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I havent played a Simcity since about 1995 on my Amiga 500.
However Ive had this weird hankering to play again the last while.

Anyone recommend a good version of the game on PC?
Is it still relatively intuitive, not really interested in wading through a 50 page manual.
Are there older versions worth looking at too?

Sim City 4 is still really good and fairly intuitive. There's also a ton of mod support if you ever get bored. The ability to create entire regions and interconnect your cities is great fun. You could always just start a new city if things go poorly. Or you could just hop over to a new tract of land, set up a new city, then connect it to your older (failed) city to get it a boost.

I sound Sim City 3 to be a bit unintuitive, but that just may be my past playthroughs speaking. The introduction of landfills and trash and excessive pollution became a nuisance. It was still fun.

Sim City 2000 is really graphically old by today's standards.

Sim City (5), the newest one, is a step backwards. If anything, the size of the cities is just too small. Everything this game does, Sim City 4 does better. If you mess up, there is no way to outright delete a city. You must abandon the whole region completely. Additionally, there is no save/reload function. It's also ridiculously easy in both difficulty and the ability to fill up the tiny chunk of land you're given.

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If you're up for pretty good City management games, try the following:

Anno 2070 is pretty much a very slow RTS coupled with a futuristic city management sim. Environmentalism is a very strong theme. Looks very pretty. Unfortunately, it's an Ubisoft game.

Tropico 4 is a smaller-scale Sim City game with a bit of humor. You're a dictator... and go! The game is like Sim City except you're also keeping other external nations happy.

Sim City 4 is the best. I will echo everything that Absolutionis said about the latest game. It would be nearly 100% better off the regions were bigger. They are tiny.

Tropico is really popular, so maybe that'll suit you.