Sid Meier’s Pirates!

D
MS-DOS 0 subscribers

81K plays 1984 #Action#Strategy

Sid Meier's Pirates! is a 1987 action-adventure strategy video game developed and published by MicroProse for the Commodore 64. It was designed by Sid Meier, and was the first game to include his name in its title as an effort by MicroProse to attract fans of Meier's earlier games, most of which were combat vehicle simulation games. The game was later ported to several other platforms, including the Amstrad CPC, Apple II, Macintosh, IBM PC, Atari ST, Amiga and Nintendo Entertainment System.

Set in the Caribbean, the game is a simulation of the life of a pirate, a privateer, or a pirate hunter in the 16th, 17th and 18th centuries. The Pirates! playing field includes the Spanish Main (namely the northern coast of South America), Central America and the Yucatán Peninsula, the entire Gulf of Mexico, Florida, and all Caribbean islands, plus Bermuda in the PC version. The player is free to sail to any part of the above-mentioned lands, stopped by an invisible barrier southeast of Trinidad, all the way north to just northeast of Bermuda.

The Pirates! Gold remake, with minor improvements and better graphics, was released in 1993. An enhanced remake, also named Sid Meier's Pirates!, was released in 2004. Versions for mobile devices have also been released.

From Wikipedia's article Sid Meier's Pirates!, licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0

Controls

This is a PC game: it uses the keyboard the way it did under MS-DOS, and the mouse where the game supports it. Click the game screen first so it gets your key presses.

Many DOS games start with a menu or ask a question first — read the screen and answer with the keyboard. Arrow keys, Enter, Space, Ctrl and Alt are the usual game keys.

Emulator help & troubleshooting

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Controls

This is a PC game: it uses the keyboard the way it did under MS-DOS, and the mouse where the game supports it. Click the game screen first so it gets your key presses.

Many DOS games start with a menu or ask a question first — read the screen and answer with the keyboard. Arrow keys, Enter, Space, Ctrl and Alt are the usual game keys.

Emulator help & troubleshooting

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Pixel Verdict

Sid Meier’s Pirates!DOS

4.5 Great job!

Critics 87 · 8 reviews

What the reviews talk about

Key wordsambitiousgroundbreakingstrategicdetailedenjoyableeasy

What the critics said

  • Computer Gaming World said that although reminiscent of The Seven Cities of Gold or Broadsides, "Pirates will prove to be a design with fresh approaches and much historical depth... intriguing and addicting".

    — Computer Gaming World, 1987

  • Orson Scott Card wrote in Compute! in 1989 that Pirates' use of an unusually strict copy protection was understandable because "the game is so good that even people who drive 55 mph might consider stealing it".

    — Compute! (Orson Scott Card)

  • In 2004, readers of Retro Gamer voted Pirates! the 84th top retro game, with the staff noting that "people still play the original version, even though Sid Meier himself produced later versions".

    — Retro Gamer

  • Compute!'s Gazette in 1987 praised the detailed gameplay with arcade and strategic aspects, stating that "the designers of Pirates! set themselves a variety of ambitious goals and succeeded on every count".

    — Compute!'s Gazette· about another version

From the Reception section of Wikipedia's Sid Meier's Pirates! article, under CC BY-SA 4.0. The words are the critics'; their full reviews are on the publishers' pages.

Scores

  • AllGame 5/5
  • Computer Gaming World 5/5
  • Dragon 5/5
  • Compute! 4/5
  • Amstrad Computer User 16,5/20
  • Amiga Joker 1990 88%
  • Amstrad Action 76%
  • Abandonia 2006 5/5

From the review table of Wikipedia's article. The face takes, first that applies: the Metascore for this platform, GameRankings' archived average, our average of the critics (one number per publication, a panel averaged), one review alone, the players' rating. Critics and players are never mixed.

Players' rating: 79/100 · 198 votes

Full reviews

Face key

  1. 1.00+
  2. 1.540+
  3. 2.050+
  4. 2.560+
  5. 3.068+
  6. 3.575+
  7. 4.080+
  8. 4.585+
  9. 5.090+

5.0 Outstanding! · 4.0 Great job! · 3.0 Good job · 2.0 Could be better · 1.0 Wake me up when it's over · A thumbs-up adds half a point. Our own drawings, in the spirit of the faces GamePro magazine used in the '90s.

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