Tiny Tower Version 1.0
One of the first games I downloaded once I got my 1st Generation iPad was Tiny Tower. It was one of the first mobile games I remember ever playing and most-definitely the one that I was the most fond of.
My mom downloaded the game on July 21, 2012, meaning that the first update I could have possibly played in was 1.5.3. However, since I've had to sideload all the games I wanted, I decided to take advantage of the opportunity and go back to the very first version of the game just to see what it was like!
I've been playing this version for just over a week now, and so I've gotten a pretty good sense of pretty much everything that this original version has, and also everything that it's missing. Before this my only "experience" with it, if you could even call it that, was via the original trailer.
Pretty much all original versions of this game, as well as other Nimblebit titles, are available to be downloaded from the Internet Archive.
This version of the game had 130 floors (not counting the lobby), with 16 of each business type (80 total) and 50 residential floors. At first I thought there would be 48 residential floors to match with the available jobs, but there are 2 additional ones.
Also there were only the first four elevators. The standard one (known after Tiny Tower Vegas as "Trusty Rusty" ), the NB200 Commercial Lift, the Insta-Lift 2000 SE, and the Ultra-Lift 3000 Extreme. The final and best of the "original" elevators, the Infini-Lift Lightspeed, was added a few months later in version 1.3.
Similar to the elevators, there were also only four VIPs. The Big Spender and Construction Worker VIPs work the exact same as now. The Delivery Worker VIP would speed up stocking a floor by 3 hours, instead of doing it instantly as it does in the present day, and the Celebrity works completely different, bringing in a crowd of bitizens instead of giving someone a dream job. These behaviours only changed after Tiny Tower Vegas or the 5th anniversary update in 2016.
The only missing VIP is the Real Estate Agent, who would fill up a residential floor, and was also added in version 1.3. Additionally, you couldn't keep a VIP in your lobby, meaning you had to instantly use them. This was probably the most inconvenient missing feature.
Another thing I realized is how much more rudimentary this version generally is. You could not sort your list of bitizens, they did not have costumes yet, there were no stars on a floor if a bitizen had their dream job, you could not rename floors, and there was no option to build a specific floor.
(In the files of this version — as well as some old beta screenshots — there is an option labeled "Architect" which might have given the option to build custom floors? But it's not here anymore.)
Also, before ordering stock for an item you had to confirm it in a pop-up, and dream jobs gave 3 bux instead of just 2, which I found quite interesting. These are probably the only two things that are strictly better than newer versions (and even then it's arguable for the first one, if you prefer to go quicker).
And that's about it for what I've wanted to share!
It has been a very interesting trip to this original version of the game. I am unsure as to how long I'll stick to it, as I definitely think later versions are definitely better, but I've stuck to 1.0 for a while just to see how it was like! And to be able to appreciate how much the game grew.
Lastly, for completeness, here is my tower currently! (I don't know why some bitizens are chopped here, whatever)
