Pirates! Gold Plus

I used to play this game on Commodore 64 in 1986, the graphics was, when compared the games of its era, fantastic, musics, the best I have heard in Commodore, the world you play in was real world with real and living cities. When you are in a town you can ask the bartender in an inn to get the latest news. Sometimes about a gold vein found in a city, which leads population and wealth boom. Sometimes femine hits a city. Sometimes countries goes to war. and sometimes they make peace. Cities can be captured by enemy countries during the war, you can also help your nation capture towns by raiding them. And ofcourse you can slowly climb the ranks of your choosen countries navvy, gaining land and reputaiton on the way. And with luck you can marry the daughter of the mayor. There are two fleets of Spaniards, Tressure Fleet and Silver Train. If you know in which date in which city they will be in you can track them down for extra gold and the best in game ship, galleon. All in 64kb Ram. This is a classic, may be the best game of Sid Meier.

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.