SimEarth: The Living Planet

SimEarth: The Living Planet was a simulation game released in 1990 by Maxis. The game, designed by legend Will Wright and based roughly on James Lovelock's Gaia theory of planet evolution, models the planet Earth and allows the player to adjust various properties of the world and see how the simulation progresses.

Players can tinker with such settings as atmosphere, landmasses, temperature, and various forms of life. The game is incredibly complex and deep, containing some very legitimate theories about evolution. The game's user interface is very simplistic, but the level of detail and nuances within the gameplay itself more than make up for it.

In 2009 SimEarth was ported over to the Nintendo Wii console by Hudson Entertainment, Inc.