If you've ever touched a computer, you've probably heard of The Sims, Maxis' incredibly clever and addictive series of games. In The Sims, you control the lives of little digital people and try to make them happy--give them a good job, buy them a swanky house, make friends, raise a family, travel around, and generally live happily ever after in the suburbs. It's an awesome little fantasy of capitalism and conformity!

Maxis is located in beautiful downtown Walnut Creek, and the company's office isn't far from Black Diamond, where Fast Times plays fairly often. When some of the design team from the new console game The Sims Bustin' Out stopped by for a drink during programming crunch time, they liked what they heard--and invited Chynna and Elektro to do some voice-overs for the game. Both being Sims fans, they jumped at the chance.

There were a few catches: they needed to sing both like rock stars (easy, naturally) and off-key karaoke wannabes (um, sadly, just as easy). To complicate things further, nobody in The Sims speaks English. The Sims speak their own brand of nonsensical babble called Simlish. What they found is that there is no actual rules as to what Simlish is--no pronunciation guide, no dictionary, nothin'. Just make it up as you go. What's more, everybody speaks Simlish differently, hitting different nonsense syllables--so whereas Elektro kept coming back to variations on "ah" ("Fwah cha rah lah mah!"), Chynna went for more "ee" and "sh" sounds, eventually repeating the word "mandoosh" a lot. With a little practice, patterns were broken and the Sims audio team got what was needed. In the final game, you'll hear 'em sing rock, jazz, funk, metal, and some really bad vocal warmups.

So, if you play The Sims Bustin' Out on PlayStation 2, Xbox, or GameCube, choose the Movie Star career and, when you're able, travel to the Hollywood property. Sing into the microphone. If you're a male Sim, that's Elektro's voice; if you're a female, those pipes belong to Chynna. Check out a sneak peek and then go buy it. Shoo shoo!

Earlier fun that you may have missed:
Fast Times in Simlish
The "Pants" Joke
Our Favorite Completely Wrong Lyrics
Fast Times In and Out of Jury Duty
Fast Times: The Magazine
Fast Times Takes the Cake
FTWTF?