Billy Krest is a self admitted "road porn" enthusiast. (Author's note: be careful typing that phrase into a search engine.) He also loves playing SimCity, a game that allows players to create their own virtual towns and metropolises.
One day about four months ago, he found himself searching for "crazy interchanges" and found Kansas City, Missouri's downtown highway interchange —known as the "Alphabet Loop" — on a top ten list.
"As soon as I saw it, I knew I had to make it," Krest said. "I got that feeling of, 'Go big, or go home.'"
Krest lives in Hawaii, and admits that he doesn't have much connection to Kansas City.
"One thing I found amusing was that Kansas City was in Missouri," Krest said. "How did that happen?"
But as someone who loves to look at roads and highways infrastructure, he saw something unique in the Alphabet Loop.
"What made the Alphabet Loop special compared to all the other crazy interchanges was that there were multiple interchanges in such close proximity to each other," Krest said. "If I never knew this existed, I would've thought it impossible for a city to have so many."
Krest says that it took him about a week or so to lay out all of the roads, but the game itself proved to be a challenge. The latest version of SimCity is notorious among gamers for limiting the size of cities that players can make. Krest had to use player created modifications, or "mods," to achieve the final product.
"It took a lot of tricks and different mods working together to make what you see," Krest said. "These types of roads were never intended [for the game]."
Krest originally posted screenshots of the loop on Wednesday, which was quickly picked up by Reddit users on the Kansas City Subreddit. Krest says he was surprised by the reaction from Kansas Citians.
"I got way more love from the KC sub than the SimCity sub," Krest said.
