Pirates! Gold Plus

I've played the first Pirates! on the C64, Pirates Gold on the Genesis and the newest version of Pirates! Honestly, the newest is my favorite, but these games here hold their own. You start with almost nothing. You'll need to learn how to use the winds to make your self-guided trading routes profitable. You'll sink enemies and battle pirates. You'll send expeditions hundreds of miles inland looking for lost native gold. Or you can target a massive Spanish galleon hauling years worth of mined gold. Each step you take earns you points. By the time your career ends, you'll be judged at how well you played the game (i.e. how well you lived your life). Did you die rich with lots of land, a beautiful wife and powerful allies? Or did you fall in combat against an ordinary hooligan pirating the seas? You can live out tons of lives in an extraordinarily accurate portrayal of life in the Carribean during six different time periods, starting as a Spaniard, Dutchman, Frenchman or Englishman. If you haven't played these games and you want to avoid some of the annoying aspects of the newest version (dancing, a preset story and often tech problems on Win Vista+), then you should pick this up and enjoy the pirates life!

The 1987 edition of this game for the Commodore 64 ate up a lot of my childhood. Not only was it fantastically fun, it also taught me way more about the geography and history of the Spanish Main and 16th-17th century geopolitics in general than I ever learned in school. One of the things I most liked about this game was the variety of things you get to do. Ship combat, fencing, trading, assaulting towns by land or sea, searching for lost treasure, courting governors' daughters -- it all felt unique and yet organically coherent. Definitely give this a try.

Back in the day, this game was one of the funnest games to play. Even the first old CGA version wasn't to bad. This version (Pirates Gold Plus) just doesn't work properly. For one thing, the controls aren't functioning correctly. I tried it a few times, but the unresponsiveness of the controls just make it impossible and not fun. When you are trying to sword fight, there is a definite unresponsiveness / delay that makes it impossible to sword fight and play the game. Very disappointing. Hopefully gog will fix this sometime and the game will be fun to play .. again! Until then, I'm going to try the Amiga version via emulation.

Pirates represents some of my most cherished gaming memories from my childhood. The original was light years ahead of its time fluidly combining aspects of several genres into one incredible package with almost endless replayability. Sail the seas, collect bounties, raid merchants, attack forts, search for buried treasure, woo the governor's daughter, the possibilities are endless.

Between this and the Gold Box series, kept me happy from about 1987 to, oh.... now :) Couldn't believe what realism this game had back in the day: a functioning international economy that fluctuated with disease and gold strikes... towns that remembered your face after you robbed it of it's gold and booties... land and sea battles that changed based on terrain, prevailing winds, or ship type... growing prestige and notoriety that forced you to eventually retire because you just couldn't outdo yourself... all on a double sided floppy! Glad to see they brought one of the best games EVER back!!