I’ve actually done it twice, both reverting the game on my current machine (to test that I wasn’t imagining the flashing blue trees), and to use 1.2.3 for a fresh install at High Sierra (rebuilding an older iMac after a hard drive failure).

In both cases I trashed everything (after backing up my downloads and any hoods I might want to restore later). So as well as deleting the Sims 2 app package in Applications, I went in and removed everything under ~/Library/Containers/com.aspyr.sims2.appstore as well.

For the first attempt I then restored the Sims 2 app package from Time Machine, and did Show Package Contents so I could run through my normal edits to that package (minor edits to files, backing out CEP and Scriptorium files and edits as they’re different in each version, renaming stealth hoods to rename them). Then I launched the game and let it regenerate ~/Library/Containers/com.aspyr.sims2.appstore and everything under it, and created a new test hood to make sure everything looked okay. Only after that did I start putting my files back in. And then I redid the CEP/Scriptorium stuff.

The second time, for the fresh install, I restored a clean copy of the Sims 2 app to Applications. It was one that I’d zipped up as a backup immediately after downloading the game a couple of years back, before making any changes.

I think the important thing is to remove the other version of the game from Applications before trying to restore it from backup, but deleting the user files may be important too - there are a couple of extra folders in there at 1.2.4. I didn’t find it necessary to find and delete any plists - I had to reset my resolution and graphics settings as if it was the first time when I went in after the restore.

I can’t swear to whether I played my game at all at 1.2.4 or just loaded hoods and exited without saving, but I certainly swapped my downloads and hoods between the two.

I'm just about to rip my hair out 2 months of on-off troubleshooting with absolutely no luck

I reverted back to 1.2.3 but then I ran into the same problem that forced me to upgrade to 1.2.4 in the first place: a blank error on startup:




Many hours of research told me this can sometimes happen and be solved by deleting the groups.cache. Did that didn't help. Also deleted Accessory.cache. No help. Deleted content registry. Nada :/