The Age of Sail. Swashbuckling pirates. Hidden treasure. The freedom of the open sea. The drama of warring factions. The responsibility of a ship and crew.
Pirates are the perfect setting for video game adventure, yet shockingly few games explore it.
Assassin’s Creed 4: Black Flag did it back in 2013, and the world fell instantly in love, with most fans still declaring it the best game of the historical adventure series.
Now with the recent announcement of upcoming remake, Assassin’s Creed Black Flag Resynced, it’s time another beloved pirate game got its flowers: Sid Meier’s Pirates!.
Infamous Legend
Sid Meier’s Pirates! originally released all the way back in 1987 on the Commodore 64 and Apple II. Legendary game designer, Sid Meier, had yet to concoct his magnum opus, Sid Meier’s Civilization (1991), but his rising stardom as a programmer and game studio co-founder inspired MicroProse to put his name right on the title — a gimmick that stuck around for future titles such as the Civ series.
| If you’re interested in Sid Meier’s career — and PC gaming throughout the 80’s, 90’s and 2000s, I highly recommend his autobiography: Sid Meier’s Memoir: A Life in Computer Games. |
Not just a simple adventure game, Sid Meier’s Pirates! was a real-time, open world simulation of the Caribbean, letting players freely explore the Gulf, Florida, Central America, and the Caribbean Islands around the 17th century.
Using randomized events and multiple eras, players recruit and manage their crew of scoundrels while searching for treasure, dealing with colonial powers, sinking ships, dueling enemy captains, and even getting married.
The successful pirate sim formula spawned not one but two remakes in the decades to come.
Pirates! Gold, image from Steam
Pirates! Gold released in 1993, featuring 256-color VGA graphics and MIDI score music for MS-DOS, Mac, Windows 3.1, and, randomly, Sega Genesis. It was a modernized testament to how good the original formula was.
The version most of us are most familiar with is the second remake, called Sid Meier’s Pirates: Live the Life (though commonly abbreviated to just Sid Meier’s Pirates!). Sid Meier’s Pirates! released in 2004 as a full 3D remake of the classic pirate sim, yet once again remained incredibly faithful to the original historical simulation of the 1980s.
Though I had dabbled in the ’93 version as a young gamer, it was the 2004 version I played the most, sinking dozens of hours into multiple playthroughs, including a recent one this week!
A Pirate’s Life for Me
The 2004 version of Sid Meier’s Pirates! adds some fun RPG elements, turning our pirate character into a specific person (though we could still name him). The game kicks off with the main character’s family getting captured by the villainous Marquis Montalban. Our young hero escapes, joins a ship crew, and eventually leads a mutiny, becoming the new pirate leader of his first ship.
The main story involves hunting down powerful pirate villains for maps to the lost family, but I’m also free to join any of the four colonial factions, English, French, Dutch, and Spanish, or all four, or none of them. I can acquire treasure maps and powerful artifacts and taverns, battle and sink every ship I see, or treat the game as an economy simulator and peacefully buy and sell luxuries, goods, and sugar across the Caribbean.
Why yes, I did name my pirate Guybrush, after another legendary pirate game!
The open world exploration uses real wind-physics, making it painful to sail against the wind, while ship movement and combat is handled with the number pad (or mouse, using on-screen controls).
The map and art style mostly holds up, featuring bright colors, 3D animated ships, and clear names for every settlement and sea.
Exploring the Caribbean still looks and plays great
The same can’t quite be said of land-based travel, however. Embarking is needed to hunt down buried treasure or take on enemy fortifications (using simple but effect turn-based tactical battles), but the graphics and terrain look incredibly muddy and low-res by today’s standards.
Ship battles occur on a slightly different rendition of the world map, using the same controls.
Unleashing broadside blasts while turning to evade enemy fire is a solid strategy, and I can choose to quickly reef my sails, or switch to different shots to disable the ship, or destroy it. But it’s a bit too easy to simply charge the enemy ship to force the captain into a duel for an instant capture.
Dueling and dancing feature rhythm-based mini-games using the same numpad controls, with more powerful enemies (and more beautiful women, I’m not joking) demanding faster reflexes and skills.
Minigames are full of fun, dynamic animations
While the player has a ton of freedom, time continues to march on. Eventually my crew of scallywags grows unhappy. I’m encouraged to divide the plunder at the nearest town, giving away much of my riches (and any extra ships I’ve acquired). But, I get to keep any special items that enhance my abilities. I can also choose to move up in difficulty, which ups my overall score, but increases the challenge of the world. It’s an excellent method of gradually making things more difficult as the player becomes stronger.
Eventually my health will fall and I’ll be forced to retire. My end game score will reflect all the things I’ve accomplished, from ranking up with colonial powers, to defeating infamous pirates, to amassing vast amounts of wealth. Oh, and rescuing my long lost family, of course!
In future playthroughs I can start on higher difficulties, or choose different specializations, and enjoy another randomized simulation of the pirate life.
Golden Age of Piracy
Over 20 years later, Sid Meier’s Pirates! is still an excellent pirate sim, but there’s further room for improvement.
The story-based stuff is great, but forcing the player to embody a blond-haired, blue-eyed young man is too limiting. Plus, we need way more customization on our sails, flags, and ships! Boarding enemy ships could be a lot more involved, and land-based exploration could be much more interesting — even making it more text and event based would be better than just traveling to landmarks on the 3D map.
I also ran into some nasty bugs, including one that ground my playthrough to a halt when the game kept turning off Numlock on my keyboard, making me unable to use the standard controls except with the mouse (which is far clunkier).
But the core pirate sim formula is still incredibly solid, and even more impressive with its roots going all the way back to the 1980s.
Windrose, image from Steam
Assassin Creed: Black Flag’s vastly superior production scope, large open world, and incredible attention to historical detail arguably make it the better (and certainly more popular) pirate game, and I’m super excited for the upcoming remake. And recent indie early access release, Windrose, looks like a great take on the pirate theme in the popular Open World Survival Craft genre.
But for a purer pirate experience, Sid Meier’s Pirates! remains the gold standard in gaming, and more than deserving of another round of tweaks, improvements, and (slightly) updated graphical design.
Assassin’s Creed Black Flag Resynced will release on July 9 on PC, PlayStation, and Xbox. Sid Meier’s Pirates! (and Pirates! Gold) are available on Steam and GOG.
