We haven’t heard much about SimCity DS since its announcement and that’s very unfortunate since it’s a very popular franchise. Just like The Settlers DS which is also coming to the DS in a couple of months, SimCity is a construction game perfectly suited for the dual screen.

The reason why we haven’t heard much about it is probably because it doesn’t have a US release date yet and that’s actually pretty awkward for a game that is a western franchise. The game will be based on SimCity 3000 and the legal rights for the city builder rest in the hands of EA. Just like Joystiq, we’re really wondering why a date hasn’t been annouced yet, because all they need to do is translate it and we’re good to go, it’s not like us Western people don’t understand how it works. The only reason I can think of is that at the moment the game features a bunch of Japanese buildings as you can see in the screenshots below. And before you ask, the guy in the screenshots is Will Wright, not a crazy German.

Seriously, we need more games that utilize the dual screen properly and SimCity could definitely be one of them.