PIRATES - microprose!

[child of Thor]

I loved this game and really wished that it had been followed and expanded on(ok there was a Pirates Gold).
So far i've also bought 'Cuthroats'(published by Eidos), but even though this was basically a 'Pirates' for pentiums and upwards it just didn't quite cut it. It was almost the perfect upgrade but it ended just very 'samey' and somehow not as addictive as Sids origonal game.
A list of also rans:
1. Buccaner(can't remember who published it - had dodgy art work though!)
2. High Sea Traders(ditto)
3. and i think some other game.(?)

Why was it never really pushed to it's limits? As a game it's got lots going for it:

Nice little role play element(choose your character traits that have an effect ingame)
Great Pirate theme(yeah burn and pillage - give me more dubloones)
Tactical Naval combat(that seemed ok to me)
Great little story elements - discover lost relatives,get married etc! End rank system - how i loved being a lowly beggar!
Buried Treasure - hunt for it for ages!
'Civ' aspect - you could take over another nations towns(this could be really expanded upon in a Pirates2)
Tactical land combat - it worked in a quaint 'old-world' way.

one bad element might have been the(realistic) wind direction in the Spanish main - jeez but it could take an age to go into the wind in anything over a sloop!

It was a little polished gem of 8-bit + 16-bit engineering. I wanna be a millenium pirate! Anyone else want to see a Pirates2?

[Lemmy]

i never *really* played pirates, i got it from the underdogs after i heard a lot of peopl talk about it on forums like this one.
But i would like to see a new Pirates type game...i read somewhere that Tropico 2 has something to do with pirates...but i think you have to manage some sort of pirate island then, not actually sail somewhere

[child of Thor]

Tropico isn't quite 'there' ,not in the Pirates sense anyway, but i like the idea of setting up and managing a pirate town in some nice tropical sunshine!
I played this game last on an Amiga, but i know it came out on PC - i've looked in bargin bins on the off chance. Still maybe its one of those games that would look real primative now? Still i really like the setting - real adventure stuff! It's surpriseing that a real update hasn't been completed yet - like a lot of games it's been attempted, but not bested. Viva Pirates!

[Skanky Burns]

Pirates was an awesome game. It would be really good to see a newer, more expanded version of the game.

[Paul Go Gain]

The best game ever, at least for the C64. It was more like a movie. The Gold version was really buggy.

[child of Thor]

So has anyone else played any of the Pirate wannabes? I was always looking for any similar games that came out and i think 'buccaneer' might have come closest, anyone else play it? And what did you think of it in comparison to Pirates(it came out about 5years after Pirates). I think this could be an awesome game to upgrade and do now.

[Zkribbler]

I thought "Cutthroats" came kinda close. Plus I liked the idea of having officers and the land combat was much better.

But it was too buggy. All to often, a couple of my guys would get stuck in a building they were plundering and couldn't come out. Because men were still in the city, I had to sail my ships away from town real time, which took about 1/2 hour. And the game could keep the nationalities straight. I'd be out plundering the towns of the evil English, sail back to my Spanish port and be punished for plundering Spanish towns.

[Nostromo]

Originally posted by child of Thor
I loved this game and really wished that it had been followed and expanded on(ok there was a Pirates Gold).
So far i've also bought 'Cuthroats'(published by Eidos), but even though this was basically a 'Pirates' for pentiums and upwards it just didn't quite cut it. It was almost the perfect upgrade but it ended just very 'samey' and somehow not as addictive as Sids origonal game.
A list of also rans:
1. Buccaner(can't remember who published it - had dodgy art work though!)
2. High Sea Traders(ditto)
3. and i think some other game.(?)

Why was it never really pushed to it's limits? As a game it's got lots going for it:

Nice little role play element(choose your character traits that have an effect ingame)
Great Pirate theme(yeah burn and pillage - give me more dubloones)
Tactical Naval combat(that seemed ok to me)
Great little story elements - discover lost relatives,get married etc! End rank system - how i loved being a lowly beggar!
Buried Treasure - hunt for it for ages!
'Civ' aspect - you could take over another nations towns(this could be really expanded upon in a Pirates2)
Tactical land combat - it worked in a quaint 'old-world' way.

one bad element might have been the(realistic) wind direction in the Spanish main - jeez but it could take an age to go into the wind in anything over a sloop!

It was a little polished gem of 8-bit + 16-bit engineering. I wanna be a millenium pirate! Anyone else want to see a Pirates2?

Have you tried "Sea Legends"? It's on the Underdogs, free of charge. Here: http://www.the-underdogs.org/

[Juggler]

Just can't forget those old VGA and EGA graphics. Pirates are certainly on the top of my favourite games list but I'd also like to see Pirates2.
BTW, does anyone remember which was the best ship in the game (I think it was something like the royal galleon)?

[Paul Go Gain]

i don't think there was a "best ship". Big, powerful ships were just to clumsy. I liked frigates/fast galions and barques best.

[child of Thor]

Zkribbler,
Yeah i meant 'Cutthroats' not 'Bucaneer'(that was one of the bad spin-offs i think). I kinda liked 'Cutthroats' too and it was just a bit buggy. It expanded on Pirates in good ways, just never really pulled it off somehow. I liked the more detailed ship to ship combat, being able to choose the type of shot to fire at the enemy(sink him,ruin his sails or kill the crew), i liked the land based combat and the fact it was quite broad in scope - you could take captives for ransom(the wealthier the citizen the better), or just slaughter whole towns!
It didn't have the family quests and the bugs and something about the way the game felt - just made it feel like a missed opportunity. I did go back to play Pirates on my Amiga(had to blow a fair bit of dust away!) just to see if maybe i was giving Cutthroats a hard time, but in the end it was just that Pirates was more fun to play.

Nostromo,
thanks very much for the link! I'll try it later tonight and i'm intrigued!

Juggler and Paul Go Gain,
Yeah a Pirates2 would be a great game(if it could be released finished for once as seems the norm thesedays.), and i always had Fleets of Barques mixed with a few Sloops(I just HATED trying to sail around the map into the wind), these were the only ships that could make a decent getaway from the big-ships by turning into the wind.

Wonder if Sid has ever thought of a follow up?

[Skanky Burns]

The biggest ship was the Royal Galleon IIRC. The best ship would arguably be the frigate or barque.

The worst problem in the game was a saving bug. I started that scenario where you had heaps of men and ships, and were set to loot the richest towns. And that I did, landing near the towns, walking the rest of the way (so they didn't hide their gold) and then looting them for all they were worth. I did 20 cities, saving just after winning, then quit.

The next time I loaded the game, I found that saving in town without your ship corrupted the savegame - and ALL of my savegames were now useless

[Lemmy]

Wonder if Sid has ever thought of a follow up?

you could always try and make your own pirates sequel/clone

[Paul Go Gain]

I didn't like the clones, I played the one by Eidos called "Pavillon Noir" (probably "Cutthroats"). I recently read that Sid Meier's is working on a sequel of "one of his 80s designs" ...

[Playa del Carmen]

Originally posted by child of Thor
Great little story elements - discover lost relatives,get married etc!

Yeah, I like that too, but the getting married thing always felt funny.

[Zkribbler]

...Not only that, the daughters of the governors didn't give information to married men. So, I didn't get married until the end of the game...and then only to a total babe. That brought me the most points.

[Paul Go Gain]

I think you should rather read it as "married". The gouvernor's daughters part seems to bit a little unrealistic to me. Ahem

[child of Thor]

Still all it really did was add to your end game rank(and to my mind my characters prestige!), along with all the other bits and pieces. I really liked that aspect of the game. I don't think i ever got much higher than a Tavern keeper! Even after one massive game where i basically turned the caribian english! Maybe to be politically correct a new version of Pirates should have the option to marry either the governers daughter or son! Heh even an option to choose your sex! This kind of thing really made Pirates the game it was to me. It felt like i had achieved something worth the time i'd spent playing the game.

[Playa del Carmen]

Originally posted by child of Thor
Maybe to be politically correct a new version of Pirates should have the option to marry either the governers daughter or son! Heh even an option to choose your sex!

I could go for that.

[Dale]

I loved Pirates!!!!

I used to live in that game on the C64.

COT:

I used to get King's Advisor all the time. The only way I could do it is get all 4 nations to Duke, get married to a hot chick, and do all the Ten Great Quests.

[child of Thor]

Hey Dale,
nice to see ya here! and know you were a pirate-aholic too! Man it just eat-up months of playing for me, a very good game. I had an Atari800 around the time it came out on C64, and it was never released on that platform - had to wait till i got an Amiga to try it out. The Amiga version was much tougher than the PC for some reason(?). It was such a great concept and almost flawless in action. What i would give for a proper update. More ship types, more tactical angle(like 'Cutthroats' tried to do), a bigger area to ply ones trade.The ability to set-up your own pirate towns(like Henry Morgan used to do!). The potential scope for this game makes me(nearly) want to cut off a leg and get some sailing in. I guess for those of us who loved this game more than our girlfriends at the time we can hope maybe Sid has this on a back-burner somewhere. See you back in CTP2 sometime - i'm going to download your latest version of WAW very soon

[Dale]

I guess for those of us who loved this game more than our girlfriends at the time we can hope maybe Sid has this on a back-burner somewhere.

Dunno about girlfriends, I was only about 10 at the time.

See you back in CTP2 sometime - i'm going to download your latest version of WAW very soon

Speaking of which, I played a game last weekend where I was between two Evil Genius's. OUCH!!!!! Pity they decided to use my nation as the ground for banging each other's heads!