I have been a big fan of the pirate strategy genre for a long time. I purchased Corsairs back when it first came out because about every 5 years I'm looking for the next game in the genre. I personally thought that it was an okay game, but hardly added anything new from a gameplay or graphical perspective. Frankly I think Pirates! Gold is still the gold standard and is available on GOG. If that's too old of a game for you then the Port Royale series (also available on GOG) does a lot of the same things that Corsairs tried and is a better overall product. I would choose any Port Royale or Sid Meier Pirates game (including the "cartoonish" newer remake) over Corsairs. One lesser known pirates strategy game that I would like to see on GOG would be Cutthroats: Terror on the High Seas. That game is what I would consider an advanced difficulty version (it is seriously a challenge) of the Sid Meier games, but doesn't get into the non-pirating gameplay modes of trying to manage ports or colonies, etc. Just straight pirating games are what I like; attack ships, attack colonies, sell the booty, rinse and repeat. However, if you want a pirate game with a little more substance than that, go with Port Royale 2. That's my best advice as a die-hard pirate fan.
Games like this are exactly the reason why I'm on GOG. The 7th Guest is not as well known as many other titles, but long time fans the Adventure genre know that its considered to be a FMV classic, a point and click classic, and yes a horror classic. Predating even the Alone in the Dark games, the 7th Guest in my eyes was one of the horror adventure games to inspire many to come for its well paced atmosphere. In that era of adventure games the developers were utilizing live action FMV (Full Motion Video) to help tell the story through cutscenes. The two classics of this era being Phantasmagoria which went the shock horror route, and The 7th Guest which went the creepy atmosphere route. Both did what they did extrememely well. The 7th Guest has a pretty straightforward interface and any seasoned adventure gamer will pick it up in a matter of minutes because it not much different than the original Myst. The puzzles can range from fairly novice to painstaking trial and error. There generally aren't many clues to solving the puzzles, you just have to spend some time figuring them out and moving on. A few of the detractors from the game, is well its obvious age. FMV doesn't tend to age well. Additionally the pacing of the game is deliberately slow, which again in this day and age goes counter to the norm and for the wrong gamer could become a snooze-fest. Then again those type of gamers aren't going to likely be interested in any adventure games so that's pretty much stating the obvious isn't it. LOL However if you have the patience, and especially if you are an adventure and/or horror fan, you absolutely owe it to yourself to play one of the grandfathers of gaming. This was a highly under-rated gem at its time, and it would be a tragedy for it to be ignored by the GOG masses today. Buy it now.
Although Ultima 3 for the NES was my first Ultima it wasn't what hooked me forever on the Ultima Series. That honor goes to Ultima 6 when I played it on my brand new 486. These games deserve a place in any gamer's library. However, my main reason for this 'review" is to address the compatibility problems that people are having with 5 & 6 in Windows Vista and 7. The games were not working for me either (Windows 7), but I ran the "Graphic mode setup" application located in the game folder in the Start Menu. From here you can launch the games and play them. Its not a perfect solution as these games should run perfectly fine (and have for years using Dosbox manually), but if you're having trouble, give this work-around a shot. I hope this helps.
