Too Long; Didn't Play: Sid Meier's PIRATES!

Sponsored By: OldMud

Time Played: 51 minutes

Arr! Review

A re-released classic gets re-re-released on Steam, and surprise-surprise, it's worth-worth your time-time.

Yaaaarrrrrrrr! Review

Sid Meier's Pirates!, not to be confused with American McGee's Pirates! (which is a macabre remake of Peter Pan, because he knows what sells) or Jonathan Blow's Pirates! (which is a dog-catching simulation because BLEEP you if you don't get the metaphor) or Peter Molyneaux's Pirates! (which is coming any quarter now, and will be awesome), but Sid Meier's Pirates! first came out in July of 1987, and was remade in 2004. In 1987, I was still playing Atari 2600 games (I didn't get a Nintendo Entertainment System until 1990, but that's another story). I didn't own a PC that could play video games in 2004. At that point I was nursing along a 4-year-old candy-apple-red iMac that needed to use virtual memory to run The Sims, because nobody sold RAM for iMacs if they weren't gouging for it. I heard about Sid Meier's Pirates! from a friend who was big into PC gaming. The one thing that he said about it that really stuck in my mind was how thick the manual was. It weighs in at 143 pages. I fully recommend reading it as an example of how stupid it was to stop having manuals.

A few years later I came to own a PSP, and, in my desperate search to find fun games to play on it, stumbled across the PSP version Sid Meier's Pirates! The PSP was something of a game desert in those days if you weren't into Monster Hunter (which I swear I tried to be) or didn't have an understanding of why the PS2 replaced the PS1. So, naturally, I bought it and gave it a try. It became one of the games most often left in the system, the others being WTF and Chile Con Carnage. It was perfect for snack-gaming; bite-sized and quick to get into and out of.

I don't own a PSP anymore, so when I saw that Sid Meier's Pirates! was getting released on Steam I put it into my wishlist.

If my Steam friends list is a statistically significant sample of GW –, and I think it is, considering that only one person on it is not a member of the site (Hello, my dear wife!) – only twenty percent of you reading this own Sid Meier's Pirates!. This is good news for your humble correspondent, because it means I get to write about the game as if a significant portion of the audience hasn't heard of it.

Uhh, I think that most of them have played it, just not on Steam. —Greg's Better Judgement.

Quiet, you.

So, Sid Meier's Pirates! is a collection of swashbuckling minigames wrapped in a shipping-tycoon simulator. It's possible that I have that backwards, but never mind. The point is that if you want to live the life of a pirate as portrayed so convincingly by such giants of the silver screen as Yul Brynner and Errol Flynn, or if you're just sick of every modern pirate game having Jack Sparrow in it, then Sid Meier's Pirates! is a game for you.

The skeleton of the game is basically Caribbean Truck Simulator, but wind powered. I do mean literally wind powered. You have to factor the wind into your course, because sailing into the wind takes longer, which means your crew will get hungry, which means you need to allocate more cargo space for food, which means you have less space for cargo that brings in the dosh. Taking that into consideration, you buy as much cargo as your ship (or fleet) will hold, and try to find someplace that will buy it for more than you paid for it. While you're exploring, you'll find duels to fight, treasure maps to explore, governor's daughters to woo, and acts of piracy to commit.

Since this is a game that's a remake of a game that's a remake of a much older game (everybody got that?), the controls have a certain quaint charm to them. Honestly, when was the last time you played something that used the number keypad as the primary control device? You steer your ship with it, you dance with it, you duel with it. My right hand hasn't spent this much time stationary since I tried to use a trackball mouse. It still works, though, which I imagine is why nobody bothered to change it.

You don't want to just start committing random acts of piracy, though. There are four factions to contend with; the Spanish, the Dutch, the English and the French. At the start of the game you'll receive a letter of marque from the nation of your choice that will “authorize” you to loot, pillage and burn any ship that sails under a different nation's flag. If you tick off your own faction, you'll find goods and services more expensive, if not denied completely, in that nation's outposts. Fortunately, politics is like the sea – fluid, changeable and deceptively lethal – and ticking off one faction probably ingratiates yourself to a different one.

There are five mini-games to contend with during your adventures:

  • The Fancy Dress Ball, in which you complete a quicktime event to judge your ability to dance with the local governor's daughter. Your dancing partner gestures in a direction, and one of the keys on your heads-up-display flashes. Do well, and you might find yourself a wife eventually. The difficulty of the dance parties are signaled by the description of the governor's daughter. If she's “plain” you can head right to the ball as soon as you get your first ship. If she's “attractive” then you have to level up some before you ask her, and the dancing will be harder. If she's “beautiful” then you have to level up a lot and the dancing is much harder. Like I said: quaint.
  • The Sea Battle, in which you and another ship circle an arena, trying to land broadside cannon volleys until one of you is either sunk or captured. This is the most free-form mini-game. You sail your ship freely in the arena, firing at will to damage your opponent. You have the option of multiple kinds of cannon loads, from regular cannon balls (to damage the hull), to chain shot (to take out the sails), to grape shot (to take out the crew). You also have the option to simply sink the ship with cannon, or you can weaken her first and then bring yourself in close to board her, which generally leads to the next mini-game:
  • The Duel, in which you fight with swords in honorable, single combat. You'll fight duels to capture ships or to capture bounties. This is kind of a more complex Rock-Paper-Scissors game. You can thrust, parry, slash, chop, etc. Depending on what your opponent is doing, your attack will be blocked, stalemated or successful. A successful attack pushes your opponent back. Do that enough times and you'll be treated to a brief animation showing him surrendering or losing somehow. If you've defeated a captain, you get his ship and as many of his crew as are left after the Sea Battle. If you've defeated a bounty, you'll get the option to accept a bribe or to bring him to justice.
  • The Treasure Hunt, in which you disembark your ship onto an island that the map tells you has treasure somewhere. This is a free-form exploration mini-game where you and a handful of your crew wander around an island following the map. I confess I haven't played this one on the PC yet, and I almost never played it on the PSP version, wherein they did a lousy job explaining what to actually do.
  • The Escape, in which you play a basic stealth game to evade the authorities on your way out of town. This one was not in the PSP version at all, and I haven't progressed far enough into the PC version to actually encounter it. I look forward to trying it out.

The most striking thing, though, is how well the graphics hold up. Sure, the resolution of the map screen is on the low side, but the sailing, dueling, dancing, and everything else look wonderful. Seriously, this game is ten years old and I wouldn't have guessed it if I didn't already know it. It just goes to show that a good art style can truly be timeless.

I suppose that's a worthy description of Sid Meier games in general, though, isn't it?

Timeless.

Will Ye be disembarkin' for another adventure, Cap'n?

Yes, I believe I will. This game is a fine addition to the “pick up and play me when you have 20 minutes” pile. Everything about it plays as well today as it did 10 years ago, and if I had been playing PC games in 1987 I would probably say it plays as well as it did almost 30 years ago.

I hear that some games be havin' Dark Souls? Be this one of 'em?

That depends entirely on you. I played the game on Easy for this review, because I just wanted to get my sea-legs back under me. There are four difficulty levels above it, and above the easiest you're allowed to choose your timeline, which further modifies the difficulty.

In light of that, I think I'll give this one a solid 7 out of Dark on the Dark Souls scale. It's as challenging as you want it to be.

Comments

I still have the boxed version of the very first PC version, floppies (both 3,5" and 5,25", yay!), map, manual and all. It has to be one of the first games I stayed up to play whole night until dawn. Great times.

I actually played a fair bit of the original with my dad on our C64. I never really gave the remake a fair go, I'll have to try it again some time!

The remake is amazing. If there is ever a game that deserves a Firaxis sequel it is this one.

It's a pity it was so hard to mod, expansion content would really have shone. There's enough to do in the game that it'll keep you busy for quite a while, but additional stuff could fit in pretty easily.

I love this game, it's one of my all-time favorites.

But. I showed it to my nephew a few months back, and the governor's daughter component made me really uncomfortable seeing it through my nephew's eyes. He's beginning to give girls serious consideration, and here are women whose worth ("beautiful" ones give you pieces of rare maps to the lost City of Gold) and attractiveness are being categorized solely by their appearance; and their tier of attractiveness is depicted in-game largely by how low their bodice is and size of what's behind it. I tried in the moment to counter whatever effect this might have on my nephew by mocking it, but it really shook up my lasting impression of the game. It's a horrible depiction of women and there's no good way around that.

Anyway, on an entirely different topic, there's one other mini-game that you missed, DT, which is the town invasions. When you take a group of sailors up to a town from land, it triggers a turn-based light strategy game where you attempt to get one of your units to the gate of the town before losing all your sailors to the defending army. I found it to be very fun, and after infiltrating the town (if you've reduced it's military strength sufficiently) you can give the town to one of the factions, which can lead to an entertaining self-made goal of conquering the Caribbean for one of the colonial powers.

I missed this when it was new, but played for a while on my iPad, which is also a somewhat modified port without some features (it seems).

Given the game's age, I wonder whether it might run on a crap PC without discrete video? I notice there is also an Xbox port, and wonder if that's any good...

Budo wrote:

The remake is amazing. If there is ever a game that deserves a Firaxis sequel it is this one.

We got a sequel; it was just called "Assassin's Creed IV: Black Flag".

The original Pirates! on the C64 is on a very short list of my favoritest games EVER. Must . . . find . . . emulator . . .

MilkmanDanimal wrote:
Budo wrote:

The remake is amazing. If there is ever a game that deserves a Firaxis sequel it is this one.

We got a sequel; it was just called "Assassin's Creed IV: Black Flag".

The original Pirates! on the C64 is on a very short list of my favoritest games EVER. Must . . . find . . . emulator . . .

I was going to say that, but then I realized ACIV is just way to violent and nasty (which is totally fine, it's just that kind of game). I actually would love a combo of the cartoony Pirates! graphics with some of the details of Black Flag.

I play this every now and again. Such a great game. Relaxing as well - except for that stupid "sneak into town" mini-game! That could be downright difficult when the town was very antagonistic towards you.

Good god! How did I miss this thread? I played SO MUCH Pirates! when I was a kid. It was my happy place to go to and just play around. I also learned way too much about ships from that game. Probably one of my favorite C64 games.

I also played the updated PC version, the one that they ported over to the PSP. Unfortunately the PSP was not as entertaining because they did not play the music in places and it felt a little awkward. But the PC version was amazing, the minigames were alright, but I much preferred the adventuring on the high seas.

Such great memories all around for me from Pirates!

Being a really old man, I was a young adult when Pirates came out on the C64. Not only was I an adult, but I was serving my country in Erlangen Germany (then West Germany). This is how addicted I was to Pirates. We had a Corp Commander coming in to do an inspection. This is a 3-star general, a man that wields an incredible amount of power! So for an inspection like this, everything was cleaned, scrubbed, waxed, and then re-done about 10 more times. And I mean EVERYTHING! All so he could breeze through our company area in 2 minutes or maybe not even at all. Well, I was completely addicted to Pirates on my Commodore C128 and let's just say some of the areas I was in charge of were not exactly up to Army standards and the General noticed. If you've ever been chewed out by a General, it is not a pleasant experience because I knew he would not be the only one. The old saying that crap rolls downhill was true. My battalion commander caught crap, my company commander caught more crap, my platoon commander caught even more and on down the line. By the time it got down to me, let's just say it was enough crap to fill Mt. Everest. I almost got busted and lost my stripes, but managed to talk my way out of that. But I didn't have any time for Pirates for about 3 months as all my spare time was planned for me from 6 a.m. until 10 p.m. Good times!

So you are saying we nearly lost the Cold War due to Sid Meier's Pirates?

That manual!! I cannot for the life of me remember the dancing part, though. Guess I'll have to play it again.

Still have the boxed version for the PC. I bought this after discovering how much I liked the Sid Meier's Railroads game or maybe the other way around... I don't think I ever attacked a town. I missed that minigame completely.

KUThunderchief wrote:

Still have the boxed version for the PC. I bought this after discovering how much I liked the Sid Meier's Railroads game or maybe the other way around... I don't think I ever attacked a town. I missed that minigame completely.

There wasn't a whole lot to it. You sailed your ship back and forth firing your cannons at the town and they fired back. When you hit dirt, your crew disembarks and then your crew and the town's "crew" meet which was just you directing the movements of little blobs until they met up with their little blobs. Then it came down to sword fighting just like ship combat. The only real danger was the numbers of enemy troops tended to be much larger in towns, so if you didn't whittle them down very much, you had no chance in the swordfight.

Aristophan wrote:

So you are saying we nearly lost the Cold War due to Sid Meier's Pirates?

Well, whatever tiny part I was involved in then yes. I was in tanks on an M60A3 (the one we used right before the M1 came out) and my battalions job was to guard the Czech border, so if they had invaded when I was supposed to be cleaning for this inspection, then Western Civilization as we know it would indeed have crumbled.

Coolbeans wrote:
KUThunderchief wrote:

Still have the boxed version for the PC. I bought this after discovering how much I liked the Sid Meier's Railroads game or maybe the other way around... I don't think I ever attacked a town. I missed that minigame completely.

There wasn't a whole lot to it. You sailed your ship back and forth firing your cannons at the town and they fired back. When you hit dirt, your crew disembarks and then your crew and the town's "crew" meet which was just you directing the movements of little blobs until they met up with their little blobs. Then it came down to sword fighting just like ship combat. The only real danger was the numbers of enemy troops tended to be much larger in towns, so if you didn't whittle them down very much, you had no chance in the swordfight.

You could sail directly into the town and cut straight to the swordfight. What you described was the land battle system, which of course you could use to attack a town. But sailing in, braving the fort's fire, landing and taking out the enemy governor was just a wonderful thing.

One thing the original version had that was really cool that I don't believe is in the 2004 version was the ability to conquer a town and name the new governor. If you were British, you could make the new governor non-British and they would like you even if you were at war with their country.

I hated the dancing minigame in the 2004 version. The swordfighting was much simpler in the new version too. And while the new game's world felt more alive, with real time ships sailing around, I liked the sense of solitude and isolation in the old game where it was just you on the map and occasionally (at least once a game month) you would sight a ship. It also rewarded you for knowing the shipping routes and paying attention to the calendar as the treasure fleet would sail in a certain pattern at certain times of the year.

The weather in the old game was much better, I think. Sailing against the wind was brutal in the original. In the new game it is an inconvenience.

The only thing the new game does better (aside from graphics) is that it took out the sun sight mini-game. You used it to calculate your position if you had no landmarks in sight. While that was sort of realistic, it also was not much fun.

All in all, the original is one of my favorite games of all time. The new one was interesting for a little while but did not have enough to keep my interest.

wanderingtaoist wrote:

I still have the boxed version of the very first PC version, floppies (both 3,5" and 5,25", yay!), map, manual and all. It has to be one of the first games I stayed up to play whole night until dawn. Great times.

I still have the "boxed" version of the original C-64 version, including the map. Boxed is in quotes because the box was some kind of weird notebook-style box. I also have the boxed versions of Pirates Gold (PC) and the more recent PC version. Pirates Gold was forgettable, but I thought the remake was very good.

I never did get it on Steam, though.

I might have missed some assignments in college from the original game, but never got chewed out by a General for it. I thought for sure I played the original in HS, but it was released after I had left for college.

tboon wrote:

I hated the dancing minigame in the 2004 version. The swordfighting was much simpler in the new version too. And while the new game's world felt more alive, with real time ships sailing around, I liked the sense of solitude and isolation in the old game where it was just you on the map and occasionally (at least once a game month) you would sight a ship. It also rewarded you for knowing the shipping routes and paying attention to the calendar as the treasure fleet would sail in a certain pattern at certain times of the year.

The weather in the old game was much better, I think. Sailing against the wind was brutal in the original. In the new game it is an inconvenience.

The only thing the new game does better (aside from graphics) is that it took out the sun sight mini-game. You used it to calculate your position if you had no landmarks in sight. While that was sort of realistic, it also was not much fun.

I have to agree with much of what you said here. My hatred of the dancing game improved to mild dislike after a while. I did like the sneak into/out of town games, though. They had a lot of tension.

I certainly missed the Treasure Fleet (and the Silver Train!) from the original. Sailing against the wind did seem much easier in the remake, too.

I always had trouble with the sword fighting game in the original, playing with an Atari-style joystick on the C-64. It rarely gave me a problem in the remake.

I also felt that taking a town was much easier in the remake. I don't remember being very successful with that in the original.

I only vaguely remember the sun sighting game from the original, so I must have avoided using it.

I definitely found the treasure fleet in the PC remake last decade.

Anyway:

Coolbeans wrote:

When you hit dirt, your crew disembarks and then your crew and the town's "crew" meet which was just you directing the movements of little blobs until they met up with their little blobs.

Great, now I'm conflating my memories with this:

IMAGE(http://www.mobygames.com/images/shots/l/181-the-ancient-art-of-war-dos-screenshot-zoomed-battle-fighting.gif)

wordsmythe wrote:

I definitely found the treasure fleet in the PC remake last decade.

Anyway:

Coolbeans wrote:

When you hit dirt, your crew disembarks and then your crew and the town's "crew" meet which was just you directing the movements of little blobs until they met up with their little blobs.

Great, now I'm conflating my memories with this:

IMAGE(http://www.mobygames.com/images/shots/l/181-the-ancient-art-of-war-dos-screenshot-zoomed-battle-fighting.gif)

I was about to say that was Ancient Art of War which was an okay game, but couldn't hold a candle to Pirates!

I loved the remake. I hade a playthrough where I conquered the entire Carribean in the name of the United Provinces.

Imbriglicated!