Pirates Gold: (8.17Mb)
OK, to clear up some confusion: this game is not "Pirate's Gold", as in the plunder of a pirate. It's "Pirates! -- Gold Edition." Pirates! Gold is basically a souped-up version of a game that first made it's appearance on 8-bit home computers and video game consoles such as the Apple II, Commodore 64, and NES.
Pirates! Gold is an excellent remake of 1987’s Pirates!, created by Sid Meier; a game of swashbuckling on the high seas set in and around the Caribbean Sea over the period from 1560 until 1680, a time well known as the "golden era" of pirates.,. Despite the pedigree of the original version, the game suffered the same fate as Railroad Tycoon Deluxe when it was initially released in 1993: the game was very buggy, and played much slower than the EGA original. Microprose shortly released this Windows version of the game, which fixed many bugs that were shipped with the original DOS release, and finally made Pirates! Gold a game worthy of its predecessor’s fame.
Anyone who has played Sid Meier’s 1987 classic will be at home with this SVGA remake. The object of the game is to retire with high social standing, having amassed a huge fortune in the process. How do you do that? The way many people tried in the 17th century: become a mighty pirate, sack towns and other ships, and search for buried treasure on faraway islands. The game is an open world, which m,eans you can sail anywhere and complete various in game tasks in whatever oreder you wish. Do remember though that any decisions you make will affect your standing with the nations that control this part of the world.
You will need to create close alliances with at least one of these nations, and will probably play one off against the other, though be careful as the game does keep track of your every move. You start as a Captain, and one of your aims apart from those mentioned above is to develop your character to become a duke or a baron; (marrying the Dukes daughter helps you to climb the social ladder). You’ll also have to find your family, which is lost and scattered, throughout the game's world.
To acquire social standing, you also must play a dangerous game of politics with four European super powers (England, France, Holland, and Spain). Gaining their favor may require the hand of a governor's daughter in marriage, or doing various dirty deeds such as attacking that government's rival countries. Along the way, you will engage in mortal sword duels with other pirates, survive cannon battles in ship-to-ship combat, buy gossip in local bars, and piece together torn pieces of various treasure maps. Four countries, four skill levels, and six historical scenarios set in various time periods, and the random map option ensures virtually unlimited re-playability. With Sid Meier’s uncanny knack in striking a perfect play balance between strategy, action, and even adventure elements, excellent watercolor-style SVGA graphics, and virtually bug-free game play thanks to the windows update, Pirates! Gold for Windows is a must-have for anyone interested in the era. And if you like this game, check out Pirates! 2, an excellent freeware remake of the original classic.
image of Pirates 2 - you can see the improvements in the graphcs between 1 and 2.
Tips:
Gathering news whenever possible is important, for example, there could be news of a city that was attacked by Indians; which would indicate it's defenses have been weakened, making it a prime target for your pirates to attack and thereby leaving all it's riches up for grabs.
Maybe other bands of pirates have attacked another town, making it pointless to attack the town because it doesn't have much anymore left for you to plunder.
News of relationship between nations is also important because you don’t want to alienate yourself from too many nations. Attacking a nation that has just signed a treaty of allegiance with another nation would effectively make two enemies not one. Conversely, it may actually be in your interest because the nation may be enemies with other nations you are keen to befriend.
Negative points:
Attacking a fortified town with a ship is the most difficult thing, because the fort's cannons will hit your ship most of the time, even if you try to evade. So getting off the ship nearby on land and attack the city by foot is probably a better idea,
The game ends rather fast, for example fast, you can only carry out around 4-5 plunder-runs before you are too old to try your luck again. Even having a good medicine skill (which helps to extend your life a little) isn’t powerful enough to extend this.
You can download the game from HERE There’s a manual and map of the game available from the same page as the download link. You'll find them invaluable while playing this game :)
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There's a great pirates game avaialble for free from Gametop. The site now has a yellow warning and many of their recent games will attempt to hijack your browser; however this can be avoided during the installation process. You can get the game, called Pirates: Battle for Caribbean HERE.
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