I dont get it really, I freaking love it.

I can't speak for anyone else, except for perhaps one or two people I know who feel the same way, but for me it was because of EA beginning to force so called "online features" into the sims, where some felt that it didn't belong. I don't want to be signing it with Facebook or Twitter, or sending sims through games to other people. The Sims is personal to me, and I resent having social media, which I already despise, shoved in my face and making simporting a requirement to unlock items.

I refused to buy the EP, but one of my kids bought it for me as a birthday gift a couple of years ago. I haven't really touched much of the EP apart from the build / buy items, but I played with a Magician the other day, and the careers are all right. If it had come without all the online crap and social media garbage, I probably would have bought it from the get go.

Pool Table - Showtime
Themed around fame - Showtime
Coffee houses, and places live bands normally play - Showtime

Pool Table Ceiling Lamp - Late Night
Celebrity system - Late Night
Bands and live music - Late Night

Suffice to say much of Showtime was recycled content or ideas. Without Late Night, Showtime feels incomplete. And vice versa.

...And then there is also Katy Perry which is a good enough reason alone to hate anything...

Genies are good but I'm not sure why they put genies in showtime and not supernatural. Genies are like having a ITF sprite only they're Sims. Pull out the lamp, talk to them, and put them away when done. Due to a glitch you can generate another genie by traveling to a vacation world, going to university, or going to the future. When you get back, new genie and 3 more wishes. Wanna get rich? Get a genie and travel - wishing for 100,000 simolians each time.

The whole rock star thing tho'? Never did it.

Edit: Only make 2 wishes per world, cuz if you make 3 wishes, you lose the lamp! 2 wishes.

I'm not sure why they put Jinn — an Arabic folk-lore "supernatural" that stems from verses in the Qur'an — in a pack that has a heavy Spanish theme. More EA "I don't understand non-American culture" I guess?

I think this entire pack was made with the now-normal mindset of "we have these and these ideas, what can we make of them?". It's just leftover ideas and features thrown together, which is odd considering there was so much they could've done at that point. We didn't have seasons yet, or any supernaturals. We didn't have university. No business-oriented pack, though, to be fair, we never got one at all. Unless the Midnight Hollow business pack was any good (if it is, please let me know!).

In Sims 1 there was a genie lamp you could buy. It looked like an ordinary decoration, but when you put it on your lot, you got the option to rub it. when you did, there was a (somewhat incompetent) genie that came out and offered a wish once per day. Sometimes the wish would backfire, and you would get the reverse of what you wanted.

Shortly before Showtime came out there was a survey by EA about what we most missed from Sims 1 and Sims 2. Apparently, I was not the only one who chose the genie.

Well that explains it, then. They wanted to be good to the fans but didn't know when and how to do it.

Probably cause it feels like a weak rehash of Late Night or it has features that should have been in Late Night to begin with, but were kept out for another EP? Only reason I would want Showtime is cause Genies can clean a house instantly. And that's, unfortunately, not enough of a reason for me. Not at 40Euro an EP.

There is one notable difference between Late Night and Showtime though despite the similarities. Late Night's theme mostly revolves around clubbing and lounging, and Showtime revolves around being a superstar pop-culture icon. They are different, but not really different enough to warrant separate Expansion Packs.


I am glad you and others did choose the Jinn though. It's a fun item. Back in House Party days most every Sims house of mine had it. I just feel it was inappropriate for the theme of Showtime though. Would of fit better in with Supernatural expansion.


It's not well designed honestly, and is a poor substitute for OFB. However, Ani's mod(s) drastically improve upon the concept.

Hate is a bit strong (for me anyway), but Showtime is one of the few EPs that rudely inserts itself into our games if/when we don't really want it to and in ways that are virtually impossible to control even with mods. I mean, yes there are Uni mascots, Generations "free" vacations, LN Paparazzi/Celebrity System, Ambitions laundry, Pets ice cream trucks, etc. but it really isn't that difficult to ignore those or mod them out if the player sees them as annoyances and doesn't want them. Showtime injects homeless street performers into our worlds, sometimes at alarming rates and sometimes commandeering sims we would rather be left alone, and I don't think anyone has found a way to get that to stop as long as we want parks and whatever other venues they use for other purposes -- even NRaas SP is powerless at disallowing those completely much of the time, although it does help control the rates they spawn for many of us.

It's really the only EP I keep thinking I could do without except maybe in certain worlds where I would welcome the content more and personally I have no use for the EP's online features. But then I remember genies (resident occult genies I mean, not the ones stuck in lamps whom I regard as their more unfortunate ancestors), dominoes, bananas. And genies playing dominoes while eating bananas. So I've got to keep it in play even if just for those, EA is so sneaky.

You got any links to those mods? You had my curiosity, but now you have my attention.

It's hardly sensical.

The ice cream truck came with PETS? I thought it came with Seasons. Maybe that's why I haven't seen them in so long; I rarely install Pets.

Witches can also clean house instantly, but it's at an insanely high level at 8 or 9 I think, And it rots the food in the fridge.

http://nraas.wikispaces.com/The+Savvier+Seller
http://nraas.wikispaces.com/Business+As+Unusual+Bistro

Because of the bug where Sims come out of the shower or tub, spin from naked to still naked, and proceed to walk around naked all day long.

Um ... or so I have read.

...And why would anyone hate that?

The EP was a slap in the face to everyone. A spectacular let down. If you were a player that didn't like LN you hated it.

If you were like me and liked LN, you hated it. It just added stuff that would have worked well in LN as standalone objects, and didn't build on features from the EP like bands for example.

If you were a fan of other genres of music outside of pop, you hated it. You could only make pop singers. No Hip Hop, no R&B, no indie, no rap, no rock&roll and we sure as hell weren't getting any metal.

If you were a fan of Katy Perry, you hated it because EA tried to squeeze as much money out of you as possible by giving you a bullshit lackluster special edition, and the infamous Sweet Treats pack.

If you hated Katy Perry, well then you probably couldn't play without thinking about her, because every time you ran into a bug in the game, you knew that the Sims team thought it was far more important to add her to the game rather than fix that bug, and your hatred only festered and grew until you were nothing more than a rotten shell of your former self mourning over what could have been.

And that is why my friend Showtime deserves a special place in sim hell.

Would you mind sharing how SP controls the rates they spawn at? I took a quick look through the StoryProgression FAQ and can't seem to find anything about the Showtime careers.

Get Showtime for the clothes; get Supernatural for the Build/Buy stuff.

I find it amusing that people keep hating on the EP because of Katy Perry....The only way you have Katy Perry in your game with Showtime is if you purposefully bought the Katy Perry Edition, which I did not. I have had the EP since it came out, like what five years now, and no mention of Katy Perry, no annoying bubble gum and candy themes in my game.

That being said I did find the whole social media aspect of the game extremely annoying. I refuse to send my sims around to other people, and I don't really want other peoples sims in my game either. I'm just picky about aesthetics, most sims made by other people just don't fit into my worlds. Yet once all the reward objects were unlocked and put up for download I was fine never worrying about it again.

The careers are fine. Yes I wish they would have linked the singing career to the Band Career, but EA seems to love to do thing half-assed, I'm use to it now. Magicians and Acrobats are fun..... and I don't seem to have the spawning a million performers issue that everyone else does. Might be because I make specific sims for my town and give them those jobs, a house, a life, so the game doesn't need to keep filling it with randoms. Also I enjoy street performers... this is a real life thing, I don't see it as a fantasy aspect that others do.

Plus we did get some cool objects:
Pool Tables
Golf Tee
Dominoes
Karaoke - seriously my sims love this damn thing
DJ Booth
Skee Ball

But, like everyone else said....All of this could and really should have been included in Late Night. So its not so much a matter of hating this EP for me, its hating EA's Greed.

If only it was. Because if there weretons of good, Maxis Match CC items and outfits out there, and enough to cover several expansions' worth of clothes, I think there would be more than just those two EPs, too.

@nitrimon the EP isn't that bad, I just like being dramatic. The items and clothes in the standard version are decent and won't make you think of Katy Perry . If you can find it for the cheap and can fit another EP on your system it's OK. And playing a magician is fun.