As you become more famous, fellow sims will begin to take notice of you.  Paparazzi will snap pictures of you, sims will become all giddy when they recognize you, and you can even pick up an obsessed fan.  If your fame grows high enough, you'll be recognized by your peers with awards for your performance in movies, music, or fashion.

The crowd goes wild.

The entertainment career is a welcome addition to The Sims because players now finally have control over their sims at work.  The amount of money that you bring home each day is entirely dependent on how well you do while at Studio Town.  The dark side to this is that you can just as easily come home with your pockets empty.  Starting out as an entertainer is quite challenging; the fame objects to which you'll initially have access won't earn you a lot of money.  You'll need to play well just to have enough to cover the basic expenses such as food and your bills.

The road to fame is also a long one.  Don't expect to be appearing in movies before putting in many hours of gameplay.  Studio Town provides objects to fulfill some of your motives, but you'll always need to head home for some sleep at some point.  Because your sim needs to be in a good mood to do well with the fame objects, you can expect two good performances on a good day with the rest of the time spent fulfilling motives. 

Things get even more challenging when you begin to need friends with star power to advance.  You'll have to spend time meeting famous people at Studio Town, which will prevent you from using the fame objects and earning money.  You'll eventually be able to phone famous friends and invite them to your home, but you'll need to do a lot of leg work and face time in Studio Town first.

Superstar would have been a full-sized expansion with the addition of the fame career and Studio Town alone.  As an added bonus though you also get a large number of new objects.  These include a set of spa objects that will allow your sims to relax and enjoy steam treatments, mud baths, and massages.  There are also some exotic objects which include a skydiving simulator and a scuba diving tank.  In addition, you'll also get new objects to add to your home such as a satellite dish which will expand your channel line-up by four.

While Superstar doesn't address the issues that have been with The Sims since the beginning such as painfully slow zooming and scrolling, it does add quite a bit of new play to the game.  As long as you're patient and realize that there's no quick road to fame, you'll probably find yourself enjoying the game.

In The End, This Game Hath Been Rated: 87%.  Superstar is a supercharged expansion for sims seeking the spotlight.  You've really got to want it though, as achieving superstar status takes quite a bit of work.

System Requirements:  Pentium II 450; 128 MB RAM; 4 MB Video RAM; 4x CD-ROM;  1.12 GB Hard Drive Space;  Mouse.

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