As an elder millennial, The Sims™ was one of my favorite computer games. It kept me up until the wee hours of the morning on summer vacations. It was actually this game that helped me decide I wanted to be a programmer. When attending college and deciding between Game Art and Animation, I decided on Game Art because in animated movies, the ending is always the same. The ending is what was animated. However in video games, the ending might not always be the same, as the player now gets to have input in what happens! With The Sims™, I was essentially a god among these digital avatars, disabling their free will and forcing them to entertain me. When I write code, I still feel like a god of the application I’m working on, because it is doing what I tell it to once again.

Now that The Sims™ Legacy Collection has been released on Steam, people like me are playing it again!

This collection comes with all of the expansion packs, including Makin’ Magic. One of my favorite things to do was duel other Sims. In every duel, there are five magic spells that can be used: White Lightning, Red Wave, Blue Tornado, Black Blizzard, and Yellow Brimstone. Each participant is randomly given four, but not the same four. This is indicated by the lightbulbs on each side of the dueling station.

There are four rounds to the duel, giving each Sim the ability to cast one of their spells, but they cannot cast the same spell more than once per duel.

In each round, your opposing Sim chooses a random spell from their arsenal. The symbol is displayed in front of them and the corresponding bulb flickers. Now it is your turn to choose a spell. To win the round, your spell has to beat their spell. Whether a spell beats the other or not is based on a simple configuration. Several people have made charts depicting it, but essentially, each spell can beat two other spells.

• White Lightning defeats Blue Tornado and Red Wave.
• Red Wave defeats Blue Tornado and Black Blizzard.
• Blue Tornado defeats Black Blizzard and Yellow Brimstone.
• Black Blizzard defeats Yellow Brimstone and White Lightning.
• Yellow Brimstone defeats Red Wave and White Lightning.

These rules always apply, so you can choose the spell out of your arsenal that beats your opponent. You win the duel if you win the majority rounds. You can also lose or tie in a duel. However, the complexity comes in when you each have only four of the five spells, so in order to win every round, there’s a bit of logic that needs to take place. For example, if your opponent has White Lightning, Red Wave, Blue Tornado, and Black Blizzard, and you have Red Wave, Blue Tornado, Black Blizzard, and Yellow Brimstone. Let’s say they use White Lightning as their first move. To defeat it, you can choose between Blue Tornado and Red Wave, you have both of those spells in your arsenal, but because you’re missing Yellow Brimstone, you can’t use it to defeat Black Blizzard, only Blue Tornado, so this is when you need to choose Red Wave to win a perfect duel.

And so, because I am a programmer, I decided to cut to the chase and make the machine think for me! Behold, a little widget to calculate the perfect duel based on what spells each Sim has. Enjoy!