This may NOT be a revised edition at all.
I have checked with Amazon customer service and they are as curious as I was after receiving this title.
The listing indicates a 2007 copy right for the revised edition and it comes at 368 pages.
If you compare covers of the standard edition and this one - they are identical, no flag or starburt logo saying anything about Nightlife being included. Also, this book retains ONLY a 2004 copyright, no revision or second edition update to 2007.
Also, compare the standard guide and the Nightlife guide: the std edition is 368 pages and Nightlife is 244. It is impossible to have jammed those two books together to make a Revised Edition still with only 368 pages! I understand they can change typeface, font size and add overall content compression, but at best you'd only save a portion of original mass.
This does not seem to be a fault solely of Amazon.ca - I have checked the Amazon.com site, a competing Canadian online book seller's site, and Prima's own page. And they all show the standard edition coverart and page count, but note 2007 copyright and that it is supposed to be two original guides in one.
If there is any doubt on the basic info above, opening the book yields not one iota of Nightlife mention. There is no section for it in the Table of Contents, there is no "what's new" section of the book. It appears to be just the original contents guide. It is possible the misunderstanding is in the wording "We're combining the hit The Sims 2 and The Sims 2 Nightlife guides into one book ..." Perhaps instead of just joining the two titles, they have removed a lot of repeat info from Nightlife and then added content realted to it directly to the same sections in the base game guide. I still find it hard to believe this would not at least add some additional pages. And I have found no mention of Vampires or DJ's, or "Pleasure and Aspiration" as noted in the Nightlife guide blurb.
While I have no original guide to compare it with side by side, I did check the ISBN number and it does show a different number than the original guide, and that new number is correctly (I assume, unless the info is flawed elsewhere) displayed on this listing.
Checking various forums also yielded many similar findings. I did in one instance find a forum poster that claimed he did indeed have the "revised" guide that he purchased bundled with Sims 2 Deluxe and his claim was it was literally two books in one cover, including quotes from the Nightlife guide. He did not elaborate however, if it was a total separate section of the guide or incorporated into the main text.
Which brings us right back to the title for this review: Buyer Beware
If you want a basic get started guide to Sims 2, then this is still the way to go as it seems the original guide is no longer available from this site. If you are happy with the possibility (as I can not prove absolutely without all three guides in front of me: std ed, rev ed, and Nightlife stand-alone) of no obvious Nightlife content inside this book, then you also have nothing to lose for this price point. But if you insist on and need Nightlife content, you should be prepared to spend additional money buying the stand-alone guide if you discover this one lacking what you were looking for.
I may take the advice of the rep that helped me and check a local book store just to see if they carry all the editions and then compare them there. Amazon.ca can rest assured that if I do so, any purchase will still be made through this sight.
And if I find my review post - with further research - to be faulty, I will delete or ammend my review.
