Pirates!
Pirates! is a game by Sid Meier, originally for the C64 and released for the CPC by Microprose in 1987.
This game was one of the best of its generation, with a depth and replay value far beyond many other productions. You are basically a pirate/privateer/trader in the Caribbean and the goal of the game is to retire rich, influential, and married. There are also abducted relatives of yours you are supposed to track down. The length of the game is primarily determined by the character's health, e.g. if you get wounded in battle too often, you will not be able to sustain a very long career.
Gameplay consists of setting out to sea, plundering towns and looting ships, also trading, finding the occasional hidden treasure, etc. Every few years, you divide up the plunder (kill off some of your own men before that in battle, this will increase their happiness and share of the loot), then start another expedition. The length of each expedition depends on the morale of the crew (so frequently check morale by pressing fire or space, then select "party status"). At some point they will mutiny if you go on too long without dividing up the plunder.
Versions
The game was ported to most 1980's 8-bit/16-bit machines: C64 (looks quite a lot like the Amstrad CPC version), Atari ST, Amiga, PC and more.
Some new updated versions were made too: "Pirates! Gold" (with VGA colours on PC) and a modern PC "Sid Meier's Pirates!" 3D version in 2004.
Pirates! includes a lot of Graphics (Mode 0) and music. The game is notable for being one of the (too) rare 6128 specific game: only disk version and 128KB RAM were supported. In theory, 464 (+ disk drive) and 664 with Extra Ram upgrade should work. (maybe not ?)
This port of Pirates! is also notable for its underlying structure being written in Locomotive BASIC, augmented with machine code routines for graphics, audio, and the arcade portions of the game. Presumably this is largely the same BASIC code as in the C64 version, although on the C64 it is apparently much harder to access than on the CPC (where the files are not hidden in the catalog and only protected by the standard ",p" BASIC protected mode).
Despite it's ultimate awesomeness, the Amstrad CPC port was a bit slow and graphics could have been a bit better. They were somewhat obvious as a C64 port in that respect.
As a result, most graphics, while not bad, didn't make the best use of the specific CPC palette and most graphics look like having the C64 colour attribute—no more than 4 colours per characters and some bad ink choices.
Video
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Game map of the Caribbean
Download
Links
- Pirates! at CPC-Power
- The lost tavern More infos about different versions of the game, manual and map downloads
- Pirates! on the C64-Wiki
- Pirates! at the English-language Wikipedia
