Overview

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Review

Release Date: 1987
Platform: Commodore 64/128
Developer: MicroProse Software, Inc.
Publisher: MicroProse Software, Inc.

Reviewed by Luke Campbell on 9.19.2003

Review Rating: 10/10

User Rating: 7.6/10

Rarely is the word "perfect" used in relation to a game, as there is always a flaw that can be pointed out by a naysayer or a nitpicker. However, Sid Meier and his associates at Microprose achieved perfection in 1987 with the release of Pirates! for the Commodore 64. Released on one double-sided floppy disc, this game is sheer brilliance that is as infinitely replayable today as it was some sixteen years ago. In fact, there's more replay and depth in this 540k floppy than you'll find on most dvd "epics" we see nowadays. It's got four-color graphics and the music is sparse at best, but given the Commodore 64 hardware and the scope of this game, it's not something to be used for eye candy anyway.

Pirates! is, as you may have guessed, a game about pirates. But it's more than just a game about pirates; it's like having several different games about pirates all rolled into one: naval simulation, land war strategy, action, adventure... unlike many games that try to do many different things and end up doing none of them well, Pirates! does many different things well and sews them together into an unforgettable gaming experience.

The game starts simple enough, with a quick character creations. You pick a time period, ranging from the 1560s to the 1680s. Each time period has its differences, such as how powerful the Spanish are, and how friendly merchants and officials are towards pirates. Then you select a nationality: English, French, Dutch, or Spanish. English is generally the easiest (England actually backed a few pirates in the 1600s), and Spanish is the most difficult nationality to choose (many officials frown upon Spaniards, pirate or not). The next choice is your difficulty level: Apprentice, Journeyman, Adventurer, and Swashbuckler. The harder difficulty levels give you crewmen that are not as loyal and patient in the search for loot, and you'll also have to plan your travel routes around wind currents, whereas you can sail freely without much fear of mutiny on Apprentice or Journeyman. You then pick your skill: Fencing, Navigation, Gunnery, Medicine, or Wit and Charm. Each skill has its benefits (the medicine skill reduces the amount of time it takes to heal after being wounded, for example), but it is up to you to choose which one is best suited to the game you plan to play.

After creating and naming your character, you're presented with a brief history of your character, who is searching not only for treasure and fame, but for his lost family members, who have scattered over time. Some sailors ask you about the arrival date of either the Silver Train of Treasure Fleet, and it's your job to answer it correctly, or the game will warn you that you'll be heading into an "unpromising career." The correct answers can be found in the game's instruction manual, which was probably planned as a method to prevent software pirates from playing the game with much success, and this predates Hideo Kojima's use of the Metal Gear Solid game packaging in the game's storyline by roughly ten years.

Answer the question correctly, and you'll duel in a swordfight for command of a ship. This is an easy fight to win, and after winning you'll get a briefing from your first mate as to the current political and economic climate. The nearest ports for each nationality are noted, and then the game leaves itself open to be played however you see fit. While the overall goal is to find your family and retire wealthy, you certainly don't have to play that way. If you want to trade with friendly nations, you can, and if you want to loot the Spanish Main like there's no tomorrow, that is also an option. Either way, you'll start out in a friendly town, with all of the options available to you, and the town is a busy place, indeed...

Visiting the governor is the best way to get missions and earn any sort of status, so he is the first person to visit. He will normally tell you which nations his country is at war with, and if you're starting out, will offer you a Letter of Marque, which you should purchase. This helps you to gain access to other governors of the same nationality, and if you can play up to a certain nationality, the titles come quickly (Duke, Baron, etc). Also, you'll sometimes meet the governor's daughter, and depending on your status in the community, you just might be able to marry her, which adds to your status (retiring single counts against your ranking at the game's end). The governor will also occasionally hand down a mission that you can accept or refuse. These missions can involve something as simple as delivering a letter to another governor, or something as tricky as tracking down a certain pirate and bringing him back for questioning. It's wise to accept these missions, as they help you build trust and a small bit of recognition by the townsfolk, such as the men in the tavern.

The tavern is another useful place to stop in town. The news can be heard for free, which is good for keeping tabs on which countries are at war. Even attacking an ally of your country can harm your reputation, so it's important to keep updated. Also, town information can be purchased for a random fee from travelers. Town information consists of the population, the gold present, and the number of forts and soliders present. Sometimes the information tips you off to an enemy port that is prime for a plundering, other times it lets you know which ports to steer clear of (like the ones that dislike you and have many forts that can sink your ship in the harbor). You can also recruit more crewmen at the tavern, and every so often, an old sailor will offer to sell you a portion of a treasure map, which you should always buy if you have the gold available to do so.

Another town option is trading with a merchant. Some merchants will simply refuse to trade with pirates, but in pirate-friendly ports, this is a good way to boost your crew's morale. Sell off your excess supplies and bring on supplies you're running low on, or you can also repair and sell captured ships here, which is a good choice if you've got no use for that extra sloop or pinnace.

The other town options are to divide up the plunder, and to check your information. Dividing the plunder disbands the crew and gives you the option to either retire, plan another expedition, or advance to the next difficulty level. It's a good way for ridding yourself of a particularly whiny crew if need be, but you lose several months in preparing another ship and amassing a new crew. Checking the information lets you see things like your status, the crew status, the ship's log, as well as giving you the option to save your game while in town. Once you're done in town, select the "Leave Town" option, and prepare to head out, matey.

Travel by ship can be overwhelming at first, because your ship is one very small unit in a very large Spanish Main. Thankfully, a parchment-looking map was included with new copies of Pirates, so with the map unfolded, it's easy to tell where you are, and where you need to go. The ship controls are simple (don't forget, most Commodore 64 players used the old Atari 2600 joysticks to play Commodore games): you hold the stick in a direction, and the ship rotates in that direction. Once you've set a course, you can sail in a straight line, unless wind kicks up and takes your ship off its course, of you run into a reef. The wind's direction is easy to predict, as cloudbanks float overhead in whichever direction the wind is blowing, and the reef is visible in the water, so it's in your best interest to avoid sailing over it, as you can lose a ship immediately if you cross the reef.

Another interruption in your voyage comes in the form of your lookout spotting ships. First, he'll spot a sail. If you choose to investigate, he'll tell you which type of ship it is (galleon, merchantman, etc), and if you investigate further, he'll tell you which colors the ship is flying ("She's flying English colors, Captain."). At this point you can sail away, hail the ship for the latest news, or close for battle. While getting the latest news is always useful, capturing a ship in open waters will often soothe your unruly pirate crew.

Ship battles seem simple, but they're fairly complex. You're first given the option of which ship to use in the fight, provided that you have more than one. You must choose wisely, because a mismatched ship will perform poorly, and while it is possible to still emerge victorious, the odds would be working against you. For example, a Spanish galleon has a faster sailing speed than a sloop. So if you took a sloop into battle, you'd not only have a speed disadvantage, but a sloop also holds less men and fewer cannons, which means it would be a poor choice unless it was your only ship. After the ship is selected, the battle starts.

The battle is played out in overhead open water. Both ships are present on screen, and there are a few factors that can work in your favor, or work against you. Wind comes into play heavily, because it is hard to catch someone if you haven't got the wind with you. However, you can switch to a different sail set mid-battle, to change your speed and handling. The actual combat is simple, just aim your broadside towards the enemy, try to lead their boat a bit, and fire. A happy crew reloads faster than an unhappy one, so it's good to make sure your crew is happy. If you hit the ship, it will flash red and depending on the amount of damage you did, they'll slow down, run away, or begin sinking. There's no fun in letting a prize run away, and if it sinks, you won't get any loot from the ship, so this is where you chase the slowed ship down and ram into it, boarding the enemy vessel.

Once you board an enemy ship, you'll engage in a swordfight against the enemy captain. Swordfights are fairly simple, but there's a small bit of depth to it. You choose your weapon: a rapier that has a long reach but does the least damage, a longsword that has average reach and does average damage, and a cutlass that has a short reach but does the most damage. Your enemy seems to randomly have the cutlass, which can take you down in seconds, so while the rapier does the least damage, it keeps you out of the cutlass' range and is generally the weapon of choice.

As mentioned earlier, the Atari 2600 controller does not lend itself to spiffy 78-hit combos or anything, so the swordplay here is pretty straightforward. Holding the stick up, towards, or low towards the enemy will do a weak strike, while pressing the button in conjunction with the stick movements casuses you to slash your enemy. When you see the enemy flash red, you've connected. The way to tell when he will fall is by his onscreen morale rating, which ranges from Wild! to Panic. If he's on Panic, you've got him on the ropes. However, these swordfights can play out into long tug-o-wars, and in that case, you need to not only watch your own morale rating, but your number of men, which is also displayed onscreen during a fight. It takes at least 8 men to man a low-level ship, so it's best to end a fight quickly. I once won a fight where the enemy had 332 men, and I was the only member of my 8-man crew left, so even though I won the fight, I was imprisoned for several months.

Upon winning the swordfight, you can claim the ship as your own, or you can plunder it and have your men sink it. Capturing ships is a good way to gain new crewmen, and sometimes an enemy captain will be a pirate that you were hunting down, or someone you can hold for a ransom. Either way, winning ship battles improves your crew's morale, which lowers the chance of mutiny and improves the reload times during ship battles.

Should you lose a battle, or lose a ship somehow (running into a reef, for example), you will either be imprisoned or washed ashore and nursed by natives. Either event causes several months to be shaved from your overall game time, and you've got to get a new ship and crew together afterwards. So it's not in your best interests to pick fights with everyone or sail wherever you want, unless you've got the crew and the ships to back up that sort of recklessness.

Once you return to a port, you can visit the governor and repeat the whole process, or if you're in an unfriendly port, you can try to attack the town. This can be done with a ship, or on foot. If you try to attack the town with your ship, you've got to duke it out in a cannon fight with the town's fort. This is easier said than done, as you'll rarely have the wind in your favor, and your slower speed makes you easy to pick off in the water. But if you can get maneuvered into the port, you can duel with the town's commander in a swordfight, and upon winning, plunder the town. Sometimes you'll also get to change the town's allegiance (such as turning an English town into a Dutch one).

Attacking a town on foot is probably the most difficult undertaking in the game. Your crew is split up into several small squads, and you've got to get then to the town. Meanwhile, the enemy troops are coming from the town to meet you head on. You can use trees to hide, but this does not always work and sometimes you'll lose a whole squad of men this way. Meeting the troops in hand to hand fighting is also questionable, as you can get killed quickly this way. The easiest way to get to town is to use a couple of squads as decoys while one squad makes trip in whichever direction is the long way around to the town. Once you're there, a swordfight ensues just like it would have if you'd attacked from sea, and again, winning nets you loot, losing gets you tossed in the prison.

There are sidequests in this game, such as the buried treasures that are on the maps. Sometimes these maps will be a dead giveaway as to the location of the treasure, and sometimes you'll need several map pieces to find it. Either way, when you dig up a chest filled with 80,000 gold pieces, it is well worth the effort. Another sidequest involves finding your family members. Information on their whereabouts is normally found through pirates that you've captured, and they'll give you a trasure map that's got a person on it instead of a trasure chest. If you've got a loyal and small crew, you can successfully find your family members quicker. You've got to move fast, because while you start the game at age 25, you'll be in your thirties before you know it, and that's retirement age for a pirate.

But you can always forego any formalities with foreign nations and your own nations, and simply attack every ship you come into contact with, and raid every port you enter. There will still be pirate-friendly ports to trade with, so you can sell off your ill-gotten wares and retire rich. Without status, however, your endgame rating will suffer.

When you finally decide to retire from the pirate life, the game ranks you on a scale of 1-100, based on how you lived your life. If you worked dilligently for more than one nation and gained titles, then you probably were also granted parcels of land, reward money, and marriage to a governor's daughter. The higher your titles, the higher you'll rank.. more land equals a higher rating, as does the amount of money you retired with. Cracking the top ten listings (titles such as King's Advisor, Admiral, etc) is difficult, but even getting Beggar (the lowest possible rating) is a complete blast, so whether you do well in the game's eyes or not, you are still allowed to play however you want.

When Grand Theft Auto III received critical acclaim for having "open-ended, go-anywhere" gameplay, my mind wondered where all the praise was for Pirates!... granted, it came out in 1987 and not 2001, but isn't that an indicator of how far ahead of its time this game was? Add in the fact that this game is never the same twice, gives you a vast area to explore, and is still crammed on to one little floppy disk... it just shows that you don't need all the newest high-count polygon models and bump-mapping to make a truly classic and perfect game.

If Pirates! II is one tenth as good as the original, I'll be glued to it for months. I'd give Pirates! an eleven out of ten, but they won't let me, so it gets a ten out of ten. If you get a chance to play it, don't pass it up. It was released on several platforms including the NES, and was later released as Pirates! Gold for the PC and the Sega Genesis. Any version is great, but I'll always be partial to the C64 version.

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