About

Howdy! My name is MrPowerGamerBR and I'm the creator of SneakySims! You may recognize me from other places (Loritta, SparklyPower, Droidtale...), but today I'm here to take you in a trip down on the memory lane...

The Sims: A Custom Content Playground

In Feburary 2000, a game that would go on to revolutionize gaming was released: The Sims, The People Simulator from the Creator of SimCity™—now referred by fans as The Sims 1.

While The Sims is widely recognized for its massive impact on gaming, one aspect that it is often overlooked is that EA/Maxis made a big bet on user created custom content, a decision that led the flourishment of the The Sims's custom content community, months before the game was released!

Ahead of launch, EA/Maxis provided tools for fans like SimShow and Hyper HomeMaster 5000DX Mach3 (later renamed to HomeCrafter), you could preview Sims and create custom walls and floors for your sweet virtual home before the game was even released! During the game's development gaming magazines also showcased the custom content capabilities, with one example showing Quake skins inside of The Sims.

The base game also features a HTML Export option, which enabled players to craft stories using the built-in Family Album feature, leading to players publishing the stories to their own personal websites and to The Sims' official website.

That bet paid off. Just one year after The Sims was launched, there were over 800 fan sites about The Sims, with new ones popping up as the community grew.

And The Sims custom content did leave a mark on people's life, just ask Will Wright, he'll gladly tell you about "Starbucks Sucks", a story that was uploaded to the The Sims official website, that he still reminisces to this day on interviews.

But where are these fan sites nowadays?

Death of Fan Sites & Preservation Efforts

Over time, many of them vanished into the void for various reasons. Back then, web hosting back was expensive, and once-popular free web hosts no longer exist. Sometimes it's just that the owner lost interest and moved on to newer games, and sometimes they have even passed away... Slowly but surely, The Sims 1's custom content, along with the creators' once-beloved fan sites, were vanishing into the void.

This led to the creation of preservation-focused groups like Saving the Sims, and fan sites like CTO Sims, with "Preserving a Legacy" as its tagline, dedicated to keeping the The Sims 1 fan community alive by archiving and cataloguing custom content.

CTO Sims required registration to view the content, and full access to all the goodies was locked behind ten forum posts. As a 13-year-old The Sims 1 fanatic in 2013, I could only dream what laid behind the account restriction, so I signed up.

And from that moment I was hooked. A big archive of custom content for one of my favorite games—filled with creations I never knew existed or that were possible. It was an treasure trove for any The Sims 1 fan.

Who Preserves the Preservation Efforts?

Sadly, CTO Sims shut down in late 2016, and no fan site has filled the void that CTO Sims left behind. The Saving the Sims group was hosted on Yahoo Groups, which shut down its doors in 2020. There were spiritual successors, but they often introduced strictier registrations requirements, often opting for invite-only groups.

I do get why people prefer private communities. These forums are mostly a (big) group of life-long friends, and they prefer to keep it that way instead of requiring to moderate everyone that joins the website.

When I was younger I was willing to jump through hoops to access these goodies. But now? I hate the hassle... or maybe I hate it because I'm a introvert.

Thankfully other Simmers, like simsample, have their own archives on the Internet Archive, which we are eternally grateful for backing up the custom content. However combing through these archives is not a good experience because they are mostly files with no explanation or images about them, so they are very useful if you already know what you are looking for.

But at the end of the day, does anyone care about The Sims 1? For years, getting The Sims 1 running on modern machines required unofficial fan-made patches (thanks FaithBeam for creating it!) and, if you didn't have the original The Sims Complete Collection game disk, you needed to resort to piracy. If you weren't already a fan of the game, you wouldn't want to go through all that hassle just to play it.

An Unexpected Surprise

In 2025, EA shocked everyone by rereleasing The Sims 1 for the series' 25th anniversary as the The Sims™ Legacy Collection. No one expected EA to revisit The Sims 1 and The Sims 2! Since its release, new players discovered the original The Sims and old fans returned, rediscovering the magic that was present in The Sims 1.

If you enjoy a Sims game, there's one inevitable next step: you want more content. New clothes, new objects, new features... maybe even attempt to learn how to create your own custom content! It's a rite of passage for any Simmer.

The desire for Custom Content

But where do you go for The Sims 1 custom content nowadays? Even if you are an seasoned Simmer that has played the newer games, a lot of The Sims 1's custom content is stored inside backups and archives. If you don't already know what you want, it is nearly impossible to shop for new custom content.

That's what happened to me, way back in 2013 I remember having a Hatsune Miku skin in my game, and I even had screenshots of it! But I couldn't for the life of me find it again on the web. Was it lost... forever?

Thankfully, citrusella, a kind Simmer, was able to find the skin in one of the archives, but that experience made me wonder... what if there was a better way of shopping through these archives? If you were a new fan, how would you be able to know that a Hatsune Miku skin for The Sims 1 existed?

And so, I started learning about the file formats that make The Sims 1 tick and figuring out how to parse and display that content in a more accessible way. I wanted to do for other The Sims 1 fans what CTO Sims did for me all those years ago.

In the process, I also created new modding tools for The Sims 1, to ease new fans into creating new custom content for The Sims 1, just like how go—... I mean, Will Wright, intended.

But Why The Sims 1?

But why The Sims 1? Why play the original The Sims when there's The Sims 2, The Sims 3 and The Sims 4? Aren't the newer games better?

The Sims 1, compared to other games of the series, feel less like a doll + house builder simulator and more like a strategic game. The Sims 1 infamously known as being hard, and if you are coming from newer games of the series, the difficulty may be even off-putting to you.

To some, that difference is what makes The Sims 1 be so desirable compared to other games of the series. That difference makes The Sims 1 feel more like other tycoon games, like RollerCoaster Tycoon 2 and SimCity. Micromanaging each Sim's action just to get your Sim's mood up to try to get promoted is a thrill.

There is also the nostalgia factor. My computer back in the day wasn't powerful enough to play The Sims 2, so I could only play The Sims 1 with the only expansion that I had, The Sims: Unleashed.

One day I found out about piracy (Yar-har-fiddle-dee-dee) and downloaded The Sims: Complete Collection, and it was amazing. And even though I have played the game on-and-off for more than a decade, I still haven't done everything that the game has, like being a Superstar or moving to Magic Town.

The easiness of modding also is a plus. The Sims 1 compared to newer installments is easier to mod and create custom content to. The low-poly aesthetic of the game also makes it easy to add some quirky skins to the game without it feeling too out of place.

Let's create a fan site like it's the 2000's

I needed a website to host all of that content and, due to the lack of The Sims 1-centric websites, I decided to make my own, and thus, SneakySims was born! A hub for everything related to The Sims 1—preserving its legacy while offering new ways for fans to enjoy the game, with no account restrictions.

The modding tools were created using SneakyLib, a Kotlin library created to read and write The Sims 1's file formats such as IFF, FAR, and others.

The custom content archive explorer evolved from its original idea to a custom content database, aggregating custom content from around the web, including from dead fan sites!

Every custom content aggregated is mirrored here for preservation. While we could redirect the users to the Wayback Machine, the Wayback Machine is sometimes a bit flaky and slow. We can't complain though, imagine how much work it is to store so much data.

If the creator's website is still up, we redirect the users to their website. If the creator's website is dead, because we have all content mirrored, we can start serving the mirrored content.

Now, truth be told, I don't think that the custom content database will be the end all be all of everything related to The Sims 1 custom content. After starting this project, I found other modern websites that also host The Sims 1 custom content (like Simblr.cc) and they also work so well that it is kinda pointless... Well, at the end of the day, if I like it, then it is good enough. :3

The name "SneakySims" was chosen because it flows well y'know? I wanted for the website name to be a reference to something of the game. I thought about "Beanstalk", "Move Objects", "Klapaucius"... I almost ended up with "ClassicSims", but I wasn't vibing with it... Thankfully then I had the idea of "SneakySims", which references the "Some Sneaky Sim" NPC. Now, if it is a good idea to reference the burglar NPC, it is up to you to judge, heh.

The design of the website is a bit... exotic, especially if you are used to modding websites for newer The Sims, but that's intentional! The design is heavily inspired by The Sims 1's and The Sims Online's UI design because I wanted to make a website that looked and felt different, because a modern UI design would be too boring for a game like The Sims 1. The internet is dying because every website feels the same, everything is centralized... let's make the web fun again!

I hope you enjoy the website as much as I enjoyed making it! Sul sul!