Pirates!

1990 retro games Commodore 64 gamesPC gamesAtari ST gamesApple gamesAmiga games

role-playing gamesadventure gamesarcade games

In the world of no rules all you have to do is survive. And build your own career among the pirates of the Caribbean.

The Caribbean islands in 16th century were the lands of opportunity for some, the new homeland for others and the hunting grounds for the pirates. And this Sid Meier’s was giving the player a chance to be whoever he wanted to be. To begin with you are just a captain of a tiny ship is some Caribbean port or a beginner in a pirating craft who will fight for his first vessel. Whatever happens from that point is entirely up to you the player. There is no story, there are no sidequests, there is no tutorial - once you are in charge of a ship you can travel anywhere, find your own way of making money and gaining fame.

Once you choose your nationality, it will determine which of the nations present in the Caribbean will be friendly towards you, while all of the others (or most, depending on current political situation) will be hostile. Of course you can sail between the ports, buy and sell goods, gain the trust of the governors of some particular regions, but this could be boring. Of course you can just become a pirate and rob others, who sail between the ports, but this could be risky. Also there is another way - you could become a privateer. A privateer is an individual, who is formally not part of the fleet of that nation of the country, but could be an ally of such fleet. In exchange for money and titles, of course.

As you can guess, you can also be fluent about your status - once you could be privateer on service for Spain, turn into pirate, become privateer for the Dutch or the English, just to betray them and rob them as well. Whichever way you will choose to follow, Pirates! will let you be yourself. Not only you can choose your own path in life, but also you can choose different approach to almost any task you take on - you can attack a port and pillage the town, you can sneak in and make some shady trades, you can bombard the fort until the city will surrender, you can land an infantry party and attack from the land.

Of course, there are some limitations - most of the time the outcome of your attacks will be decided by a fencing duel with the commander of the other side, but other options are always at the reach of your hand. You can board the enemy ship and try to win the duel, shoot the opponents and count on them surrendering or try to intimidate them to just give up. You can capture pirates or known commanders and keep the for ransom, take over their ships and build your own fleet, in some cases take over a town and place a new governor out of your choice, which will change the overall balance around the Caribbean.

And all of it you can do in an open-world game made in late 1980s by the brilliant team of creators from Microprose. I can’t even remember how many hours I have spent playing this game, how many times I was captured as the worst pirate around and then suddenly escaped or how many missions to find a buried treasure or long-lost family member have I finished. This was one of the best games ever made - a perfect mixture of adventure, a bit of survival, a bit of politics, naval battles, fencing duels and even building your own wealth for the moment you decide to retire.

comments

amazing game, used to play it for hours
amazing (19-02-2025 08:37:17)

Modern-day game developers should learn from titles like Pirates! how to build a title that will never get boring.
bob (22-11-2024 13:35:23)

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