who cares? intellectual property law in the united states is irrational and immoral. i strongly support evading the law or fully exploiting gray areas / unenforced copyrights.
That's easy to say if you are not the one who gets hit with a C&D plus some claim for x billion damages or whatever the going rate is these days. Life's too short to sit in courts and fight for something which is a hobby.
simcity's IP is owned by EA, which is a multibillion-dollar publicly-traded company. this isn't just "someone's art". the only ones who benefit from strict enforcement of 25-year-old IP are EA's shareholders, not the artist, and certainly not the public.