March 26th, 2009

Dude, box art!Sid Meier’s Pirates! is the 2004 remake of a game by the same name originally released in 1987 for the Commodore 64 during Sid Meier’s tenure at MicroProse. Arriving first on PC, this Firaxis-developed remake of Pirates! was later ported to the Xbox, the PSP and Mac OS X.

Sid Meier’s Pirates! is a genre bender of a game featuring aspects of real time strategy, turn based strategy, simulation, stealth, exploration, adventure, and even some even light role-playing elements. Though Pirates! could be described as an amalgam of “mini-games”, that would be selling it short. There’s more depth to it than that, and everything is tied together nicely by the main character’s objective which is tracking down the evil Marquis de la Montalban who has enslaved his family. Activities such as sword fights, ship-to-ship naval battles, upgrading ships, turn-based land battles, trading with port merchants, capturing cities, and earning fame and fortune surpassing that of nine historical pirates are the locus to reaching this goal.
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February 11th, 2008

For years I thought that I’d lost my old 386 games. The first PC games that I ever played. They’re much of the reason that I’m contributing to this site today. I knew I had the hardware laying about here and there, but I could never find the old games I used to play. Recently, however, when cleaning out the old garage, a cache from my gaming past was recovered. For those interested in joining me while I wax nostalgic a little bit, read on.

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