Sadly I haven't played many of the sims games. If you count the Sim City games, I played Sim City 2000 in school a lot. We had copies on each computer and were allowed to play in computer class when we were finished with work. It was what I looked forward to the most. I got Sim City 3000 for one of my birthdays and played that like crazy.
I only played The Sims 3 to get back to the subject at hand. Didn't play it too long though. I had a lot of fun with it when I did play though.