Pirates! Gold Plus

I remember loving this game, playing endless hours and many days at it back in the late 80's. It was such fun that my sister, brother, and even mother soon began playing and were hooked on it too! The map and sailing the caribbean taught me the geography there which I recall to this day. Although some of the graphics were primitive back then, the game was still great and provided awesome role playing for that time. I managed after many many fun times to bring my pirate to the highest level at his retirement. Sure miss those times.

I spend hours playing this game with my father on his old DOS computer when I was about seven years old. Definitely brings back memories. The game itself is a sophisticated port which runs flawelessly on my mac late 2011. It just feels like playing in the old days. There is even a numpad simulator... Under the line: absolutely great.

This game is in the class of game that made me join GOG in the first place (or would have been had it been available when I joined). Short version: It's a classic - play it! At it's core, Pirates! Gold is making 3 choices starting with an era (most choices being 20-30 year chunks from the late 16th to early 18th centuries) one of four nationalities (Dutch, English, Spanish or French - though Dutch is not available in the earliest scenario). Finally you round out your "character" with a skill (swashbuckling swordsmen, competent navigator, etc). From these choices the game then gives you a background-suitable ship and plonks you into the Caribbean within a day or so's sail of a port owned by the same nation your character hails from (again in the very early era's when Spain owns basically everything this may not be the case). However it's now completely up to you. You can sail into the port, immediately go looking for a ship to attack or set off into the blue - basically whatever you like. It was one of the first games I can remember that gave me that Elder-scrolls like feeling of "well, you're on your own kiddo!". It is almost sand-box like in that while the "goal" is to retire with as much gold, loot and land as you can get your grubby little hands on, the fun is in how you choose to get there. You can be a Bloodthirsty scourge upon all shipping, or on the other hand you could even try and simply try your hand at legitimate trade. You can align with all or none of the nations, or play them off turning your coat and purchasing pardons as it suits. Each area of the game is essentially a minigame from duels to land and sea battles searching for treasure. There is a risk/reward mechanic in that the easiest paths to gold are also usually the most likely to endanger the longevity of your pirate, so you must constantly weigh up the price of failure. It is a fun blend of sim, strategy, management and light rpg. Now, play it or walk the plank, Sah!

Sid Meier's Pirates! is a definitely one of the very old-school games. Which is to say, if you actually want to prosper in the game, it'll be nerve-splittingly hard. You just can't sell old games to newbies these days - fortunately, the game industry has learnt to actually provide us games with a sensible difficulty curve and you can no longer sell a ridiculously short game under the guise of unforgiving difficulty. But this time, the difficulty doesn't mask a game you can just stroll through in ten minutes with infinite health. And this time, the difficulty level won't mean that sunday gamers won't be getting anything out of the game. I think that has always been the brilliant part about Sid Meier's designs - he makes games that have actual depth to them, and games that have something for everybody. (For comparison, you can be the suckiest strategist ever in Civilization series, and still have tons of fun.) So here we have a game that doesn't really need a lot of explaining. A jolly old pirate romp - nay, the mother of all pirate romps on personal computers! You start with a small ship and barely anything at all. Be a good guy, hunt pirates, or become a privateer. Be a bad guy and plunder frigging everything. Capture ships, assault towns, do epic cannon battles and fence your way to victory. You can either care about what's going on, or not. It doesn't matter, because a pirate is free, you are a pirate.</meme> I didn't actually try out the original DOS version included in this bundle, because the first version I played was the C64 one, and I doubt the glory is the same. But the Pirates Gold remake is absolutely incredible - great graphics style, good music, and an appropriate amount of "arrrrr!" sound effects make the game feel sufficiently modern in every way. So support *true* software piracy today and get this incredible game! Final breakdown of the stars: 4 stars for the concept, -1 star for a *slight* unexplainable feeling of they-really-ought-to-have-modernised-this-further, +2 stars because in the end of the day, it's *just that much fun*.

I remember being a little kid and spending hours a day playing this on the Apple IIc. I've always had love for this game and I even still, to this day, have a giant xerox copy of the original map hoisted on the wall over my monitor. I suppose this means my free time is now swept away once more. If you played the 2K Games remake, you got a small taste of what Pirates! actually is. Nothing can compare to the 1987 title and is one of the greatest games of all time, imo.