EA is giving a retro Christmas treat to fans of endless lanes of tarmac and industrial zones, by making Sim City 2000 Special Edition a free download. The then futuristic game was originally released back in 1995, when the Amiga was still counted amongst the supported platforms.

Naturally, the graphics aren't quite up to today's standards, but it's a gameplay classic, and there's little fear that even the shoddiest of laptops still running today won't be able to support it. The official system requirements are Windows XP or Windows Vista, a 1.8GHz processor, 512MB RAM (1GB recommended), 2GB of hard disk space and a DirectX 7-compatible graphics card, which have presumably been bumped since the original was released, but should still make the game perfectly playable on almost any current hardware.

The download weighs in at a little over 100MB and you will need to install EA's Origin software on your PC to play the game. Once you've registered for an Origin account and clicked on the download , the game is yours to keep for good. The free download will only be available for a "limited period", so budding city planners shouldn't hang about.

Sim City 2000 saw the introduction of several new types of building - including prisons, schools and libraries - as well as providing the option to build road links into neighbouring cities for the first time. It also introduced several real-world scenarios, such as dealing with the 1970s recession in Michigan.

The game has evolved into a sprawling beast since those glory days on the Amiga. The latest version of Sim City sparked controversy when EA decided that users would have to be connected to EA's game servers to play the game. The company has since recanted, allowing players to continue building their metropolis when offline, too.