Maxis’ long-lost sim game has been put online

A game from developer Maxis that simulates an oil refinery has recently appeared online. It’s about SimRefinery, a game that was never finished and was thought to have no copies left. Someone has managed to find a copy now.

That reports Ars Technica. The website previously reported on the long-lost SimRefinery, after which a reader went on a search and managed to find a working copy of the game on a 3.5″ floppy disk. He managed to get the game off the floppy disk and upload at archive.org.

SimRefinery is developed by a branch of Maxis called Maxis Business Simulations. He made the game for oil company Chevron; the latter wanted to use the game to train employees on how to work in an oil refinery. The training program would have been little successful, after which the project was stopped and Maxis paid no further attention to it. Since the game seemed to have been lost, attention came back to it. The game was never finished, by the way, and a short test by Ars Technica shows that not all functions work.

The person who managed to find the source code of the game claims that he obtained it from a friend who worked in the oil industry in the 90s. However, there are no further details. The game can be tried out via the website, or by importing the software into an emulator such as Dosbox.

Maxis is best known for the simulation game SimCity, the first version of which came out in 1989. The company was eventually acquired by EA.