Aléatoire: La chanson d'Arctic Monkeys fait potentiellement référence à Obscure DS City Builder

Sniper


City Life
Image: Monte Cristo

Sheffield-based rock band Arctic Monkeys have released their seventh studio album The Car aujourd'hui. This may have been something playing on the radio (or however the younguns listen to their music nowadays) here at NL Towers, but it’s now on our radar for a totally different reason today — it apparently makes a reference to City Life sur la Nintendo DS.

Freelance games writer Jordan Oloman spotted a breakdown of the song ‘Sculptures Of Anything Goes’ sur Genius (thanks GamesRadar!), where one avid listener has pointed out a potential video game reference in the song’s third verse.

The lyrics in question are: “The simulation cartridge for City Life ’09 / Is pretty tricky to come by”. Definitely very specific, and the DS version certainly did release in 2009 — et only in Europe. So it’s a pretty niche reference if that’s the case.

L'annotation sur Genius se lit:

“Ces paroles font référence au jeu PC City Life et à la sortie de la version Nintendo DS en Europe en 2009. Le jeu est centré sur la création d'une ville et les structures économiques au sein de la ville que le joueur est capable de contrôler.

Turner mentionne la difficulté d'obtenir ce jeu parce que non seulement Nintendo a arrêté la fabrication de tous les ordinateurs de poche DS en 2014, in 2020 ils ont annoncé qu'ils ne vendraient plus de jeux DS et Wii U sur leur eShop.”

Eh bien… pas quelque chose que nous nous attendions à lire. Mais peut être c'est vrai! It’s a fun little nod towards the game if it is. And hey, a UK band making a reference to a Europe-only port? We’ll take it. Someone should ask frontman Alex Turner about it.

City Life on DS was a port of the 2006 PC, and it was the first modern building game that let the player work in fully 3D environments. The DS version was obviously fairly compromised, but it still got decent reviews at the time from publications.

If you’re not aware of the 2009 DS game, check out this trailer below to get a feel for it. And let us know in the comments whether you think this is a fake tale from San Francisco or whether this is a cornerstone!