I did not play “The Sims” on a regular basis. When my children loaded it on the family pc, I did take a crack at playing it. The game just did not appeal to me. Now “Sim City” I loved. I could play that game for hours. Especially when I learned how to basically give myself unlimited funds. Oddly people don’t talk much about another game from Maxis (before they were bought by EA) - “Sim Earth”. It involved changing temperatures or atmospheric conditions of a planet, tinkering with creatures to see if they survived and had options of terraforming planets like Mars or Venus. It was fun, but in a subsequent move I lost the game.
I've never looked into any of the Sim City remakes or later releases. I agree with you about that one and I think I would probably still enjoy that today. Recently a game was on the PS4 called Skylines but it was far too complicated and I lost interest before I got through the tutorial... probably because a game like that was likely never meant to be played on a console with a controller.