Pirates! Gold Plus

Pirates! Gold for the Sega Genisis was the Holy Grail of video games back in the day. Blockbuster Video was the only place where I could rent it and man those were a great 5 days filled with hours of sailing, looting, and trying to find your lost family members/burried treasure. This PC version is a very close proximity to the Sega version, but you really miss out on the refinement that came with a console version. This version is a little clunky on movement as it just feels like the interface lags across the board. Trying to turn your ship real quick and avoid cannon fire? You're probably not going to make that turn. Trying to thread the needle with your ship to avoid the coral to disembark? Odds are you're going to lose a couple of ships. Don't get me wrong, you would hit coral all the time in the Sega version, but here it's mainly do to the sluggish keyboard and mouse controls and not because you're trying to push your luck. The town interface is pretty basic in this version. You move your mouse to the building, click, and bam, you're at the merchant's, the bar, or the mayor's house. It's not bad, and in fact it's quicker than the Sega version, but there was just something really cool about walking around town in the Sega version and hearing your captain's shoes clicking on the streets of the town. The music in this version is also not as refined and robust as the Sega version which is really disappointing as the music in the bar was easily one of my favorite bits of music in a game. It was just the music to Drunken' Sailor, but damn, I would leave that playing sometimes while doing my homework it was that good. Again, if you're expecting this to be the refined console version that was an epic adventure game you might be a little disappointed. But, if you're looking for a stripped down version for the PC, give it a go. I would suggest maybe you just skip this one just go emulate the Sega version and complete the Ten Great Pirate Quests!

I'm not only a retro gamer but do so on retro hardware. GOG is often the only place you can find old games for your 386 etc (mostly because GOG now owns the rights to what was previously considered abandonware) . I'm fine with that, as I can often strip away the DOSbox emulator files and the original code is still there and will run without the need of DOSbox on the appropriate hardware and OS. Not so with GOG's original Pirates! The game's code seems to be compacted into "disk" files, that I'm assuming DOSbox can read to access the original games files. There may be a way to uncompact them, but I'll let someone else figure that out. As is this purchase was less than worthless to me, and GOG has made it so the game is practically lost to the original hardware as the only legitimate place to find the original game is on 40 year old floppies that often don't work and are going for stupid money on eBay.

6 of 5 must play. 5 of 5 great story great gameplay. 4 of 5 great story average gameplay. 3 of 5 average story average gameplay. 2 of 5 play only if it's your favorite genre. 1 of 5 play if you have nothing better to do. 0 of 5 play if you're a masochist -1 of 5 avoid Pirates Gold Plus scores 1 of 5.