Simulation is the heart of gaming. The Sims makes it explicit, but RPGs the like the Fable series and strategy games like the Civ series also transplant our attention into constructed worlds with explicit rules for hours at a time. Microsoft was an early entrant—their Flight Simulator launched in 1982 and set the standard for realism (interestingly, their in-development reboot dropped the S-word and will be sold as Microsoft Flight*).

Its domination also created a thousand tiny niches, as developers reached out to those who wanted to explore smaller worlds, like bus route 92. OMNI Bus Simulator "is a realistic omnibus simulator for home use." It's set in 1980s-era West Berlin and lets us drive past the still-standing Berlin Wall:

It's due out in 2011 and offers vast support for modders, who can (and surely will) create new routes and buses. There's more—many, many more—out there. The bus sim fellas also made the moderately perplexing World of Subways, which offers the comfort of controlling 1-D travel. Digger Simulator 2011 is coming out any day now, and while it's a bit more extensive (you're also running a civil engineering company), it's pretty much all about using a virtual digger to dig virtual dirt. If a machine is operable by humans, it has likely been simulated. Europeans have rolled over US programmers in the non-flight market, because (we suppose) we just aren't as interested in making the trains run on time as we are in murdering elves and terrorists and terror-elves. Such diversity enriches us all.

Thanks to the ever-smart Rock, Paper, Shotgun for inspiration.

* Which sounds like the last couple of years in the home computer market. ZING!

The Stranger Testing Department is Rob Lightner and Paul Hughes.