Seven Cities of Gold: Commemorative Edition

I grew up in the 80s and played on all the system from back then - Atari 2600, NES, TRS-80, ZX Spectrum, CoCo, MSX. So I really have no prejudice against old games or games with primitive graphics. 7 Cities of Gold is one of those games I always wanted to play back in the day but, for many reasons, ended up not being able to play. So when I saw it here, it was an easy decision to buy it and give it a try. What a disappointment! I can see why this game could have been considered special back in the day given the big world size (for 80s standards, that is), but this is NOT a fun game. I love exploration games like Starflight and Pirates!, but Seven Cities has very poor mechanics. For instance, the manual doesn't tell you how many priests/soldiers you need for each type of settlement so you need to guess. You can find this out by taking very tedious steps (and then write it down), but this guesswork is an unfun part of the game mechanics. A similar aspect that takes the same unfun guesswork is figuring out how much your new world goods are worth. Combat is also poorly introduced in the game. I actually beat the main goals without killing a single indian because it's just easier to do it this way. Bottom line, this game is a train wreck, even for back in the day, and it was a huge disappointment. If you like the sailing theme, skip this one and go straight to Pirates! (the Sega Genesis and Amiga versions, not the broken Pirates Gold one).

This is one of those games that I always said "If it ever comes out on GOG it's an insta-buy". But that was usually followed up with "It's so old, it will never come out". I'm really glad to be wrong. Would love to see it updated, but one of my favorite game types is "Random-Open World Exploration" and this game has that. I won't rehash what is involved in playing the game.. just that this game did so much right, it really was ahead of it's time. I was always surprised that playing it on a historical map is still very exciting. You know the major land features, but when you actually find them.. it's quite a rush. My problem was always resisting the urge to explore 'just a little bit more' and running out of supplies and not making it back to the old world (to update my map) so I would lose progress. But that is the balancing act that is this game. The definition of a great old game.

So I might be a tad bit bias here, but I always loved Seven Cities when I was a kid. I am really happy that GOG was able to bring back one of my dad's classic games to the current market. I have not gotten to play the game in a REALLY long time, but it is just as enjoyable as I always remembered.

This is one of my all time favorite games, along with the original 2 XCom games, Machiavelli the Prince, Civ 1, and Master of Orion 2 - these games were unique... Nothing quite like them now days. Thank you GoG

Here it is, on GOG at last, one of the all-time classics of computer gaming. Seven Cities was created by MU.L.E.'s Dan(i) Bunten in 1984 and published by EA for several 8-bit platforms. It was a sensation upon release and is firmly established in the computer games pantheon. You can hit Wikipedia and MobyGames for the whole story. For now just buy it. This is as close to a no-brainer purchase as you're likely to find.