Great Ideas Hampered By Poor Mechanics
I first played SimTower close to its original release in the mid-90's; as one of the only games I owned at the time, it received a considerable investment of my time. The distinctive buzz and hum of elevator chimes, background conversation, and ringing office phones is still strong in my memory.
Unfortunately, fundamental flaws with the simulation's logic prevented me from ever progressing to the fabled 5-star cathedral for my hundredth floor; a flawless transit system is absolutely necessary to earn money and residents, and at a certain scale it becomes very difficult to keep everyone moving as they should.
Residents will only take 3 staircases and 6 escalators per visit to the tower - once that limit is reached, they will wait days for an elevator to carry them to their destination - during which time they will become red with rage and vow to never return. In a word, the game quickly becomes Finnicky with endless nests of overlapping elevator routes.
Despite the mechanical flaws, the visual style and audio design of the game is incredibly endearing. A 3D tower would be more interesting - say if we could have multiple 'slices' of cross-section to build in and layer - but the wide range of restaurants, hotels, condos, office spaces, movie theaters, and utility structures (all of which feature nifty animations) keeps things exciting.
Overall though, you'd be better off checking out the followup YootTower - it's the same core experience with a wider pallet of buildings to choose from and important fixes to the traffic simulation.