Prewar Cornices: That’s How We Roll

You know things have turned a corner in New York when even video games stray from the crime, murder and mafia staples the city is known for:

When we say, “I’m a New Yorker,” we sometimes say it with a little sneer. Rats? Mafiosi? Terrorists? We can take it. Bars here close at dawn. Subway doors are ripped open with bare hands. New York’s edginess is so endemic, so untamed, that a crack cocaine den was found this year in the otherwise relentlessly genteel Upper East Side. That’s how we roll.

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But another, equally powerful myth defines how many New Yorkers see their city: the one that makes them announce, ecstatically, that Sarah Jessica Parker lives in their neighborhood – “I see her all the time!” – or that Jack Kerouac used to get drunk in their favorite bar – “this very booth!”

For this reason, the most telling glimpse of real New York life might be found in a far less showy new game being developed by Atari: “Tycoon City: New York.” The heart of “Tycoon City” is a real estate development adventure in which the first mission is to renovate a Greenwich Village coffee shop. Other tasks include running a hopping nightclub, opening a profitable Broadway show, managing a Wall Street firm, setting up a concert in Central Park, and organizing the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade.

Real-life corporate logos litter billboards and marquees – Lacoste, Nokia, Toys “R” Us – but the streets themselves are spotless, the landscaping immaculate. If the other games suggest that New Yorkers secretly see Times Square as a bloodbath, “Tycoon City” speaks to New Yorkers’ obsession with window boxes and prewar cornices.