textfiles/games/REVIEWS/pirates.rev

 PIRATES!

 One of my favorite old movies is "Captain Blood," a 1935 high seas swashbuckler
epic that made Errol Flynn a Hollywood star. The rowdy and rugged elements of
that classic film -- action, adventure, romance, and a dashing hero -- all find
their way into PIRATES!, a completely excellent strategy/arcade/adventure
simulation. Set in the West Indies during the Great Age of Buccaneering
(1560-1700), the game offers piracy, smuggling, treasure, war, politics, and
beautiful women. (This review is based on the Commodore 64/128 version; Apple
IIgs, Macintosh, Atari ST, and Amiga version notes follow.)

 PIRATES! is the design and development work of Sid Meier, whose previous
MicroProse software packages were F-15 STRIKE EAGLE and SILENT SERVICE. Although
it's a bit too soon to attach a "classic" label to this release, PIRATES!
deserves all manner of accolades: This game is alive!

 Your goal in PIRATES! is to rise from a lowly station in life, seek fame and
fortune in the turbulent hotbed of the Caribbean Sea, and retire with your
health, a grand reputation, land and economic wealth, a gorgeous wife, and a
title of nobility. En route to this desirable destination, you'll roam the West
Indies, conduct broadside battles on the open sea, duel pirates and noblemen,
trade with merchants, visit taverns and local governors, search for buried
treasure, storm forts, and plunder, plunder, plunder.

 From the Main Menu screen, you can select Start A New Career, Continue A Saved
Game, or Command A Famous Expedition. This last option allows you to wear the
boots of a well-known seafaring man, like Henry Morgan or Francis Drake, and
lead his loyal crew -- successfully or otherwise -- through a simulation of a
famous historical buccaneering scenario.

 Starting a new career leads to further options. You can select any one of six
time periods: The Silver Empire (1560), Merchants And Smugglers (1600), The New
Colonists (1620), War For Profit (1640), The Buccaneer Heroes (1660), or
Pirates' Sunset (1680). The Buccaneer Heroes time period is the default
selection.

 You can select any one of four nationalities: English, French, Spanish, or
Dutch. Selecting a nationality determines starting location, number of ships,
crew size, and your initial wealth and reputation. Moreover, your nationality is
no indication of which nation you actually support: You play the role of
privateer captain, and answer (ultimately) only to yourself.

 There are four levels of difficulty: Apprentice, Journeyman, Adventurer, and
Swashbuckler. Apprentice offers expert subordinate officers whose intelligent
and informed aid will reduce your share of the loot; whereas Swashbuckler level
offers "drunken gutter swine" subordinates who will take hardly any loot and
like it.

 You can choose to be skilled at Fencing, Navigation, Gunnery, or Medicine, or
be gifted with much Wit and Charm. Each special ability is useful in a most
obvious way, but only one can be selected.

 During the opening screens, you will also enter your family name. You'll be
addressed by this name throughout the game, and it will be entered in the Hall
of Fame when you retire.

 The C64 screen displays vary as the game progresses. Windows of text appear as
events unfold, or when decisions must be made. You navigate your ship through
the wind-laced waters and reefs of a scrolling, on-screen map of the Caribbean
(the game package includes a map). On a stationary (and wraparound) screen, you
fire broadside salvos at rival ships. You duel a rival captain on the deck of a
ship that you and your crew have boarded.

 Pictures appear when you enter towns, visit local governors (and perhaps meet
their daughters), converse with ancient sailors who have information to sell,
and when you find buried treasure or loot a rich fleet.

 PIRATES! is controlled entirely by joystick. For menus, the stick moves a shiny
sword around the screen to highlight the choices, and the button selects.
Dueling, navigation, and land and sea battles are also controlled (in obvious
ways) by the joystick.

 In a town, more options are available. You can visit governors and taverns,
trade with merchants, divide the plunder, or check information -- an option that
reveals the status of your party and your personal status, and lets you study
the ship's log (a record of everything you've done and heard in your travels).
You can also examine fragments of treasure maps, see a list of cities, take a
sun-sighting with an astrolabe, or save your present position.

 To save a game and to preserve your score in the Hall of Fame after you've
retired, you will need a blank disk, which must be formatted from within the
game. Four positions can be saved on each disk.

 Dividing the plunder disperses your crew, and you can then retire with whatever
fortune and glory you've accumulated. Age and health permitting, you can start a
new expedition.

 PIRATES! is by far one of the liveliest games I've ever played. You can feel
the sea spray on your face, hear the clash of swords, and see golden light spill
from a chest filled with treasure. All is further enhanced by a wealth of
details. Your crew can be happy, pleased, unhappy, or angry. During a duel, you
and your rival run the gamut of morale -- from wild to downright scared.
Colonial towns can be struggling, surviving, prosperous, or wealthy, and Indian
or pirate attacks, malaria, and the occasional gold rush all affect the towns in
one way or another.

 Wars erupt and peace treaties are signed constantly; pirate amnesties are
offered, and you might learn that your long-lost sister was kidnaped by the
Spanish and is now being held in detention in Havana.

 PIRATES! is tense, fun, exciting, and incredibly satisfying (especially when
your career is proceeding apace). The C64 graphics are nicely done, the joystick
works flawlessly, and the game is not at all difficult to learn. The instruction
manual is jam-packed with useful information, not only about game play but also
about the men and women, the political activities, and the colonial times of one
of the most adventurous and interesting periods in world history.

 Sid Meier has combined a wonderful story line with arcade challenges and the
decisions required of a strategy simulation. Simply put, PIRATES! is one of the
best.

 APPLE IIGS VERSION NOTES

 The IIgs version of PIRATES! is identical -- play-for-play and menu-for-menu --
to the program described in the above review. In addition, an absolutely
mesmerizing harpsichord score rewards you after each successful undertaking (be
it a promotion, capture of a ship, marriage to the governor's daughter, etc.).
The accent pictures include limited animation, and the sword fighters emit
marvelous grunts and groans.

 I spent many hours on this game, and it's now on my stack of "play again" games
-- a short stack indeed. PIRATES! would be a superb tool for teachers who are
presenting the history of this period. By trying their hand at smuggling,
pirating, enforcing the laws of the sea, and treasure hunting, students might
better understand why those who lived during these times chose the paths they
did.

 Give this one a 9 out of 10 and an autographed picture of Errol Flynn.

 MACINTOSH VERSION NOTES

 PIRATES! for the Macintosh is a very good conversion. I've played the Apple
IIgs and IBM-PC versions, and this one is probably the most enjoyable. It's the
same basic game; nothing was left out (in fact, a few things were added).
However, I did find that the mouse was impossible to use in combat, and I
strongly preferred the joystick I used with the IIgs.

 The Mac version is in black and white only; there's no color support. Operation
under Multifinder is not recommended. PIRATES! uses the standard Mac interface
wherever possible, although I would not recommend playing it with a lot of
INITs, since it has been known to crash. There is on-disk and off-disk copy
protection.

 The Mac version offers several new features. The first is the ability to divide
the party. The most important implementation of this comes when it is time to
apportion the plunder. If you divide the party first, then you can keep all the
ships, cannons, and goods and still send your ex-crew home happy. The new
feature concerns the governors who send you on side trips; they now remember
your service and reward you. I haven't noticed that the governors behave any
differently, but it would be difficult to tell, in any case. Finally, during
combat, text now describes the weapon the enemy captain is using. This is far
easier than having to remember which color meant which weapon.

 The Macintosh conversion only improves what I consider to be one of the finest
action/adventure games ever produced for a computer.

 ATARI ST VERSION NOTES

 The Atari ST version of PIRATES! retains more than all the elements of the
original Commodore 64 program: It will run on any ST, including the Mega series,
with 512K, a color monitor, and a mouse; it includes the Divide The Party option
Jennifer mentioned in her Macintosh version notes; it supports a hard drive and
backup copies through "key disk" copy protection and documentation checks; and
it supports most MIDI-equipped synthesizers by way of the ST's built-in MIDI
ports. Should you actually use a synthesizer, ALT-M will redirect the music
score to it, while directing the sound channels -- cannonball splashes, sword
clanks, wind rustling through sails -- to the speaker in your monitor.

 All this points out to the world one thing: PIRATES! on the ST is a model for
translating a program from one machine to another. Every software development
company in existence should be forced to purchase both the C64 and Atari ST
versions of PIRATES! and study them. Steve Bohrer, Russ Finn, Russ Cooney, Max
Remington, Ken Lagace, Jim McConkey, and project leader Sandy Peterson have more
than faithfully ported Sid Meier's original design; they've upgraded it, a feat
the marvelous C64 version made unnecessary, not to mention unlikely. If I could
give them all a paid Caribbean vacation, I probably wouldn't (I'd go
myself)...but they'd deserve it.

 And if you have an ST, you deserve PIRATES! It's one of the best computer games
ever created, and will remain so.

 AMIGA VERSION NOTES

 PIRATES! for the Amiga is proof positive that serious commitment to conversion
of an IBM game can improve vastly on the original game design and, in the
process, satisfy even the most finicky Amiga users.

 The game is virtually identical to its IBM incarnation, which is already saying
a lot. PIRATES! is a classic of game design; it should withstand the test of
time and technological advance the way MONOPOLY and chess have. The graphics are
beautifully conceived and drawn, making good use of the Amiga palette for
variety and detail. The music is worked nicely into gameplay, and all the tunes
in the game can be accessed independently for your listening pleasure.

 Game control is a pleasure, no matter what your favorite input device may be.
Main reliance is upon the mouse, with some keyboard input, but a joystick can be
used to mimic the mouse everywhere except when sailing (where the joystick can
only be used to turn the ship right or left).

 PIRATES! comes on two copyable disks, and is easy to install on a hard drive.
It runs in 512K of RAM, but will access the disk less frequently if 1Mb is
available. With more than 1Mb of RAM, the game can be multitasked, though the
documentation suggests that problems might arise when trying to use another
graphics-intensive program with PIRATES! in the background. Since the game plays
smoothly on the A3000, though (which can have more than 2Mb of CHIP RAM
depending on the configuration), even this minor problem might not appear in the
latter system. PIRATES! runs on A1000s, A500s, A2000s, and A3000s. Instructions
for hard-disk installation are included. Copy protection involves a manual
look-up at the start of play, which isn't at all intrusive.

 The main manual is the same as the one supplied with the IBM game; included as
well is an Amiga supplement, which details some special features in the Amiga
version of the game. Your party can be divided at sea, for instance, and you can
rejoin those left behind, as well. And governors will sometimes ask you to
perform a special favor for them, which might have positive effects on rank and
land ownership. There are some good introductory hints in the supplement on how
to deal with the various aspects of gameplay; clearly, MicroProse has learned
from extensive feedback the kinds of things new users might need to know to get
into PIRATES!

 The only complaint I have is that deleting old saved games requires exiting the
program. For whatever reason, file deletion is not included in the save-game
component of the design. I guess this keeps the player from inadvertently
removing game files from the directory, but it proves an inconvenience,
especially for those users who are playing from floppy drives with only 512K of
RAM.

 Otherwise, the game runs smoothly; screen changes from one section of the game
to the next take place without the visual noise that sometimes accompanies such
changes in other IBM conversions (e.g., Electronic Arts' 688 ATTACK SUB and
MicroProse's own RED STORM RISING). Obviously, much thought has been devoted to
the graphics programming by people clearly experienced with the particulars of
Amiga hardware.

 PIRATES! is good news for Amigans, not only because it gives us a chance to try
our hand at this classic game, but also because it signals a real commitment on
MicroProse's part to doing their conversions right. RED STORM RISING has already
been released (and looks great, too!), and others are on the way. Good show,
MicroProse!

 PIRATES! is published and distributed by MicroProse Software.

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