Originally, I tried playing
Tycoon City New York on my laptop, and quickly found that you're going to want an external mouse with a center wheel to play
TCNY. Everything you do in
TCNY utilizes your mouse. I personally found it difficult to get used to the camera rotations, at first. I never could seem to get the buildings at exactly the view I wanted, which made some of the upgrades, such as the shop clerk, difficult. When you choose an upgrade, the game flashes the spots that you can place that specific upgrade. To actually play it, you have to click on that spot. From most angles, I never could see where it was flashing to place the shop clerk, for example.
One of the things that I wanted that TCNY doesn't provide is the ability to see inside all the businesses. Some of them you can see into through the glass windows, but it's just not the level of detail I would like to have seen. Other simulations games, such as The Sims, allow you to see the inside and outside of your properties.
I first played, or attempted to play, TCNY on my laptop (Windows XP; Pentium M 1.7 GHz; 1 GB RAM; 128 MB ATI FireGL T2
; Directx 9.0c). The system locked up seven times and blue screened twice. Atari does provide patches on their site, but unfortunately they didn't fix the video incompatibilities with my system. Even still, running it on my slower computer, which just barely meets system requirements, TCNY was a fun game at first. Before too long though, I just got bored with the lack of challenge it provided.
If you're looking for a game more like Civilization, in which there is a chance of actually losing, TCNY might not be the game for you. If you want a game that you can just build forever and make every little piece perfect with very little risk, TCNY is your game.