, because players can now mash buttons to lure customers into shops faster and to clean bathrooms when housekeeping has the day off.

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Where to buy

store	price	in stock?	rating
Amazon.com Marketplace	$13.74	Yes
Amazon.com	$29.79	Yes

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Where to buy The Tower SP (Game Boy Advance)

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• Amazon.com Marketplace $13.74 Yes
• Amazon.com $29.79 Yes
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