Pirates!: Final Rating

How it would have ended if I had captured the treasure fleet in Campeche (yes, it took a few reloads).

         

Pirates!

United States
MicroProse (developer and publisher)

Released 1987 for Commodore 64, PC (self-booting), and Amstrad CPC; 1988 for Apple II, Macintosh, and Apple II GS; 1989 for Atari ST, PC-88, and PC-98; 1990 for Amiga; 1991 for NES

Re-released in 1993 as Pirates! Gold for Amiga CD, Sega Genesis, Macintosh, and Windows

Remade in 2004 for Xbox, Windows, and Macintosh

Date Started: 21 January 2011

Date Finished: 22 January 2011

Total Hours: 8

Difficulty: Easy-Moderate (2.5/5)

Final Rating: 48

Ranking at Game 360: 326/360 (91%)

As we've already seen, Pirates! is barely defensible as a CRPG--my only excuse for playing it is that it's on MobyGames's list--and I've already exceeded the postings I said I was going to make for the game, but I figure that since I played it through, I might as well rate it as a CRPG and see where it comes out. Here's my GIMLET for the game:

1. The boundin' Main. Pirates! is set in the real world, albeit a fanciful depiction of it. Its sheer size and its attention to historic detail are grand, but even better is the way that things happen irrespective of your actions. Nations go to war and declare peace, Indians attack settlements, and other pirates sack towns. But these events aren't just random, ex-post-facto occurrences. In one month, the treasure fleet is in Puerto Bello, the next in Cartegena, and in between, you can actually intercept it as it sails between them. If you hear about a pirate raid on Tortuga, you can reload, get to Tortuga sooner, and catch the pirates before they attack! Very few games feature a world in which events occur so dynamically. And your actions change the nature of the world: you can disrupt trade, affect prices, instigate wars, and convert cities. I can't think of many games that do it better. Score: 9.

Catching the treasure f           leet out of harbor.

2. Gettin' yur sea legs. The lack of traditional CRPG-style character development is one of the reasons that Pirates! is only marginally a CRPG. You do not have attributes or gain levels or get experience for your quests and combats. In fact, the opposite occurs: you get older and sicker and slower, and you eventually have to decide whether it's worth extending your years of piracy. Although you can pick a nationality at the beginning of the game, it seems to have no bearing on anything except your starting town: you can advance in any nation's admiralty, and no one ever refers to you by your nation. The only real development is the advancement (at your own discretion) through the apprentice, journeyman, adventurer, and swashbuckler ranks, but the downsides to doing so (harder gameplay) generally outrank the benefits (a slightly higher share of the gold), although to be fair I played this last game fairly safe, keeping to the apprentice level for most of my career, and had few challenges. Score: 1.

3. Jawin' wit' mateys. The "NPCs" in the game include the governors, tavernkeepers, other pirates, and governor's daughters. No matter their location or nationality, they always say the same things, and you always have the same limited options while talking to them. You learn very little about the game world from them. Probably a little more variety could have been put into this part of the game. Score: 3.

The extent of NPC interaction.

           
4. Scallywags and scurvy dogs. The encounters in the game occur with various ships and other pirates. Unfortunately, they almost all play out exactly the same: you approach a ship and note the style, then "investigate" to see the nationality. At that point, you have the option to close for battle, hail for news, or sail away. You generally attack ships of the nation you're against and/or pirates and hail or sail away from the others. The encounters don't play any differently with different nationalities, although other pirates are slightly less likely to let you sail away or hail them. There are nonetheless roleplaying options in these limited choices, as you saw yesterday with my sudden decision to make enemies of the Dutch or my early decision to make a living as a pirate hunter. Still, some variety would have been nicer. No dedicated captain ever scuttles his ship to keep an enemy from capturing it, and no one ever shows up and attacks you. Score: 4.

5. Swasshbucklin' and hoodoo. No magic in this game, of course. There are three types of combat: ship-to-ship battles, land combat, and swordplay. All of them depend partly on probabilities (e.g., your age and level, and whether you chose "skill at gunnery" or "skill at fencing" in the opening), but mostly on your own aim, timing, and reactions. None of them are terribly hard. In my entire game, I never lost a ship-to-ship battle or sword fight (although I came very close to the latter once or twice) until the very end. Land combat is the most intriguing of the group, as it involves tactics such as choosing the right terrain, dispersing your parties, and flanking the enemy. I've never done it often enough--not even when I was younger--to get really good at it, although I suppose you could have a career in which you engaged in land combat continually, trying to capture towns for your favored nation. Ship-to-ship combat can be fairly tactical, especially when you're trying to do something crazy like taking on a war galleon with a pinnace. Ultimately, however, all combats get repetitive and boring towards the end of the game. Score: 5.

I feel like there's more to it than I fully explored.

           
6. Me Effects. Another element that probably disqualifies Pirates! as a CRPG is the lack of any equipment. It would have been cool if you could have used some of your booty to buy better swords, ship upgrades, maybe some light armor, and so on (although since Sid Meier wasn't trying to make a CRPG, I can see why these options aren't present). Score: 0.

7. Swag. The economy plays a vital role in the game. You can actually affect the prosperity of a city--and, consequently, the trade value of goods--in the way that you buy and sell. Some people play Pirates! as traders, doing not much more than buying and selling; this seems exceedingly boring to me, but there are a lot of logistics that go into it. You have to watch the news carefully for signs of new gold mines, Indian attacks, and plagues, and you have to record the prices you get for goods at various towns. I basically just sold based on convenience, which is probably why I ended up as a "rather wealthy man" instead of an extremely wealthy one. Although there's no equipment to buy with your booty, you do need it for treasure maps, intelligence about cities, letters of marque, and ship repairs. Your total gold also determines your crew morale, along with the length of the voyage and the number of crewmembers, adding a bit of fun strategy. Finally, gold never stops being important, since it affects your final score. I guess I just wish there was more stuff to buy. Score: 7.

Fairly middling prices on everything. A smart captain wouldn't sell here.

         
8. Goin' on account. There is no one "quest" in the game--another sign of non-CRPGness--but you do have a lot of options for self-imposed quests, such as rising the ranks of various nations, rescuing all your family members, getting married, sacking a particular town, capturing the treasure fleet or silver train, and achieving a certain total in gold or land. Your ultimate "quest," I guess, is to get as high a score as possible in the final tallying, although some players might prefer individual achievements--like four dukedoms--to any overarching score. The governors also give you some minor quests, such as delivering letters or capturing pirates. Score: 6.

9. Graphics, Sound, and Inputs (aye, there be no pirate talk for these). The graphics in the DOS version are tolerable, but the sound really is not, and I played most of it with the speakers off. The game has an annoying tendency to make you wait until its little victory tunes finish playing before you can see the results of your ship captures and such. I wish the controls had involved less arrow-scrolling through options and more ability to choose by letter, but generally they were fairly intuitive. Score: 4.

10. Yo-ho-ho. The gameplay is really the best element of Pirates! It is completely non-linear, allowing you to do whatever you want whenever you want. Much of the fun in the game comes from strategizing next actions, since time is so precious. Do I waste four months finding the buried treasure near Villa Hermosa, or do I wait until I have some other business there? Should I travel from Gibraltar to Havana via Santa Catalina, where someone has intelligence about my missing mother, but knowing that I will likely have no other significant encounters? Or should I travel up the Lesser Antilles, knowing it will maximize my chances of finding my enemies' ships? Do I trade in the heavily-defended San Juan, knowing the fort might fire on me, or do I head for the undefended but poor Trinidad? As we covered in the first posting, Pirates! allows for considerable role-playing, and in that role-playing comes enormous replayability. Once you master certain aspects of the gameplay, the challenge suffers a bit, but you can always ratchet that up by giving yourself a promotion. As you might guess from the frequency of my postings about the game this weekend, it is enormously addictive. For all of these reasons, I give the game my highest score in this category so far: 9.

The final score of 48 seems awfully low given how much I enjoyed the game, but of course I'm ranking it as a CRPG rather than a strategy game or simulator. For its real category, I would invent another kind of GIMLET scale.

The game was actually marketed as Sid Meier's Pirates! Like Richard Garriott, Meier is one of the few names that you know if you know games. He would later go on to create the Civilization series, which I sheepishly admit I've never played and am unlikely to play as part of this blog. But I will be dipping into other MicroProse titles with Darklands (1992), BloodNet (1993), and Master of Magic (1994).

Having finished this game, I have a few questions for other Pirates! players:

• Has anyone ever sailed all the way up to Bermuda, or walked across Honduras to Gran Granada? If so, why?
• Has anyone played an entire game after failing the copy protect question at the beginning? How did it go?
• Is the 2004 version basically just the same game with better graphics and sound, or does it add a lot of new material?

Although I probably tested the patience of CRPG purists with these postings, I added Pirates! Gold and the 2004 re-release to my list, maybe just for one posting, to see what's changed. I look absurdly forward to finding out.

Pirates! The Career of Captain Gatomalo, Part 2

I have recruited a spy in the court of Santiago.

     
August 1662: I resume my career after several months of vacation. A small crew of 25 men has heard my call and returned to Santiago to sign up with my barque, but I soon pick up 63 more in the tavern. Unfortunately, Spain still remains at peace with all of the surrounding nations, and Spain and England remain firmly in alliance. England and Holland are still at war, but I care not about their squabble. I have a treasure map for Panama, and news of my father awaits in Trinidad. My plan is to sail south from Santiago to Panama, collect the treasure, and then sail along the coast of South America to Trinidad. I will capture and plunder pirates as I find them and remain hopeful that Spain will soon be at war with someone.
     
December 1662: The Panama treasure—11,000 gold pieces—is in my hold, and my crew is happy. In Cartagena, I turn in two more pirates and am promoted to a Spanish Colonel, but the snotty merchants refuse to trade with me because I'm a "pirate." A difficult fight with Baron D'Valdez guts my crew so much I am unable to even spare a prize crew for his ship. I put in to Maracaibo for reinforcements and manage to seduce another governor's daughter to be my spy. I also buy a treasure map that depicts another location in the Bahamas.



January 1663: I've traveled to Trinidad for nothing. Count Oropesa left months ago for Cumana. I turn back west.

Aren't "skilled" and "able" the same thing?

February 1663: I find and defeat Oropesa in Cumana. The map he gives me to the plantation on which my father is being held is maddeningly unspecific; it could be any island in the Spanish Main. I need another piece. I resolve to sail north along the Lesser Antilles and ultimately to the Bahamas to get the treasure. I hope to get enough pirates along the way to earn favor with a governor and get more news of my father.

April 1663: France is at war with England. Great.


June 1663: I stumble upon the location of my father, in the Bahamas, just after finding buried treasure there. What serendipity! And, like my sister, my father has somehow come across a map to an incredible treasure. Its location is harder to determine than the last. It seems to be next to a lake on the north coast of somewhere—could be Cuba, Hispanola, South America, or Central America. The only way to tell is to sail the coasts. I have nothing else to do, and the haul last time was definitely worth it.

August 1663: The governor of Havana makes me an Admiral. How come only the Spanish care about captured pirates? I find out that the Marquis Porreno in Caracas knows about my lost mother. It'll be a while before I make it there.

"Well, back to the Spanish Main! I'll be back in two years or so."

October 1663: Months of fruitless sailing along the Mexican and Central American coastlines puts me back in Puerto Bello, the town I started in. I visit the governor and find that his daughter is a ravishing beauty. Impetuously, I propose marriage and she agrees! After a duel with her jealous suitor, my lovely black-haired beauty and I are wed. How can I fight the Spanish if I'm married to one of them? What have I done?

Take that, Pizarro!

December 1663: Off the coast of South America, just southwest of Caracas, I find the Inca treasure. Another 100,000 gold pieces are mine. In Caracas, things get busy. I defeat Marquis Porreno and get a map to my lost mother—another mysterious island. The governor gives me a mission to capture the pirate "Pegleg" off the coast of Cartagena. Meanwhile, I turn in two more pirates to him, and he's so giddy that he makes me a Baron! I am now both married and landed nobility among my enemies, and all because no nation dare engage them in war. The absurdity makes me scream.

January 1664: You know what? Sod the Dutch. They have every reason to hate the Spanish, and yet they pussyfoot around their natural enemies and make war on the English instead. They will pay for their cowardice, and I will get rewards from England for their suffering. I capture a Dutch sloop on my way past Curacao. When I return, I will sack this miserable town.


March 1664: I capture Pegleg off Cartagena and make my way back to Curacao, collecting men and ships on the way. Curacao has 270 soliders, and I need to be equal to the task of invading the city. My crew is unhappy with the increased staffing and their reduced shares, although they will see the rate climb soon enough.


April 1664: In the waters off Curacao, I capture a few Dutch ships to increase my cargo capacity. Then it's time to strike! Opting for a land battle, I approach the city from the north. As expected, the garrison marches out to meet me. After some volleys with their ships and battalions, my men scale the fort's walls. When my duel with the fort's commander begins, we are nearly matched in men, but he is no match for my blade. Within a minute, he has surrendered, and the city is mine. Maybe now that they have been sacked by a Spanish Baron, they will see the error of their ways.

Unfortunately, my quick victory means that I am left with a large, unhappy crew. I admit I'm not as quick to win the next few battles as I could be. Soon the contingent is smaller and pleased again.


June 1664: My expectations of rewards from the English were well-founded. I am made an Ensign and given 300 acres of land in Barbados. Unfortunately, my crew is unhappy again. I am forced to divide up the plunder. The crew is pleased with their portions.

Plundering St. Martin.

1665: My third expedition. My ploy against Curacao worked, and Spain is now at war with Holland. Actually, everyone is at war with Holland, the poor bastards. Unfortunately, the Dutch want nothing to do with me, so the war avails me not, and Spain remains a firm ally of my new patrons, the English. I sack both St. Martin and St. Eustatius in sea battles. My continuing piracy against Holland—which feels like shooting fish in a barrel—coupled with my pirate hunting has made me a Spanish Duke, an English Admiral, and a French Colonel.

1666: I turn 31 this year, and my health is starting to fail. It is "fair" for now, but who knows how many more wounds I can take? Sword fights are getting harder. I realize now that I will never have vengeance on Spain. I have become Spain. A future in Puerto Bello with my lovely wife, titles, gold, and land is starting to sound attractive.


After several years of searching, I finally had enough map pieces to find my mother. I discover her on a plantation north of Tortuga. Like my sister and father before her, she has a map to lost Inca treasure, but it depicts a location so generic—on the easternmost point of any number of islands—that at first I despair of ever finding it. But suddenly I spot the location on Jamaica near Port Royale. A third treasure of 100,000 gold is mine! My crew is getting ornery despite the gold, and so I divide up the plunder and give myself a promotion to journeyman.


November 1666: Treachery! I attempt to put into port at Santiago to sell some captured pirate vessels when the traitors fire on me! A Spanish duke! Resolved to sneak into town and have words with the governor, I am spotted by a town guard, who engages me in a duel. I beat him, of course, but I am forced to flee like a coward. All my hatred for the Spanish resurfaces. I may have to live among them, but I will humiliate them before I retire.


December 1, 1666: I successfully sneak into Santiago and meet with the governor's daughter, my spy. She tells me that the treasure fleet is in Puerto Bello. If it follows its usual pattern, it will leave soon for Cartagena, then far to the northeast to Campeche. I should be able to intercept the fleet before Campeche, or between Campeche and Havana. I begin collecting crew and ships.


January 6, 1667: I arrive in Campeche to find the treasure fleet in town! A dilemma awaits me. There are 250 soldiers in town; my party consists of 224. Do I sack the town and take the entire fleet, or do I wait until it leaves and pick off the galleons one-by-one with my superior seamanship?


The land battle is a disaster. I forget to account for the extra soldiers supplied by the treasure fleet itself. By the time my men reach the walls, I have only 99 crew against a garrison of 355. My swordmanship skills are strong, but they avail me not. I am wounded, captured and imprisoned. Damn my rashness! Damn the Spanish!


December 19, 1667: Released from prison after a year, I limp my way back to Puerto Bello and my wife, and I retire from this insane life of politics and slaughter. My fortune is thus:

• I achieved the title of Spanish Duke, English Admiral, and French Admiral, making me an extremely important member of my community.
• I accumulated the sum of 41,220 gold pieces and 2,150 acres of land during my career, making me a rather wealthy man.
• My exploits on the high seas leave me with a reputation as a "quiet and cautious captain." (Huh?)
• I retired from privateering at age 32. My bride is a lovely and cheerful girl. I succeeded in rescuing 3 members of my family. I was wounded 1 time in the course of my career. I become a contented and cheerful man.
• My pirating days are at an end. As a result of my seafaring exploits, I become a merchant captain, with 50/100 pirate points.

Ah, but I can fantasize about a life in which I did not give in to my hatred—in which I retired before brashly attacking Campeche and the treasure fleet. In such a life, my reputation is of a "competent and active" captain, I become a "cheerful and happy" man, and I wile away my days as a sugar planter. So, yeah, it didn't turn out so bad the way it was.

Avast! Tomorrow I shall pour myself a GIMLET and reflect more on the merits of my pirating days, as well as a career I had 'afore pirating, exploring dank caverns in search of treasure.

    

****

    

Previous entry in this series

    

Next entry in this series

10/12/2026

Pirates!: The Career of Captain Gatomalo, Part 1

Gatomalo after two years at sea.

          
Note: If you are uninterested in an absurdly long and detailed description of the gameplay in Pirates!, best to skip this entry.
         

April 10, 1660: I escape from prison, sign up with some ne'er-do-wells in a tavern, and with absurd swiftness, become captain of a pinnace and 64 crewmembers. I find myself in the city of Puerto Bello (in modern day Panama) with a hold full of food and a heart full of revenge. The tavernkeeper tells me that Spain is at war with France, but the nearest French town is way up in Tortuga, so I'd better hold off on plundering Spanish ships until I'm closer to a friendly port. My current plan is to sail north to Port Royale and see if there's anything the English want before heading to Tortuga. I'll fight and capture any pirates along the way and attack the first Spanish ship I see within seven days' of Jamaica. Such a long trip is dangerous in the early days of an expedition, but I have to get out of Spanish waters.

On second thought, no reason not to start right now.

April 16, 1660: Only 6 days out of Puerto Bello, I encounter a Spanish barque. Although I'm still deep within Spanish waters, the idea of capturing such a useful ship is too much to resist, and I take it with only three shots fired. There are only 14 crewmembers (reduced from 20 by my cannons) on board, and they surrender the moment I approach. 500 gold pieces and several tons of sugar and tobacco, plus 4 cannons. Not a bad haul for my first plunder.
          

"A treasure chest in the hold is worth two in the ground" -- old pirate saying.

           
April 29, 1660: My memory of the Caribbean maps I saw as a child are flawless. Port Royale arrives on the horizon with barely a need to tack. As I approach the port, a pinnace sidles up along side me, his flag betraying him as the notorious Marquis Roberts. Although wary about engaging a skilled pirate, I know that if I can capture Roberts, the English governor will reward me. Navigating into his stern waters, I tack back and forth just aft of him, making sure he can never fully swing around to fire his cannons while I hit him with an occasional broadside. When he loses a mast, I approach and he immediately surrenders. Although he offers information about the Spanish treasure fleet and silver train, I feel he's more valuable as a hostage, and I stick him in my hold. His ship yields 1,370 gold and a few tons of food and goods. Two of his sailors join my crew.
         

My reputation grows.

         
April 30, 1660: Arriving at Port Royale and not sure how the defense force will feel about a fleet of three pirate ships in its harbor, I choose to sneak into town. I visit the governor and pay 800 gold pieces for an English letter of marque--they're not at war with anyone now, but who knows what the future will bring. With this credential, I return to my ships and sail back into the port, able to conduct my business in the open. In the tavern, I pick up 20 more crew members. At the merchant's, I sell the damaged pinnace and my accumulated goods. As I leave the town, I realize that the governor didn't seem interested in my pirate hostage--probably because he was so busy with my letter of marque. I turn northeast to Tortuga, fighting headwinds.

June 6, 1660: I encounter a French pinnace and get some news, and shortly after I encounter another French pinnace flying the flag of Baron de Lavale, a well-known pirate. I try to engage him but he raises full sails and flees before I can hit him with a single volley. Coward.
           

            
June 13, 1660: Marquis Roberts gets a companion in my brig as I capture the sloop of Baron D'Clarion in a long ship and hand-to-hand combat. As our ships clash, I have about 10 more crewmembers than he does, so I take the conservative approach with a longsword.
            
June 15, 1660: Tortuga at last. I ransom Roberts for more than 10,000 gold pieces, which makes my crew very happy. The French governor makes me pay 1,000 gold pieces for a letter of marque.
              

          
July 8, 1660: In Port-de-Paix, the governor gives me a mission to take a letter to his brother, a spy in the Spanish-controlled town of Santiago. I accept it gladly, as it isn't very far away. I arrive in the city on July 19 and meet the spy in a tavern. Just for fun, I decide to visit the governor and I am appalled when he insists on taking Baron Alvado off my hands, noting that "the king will be very pleased at this news." I wasn't trying to please the Spanish! Now, suddenly I have a letter of marque from my enemies! (This means I have a letter of marque from everyone but the Dutch now.) On the way out of town, I capture another Spanish pirate, Captain Vergard, and his sloop. I resolve to keep this one for ransom or turn him over to a government I want to befriend.
           

           
August 12, 1660: Back in Port-de-Paix after capturing two more pirates. I got into this to kill Spanish, not capture pirates! But my hold is full of gold and my crew is ecstatic. The governor, pleased with my completion of his mission, promotes me to Ensign and awards me 150 acres of land. More important, he tells me that the evil Spaniard Admiral Porreno knows where my sister is! He was last seen in Campeche, a couple of months to the west, on the Yucatan Peninsula, deep in Spanish territory. Hmmm, perhaps it's not a bad thing that the Spanish are relatively pleased with me. The governor also introduces me to his lovely, red-haired daughter, but as I am just an ensign and she is being courted by an admiral, I make only light conversation. In the tavern, I pick up a couple dozen more pirates, sell off all but one sloop and one barque, and head out. My plan is to stop in Port Royale before making my way west to Campeche.
           

A good place to be.

        
September 6, 1660: In Port Royale, a mysterious figure sells me a treasure map for 500 gold pieces. It depicts a fairly obvious place on the north side of Cuba. I briefly consider going there before Campeche but ultimately decide against it. The treasure will be there later; Porreno may not be.
         

         
October 1, 1660: I arrive in Campeche after an utterly uneventful journey in which I do not encounter a single ship. I defeat Porreno in single combat, after which he tells me my sister is being held captive on a "remote plantation" and hands me a map with several pieces missing. The map seems to depict an archipelago with many reefs around it. I suspect it is in the Bahamas.

Meanwhile, the Spanish governor takes one of my pirates off my hands and promotes me to Ensign! This wasn't supposed to happen! I hate the Spanish!
        

Ijos de perros!

          
I determine my next course of action: head to the Bahamas via the Florida Keys and search these islands for a match, plundering Spanish ships on the way. If I can't find my sister, I'll pick up the treasure on Cuba and return to Port-de-Paix to get my reward for my privateering. I'll teach them to make me an officer in their fleet.

October 4, 1660: I get the news from a Dutch trader that England is at war with Holland. Do I care enough about either country to try to gain favor by attacking the other? In other news, I hate sailing east; the trade winds are always against me.
           

               
October 12, 1660: Off the Florida Keys, I take a Spanish barque, then a merchantman. Lots of gold and goods in the latter. That's more like it.

December 1660: My attempt to find my sister in the Bahamas fails, so I return to Tortuga. There, the governor gives me a mission to find the pirate "One-Eye" off the coast of Barbados, way over in the lesser Antilles. At first I balk at this, but then I realize that there are many nations represented in the island chain, increasing my ability to plunder and get rewarded for it. Also, I need to stop at Santo Domingo on the way (on the south of Hispanola), where I have some intelligence that Duke Ramirez has some more information about my lost sister.
           

Where the heck is this?

          
January 1661: I sneak in to Santo Domingo. My battle with Ramirez lasts nearly 10 minutes, with a couple of tight moments, before I finally get the upper hand and defeat him. From him, I get another piece of the map, but it leaves me scarcely better than before. Off to the Lesser Antilles, capturing two Spanish barques near Puerto Rico.
      

          
March 1661: The Lesser Antilles come into sight, with all of their towns of various nationalities. In St. Martin, I buy a Dutch letter of marque; no telling how soon they might go to war with the Spanish. Off St. Eustatius, I capture a Spanish merchantman. In English St. Kitts, I make a killing on my cargo hold full of sugar, which is selling for 100 pieces of gold per ton. In French Guadelope, the governor promotes me to Captain for my deeds against the Spanish and tells me that Count Sanchez, in Havana, can tell me more about my sister.

May 1661: Off the coast of Barbados, I capture One-Eye in a battle that, along with the subsequent visit to Barbados, I recorded for posterity. Why the governor of a French colony 500 miles away should care what's going on in Barbados, I have no idea. I resolve to head south to the Spanish-controlled waters around Trinidad, plunder some more ships, and stop by Martinique for another promotion (if I earn it), and then return to Tortuga. I have business on the island of Cuba: hidden treasure and Count Sanchez.

June 1661: Arriving at Trinidad without having found any ships, I discover that the settlement has no fort and only a tiny garrison. In another moment recorded for the future, my crew assails the garrison, and I soon bring the commander to his knees and my crew sacks the town. The resulting treasure isn't much--my cargo hold won't accommodate much--but it's a nice moral victory. In Martinique, I get promoted to Major and get 250 acres of land.
         

             
October 1661: I find the treasure on Cuba. Then, the unthinkable: a French pinnace informs me that France and Spain have made peace. No one is at war with Spain! How will I make my fortune? Fighting English or Dutch? I have nothing against them!
            

Looks like a match!

          
November 1661: In Havana, I get another piece of the map and become more convinced than ever that it is in the Bahamas. After some searching, sure enough, I find it just a few days east of the Florida keys. I don't know how I missed it before. Unfortunately, in my haste to reach it, I sail over a reef and lose my barque. It doesn't matter: I found my sister! And more important, she has a map to a lost Inca treasure! Looking at it, it seems to me the most likely locations are south of Puerto Principe on Cuba or in the crook of Hispanola south of Port-de-Paix.
        

           
February 1662: It was on Cuba. 100,000 gold piece are mine!
           

Always leave your crew HAPPY!

         
I write this last entry from Santiago, where I have divided up the plunder and released my crew after two years at sea. I will enjoy the next few months with my sister, hoping for a reversal of fortune on the diplomatic front: Spain and England have become allies. I can now not risk attacking Spanish ships without making enemies of the English.

Spain, meanwhile, has not only given me amnesty for my past deeds, they were so delighted at the number of pirates I've captured that they promoted me to Major! My blood boils, but with no enemies and the English alliance, my vengeance against Spain will have to wait. In the meantime, I'll gladly take their land and titles and use them to my advantage--against them.

On better news, I have heard of my long lost father! A Captain Oropesa in Trinidad knows something about his location. I also have a treasure map for a location near Panama. My exploits have made me famous, and I remain in fine health. Shiver me timbers, but the future looks bright.

Game 40: Pirates!

           

Pirates!

United States
MicroProse (developer and publisher)

Released 1987 for Commodore 64, PC (self-booting), and Amstrad CPC; 1988 for Apple II, Macintosh, and Apple II GS; 1989 for Atari ST, PC-88, and PC-98; 1990 for Amiga; 1991 for NES

Re-released in 1993 as Pirates! Gold for Amiga CD, Sega Genesis, Macintosh, and Windows

Remade in 2004 for Xbox, Windows, and Macintosh

Date Started: 21 January 2011

                  
I can remember vividly a day in the spring of 1992. I had just finished my freshman year at college and I was applying for an internship (my college had a strong co-op program) at an office building in downtown Boston. It was the first time I had ever interviewed for a job (all my high school jobs had come about through the influence of family or friends), and I was absolutely terrified. Paranoid about being late, I had arrived at the building about 45 minutes early, and as I sat there in my uncomfortable shirt and mismatched tie, I thought seriously about just getting up, taking the bus home, and going to bed.

Instead, I pulled a notepad from my backpack and wrote one sentence to myself: "No matter what happens, in an hour you will get to go home with a bag of Doritos and a six-pack of Coke and spend the rest of the day playing Pirates!"

It helped. My nerves calmed and confidence bolstered, I went in to the office and gave the worst interview that any student has ever given. Not only did I not get the job, I'm pretty sure I was blackballed from the entire industry. But true to my word, an hour later I was playing Pirates! on my Mac, and I doubt I stopped all weekend. There was a time when I was addicted to this game far worse than any CRPG. I'd probably still be playing it now, full-time, except that once I had achieved the highest retirement rank in all six time periods, I decided that there wasn't much more I could accomplish with it. I had "won," so to speak. I probably played my last game in 1993 or 1994 and haven't thought seriously about it until I saw that it was on MobyGames's list of CRPGs [Ed. It has since been removed.]

Is this in any way justifiable? Probably not. In one of my earliest postings, I asked "What is a CRPG?" and came up with 10 criteria by combining a Wikipedia article with my own thoughts:

1. Character identification
2. Character development
3. Freedom of movement and choice of actions
4. Quests
5. At least a partial focus on combat
6. Combat at least partly based on probabilities rather than action
7. Weapons, armor, and items to buy, find, and equip
8. Game progression through combat and dialog
9. Interaction with NPCs
10. Random encounters

Not every CRPG features every criteria on this list. Wizardry has no NPC interaction to speak of, and there are no quests in Telengard. But let's say a CRPG has to have at least 7 or 8 out of 10. Well, Pirates! gets 1, 3, 4, 5, and 10. The others are a stretch. MobyGames's other category, "Strategy," defines the game better.

And yet, ironically, damned if you don't role-play the hell out of this game. When you start, you choose your era and nationality, and depending on your choices, the game gives you a quick backstory: your family was robbed and imprisoned by a corrupt judge and you've just escaped from prison, or you're an adventurer being financed by the king, or you're a peasant farmer who chooses to sign up with some pirates to escape the monotony of the fields. It hardly matters, as the rest of the gameplay is identical, and you have "long lost" family members to rescue no matter what.

All of these would be good names for cocktails.

Among other role-playing scenarios in Pirates! are the options to:

• Eschew any real "pirating" and instead serve each nation as a "pirate-hunter," chasing down pirates and turning them in to the governors for rewards of title and land (and perhaps a comely daughter).
• Go privateer. Pick a side and wage war against the ships and towns of your nation's enemies, perhaps even driving out the governors and claiming towns in the name of your flag.
• Trade. Keep track of the buying and selling prices for different goods in each port, watch the news carefully for signs of prosperity (new gold mine) and calamity (Indian attack, plague) and use this information to make your fortune.
• Focus on recovering your long lost family members.
• Become an honest-to-god bloodthirsty pirate, attacking every ship you come across, avoiding all nations, pillaging the silver train and treasure fleet, slinking into dodgy, undefended ports to trade and pick up crewmembers, searching for lost treasure, and otherwise making as much money as you can.

Of course, combinations are also possible. Every game is a new map of your life course. Do you want to start as a pirate but then see the error of your ways, settle down with a wife, and then do missions for your governor/father-in-law? Do you want to make a lot of money fast and retire young? There are a lot of possibilities, and they're all fun. The lesson is that not every CRPG really features "role playing," and not every game that has a strong "role-playing" focus is a CRPG.

I'm not the only Pirates! lover, of course. As Wikipedia chronicles, the game won numerous awards in the 1980s and was one of Computer Gaming World's top 20 games of all time in 1996. It spawned two remakes: Pirates! Gold in 1994 and Sid Meier's Pirates! in 2004.

For those completely unfamiliar with the game, it is set in a vast area of the Caribbean and Gulf of Mexico, bordered on the east by the Lesser Antilles and the west by the interior of Mexico. It goes as far north as the South Carolina coast and on the south deep into Venezuela and Colombia. I suppose this is easier with a map:

Roughly this.

The attention to historical detail is fantastic. If you visit Jamaica in 1560, you'll find the capital at Santigo Vega, since Spain occupied the island until 1655. This is particularly notable because the town was officially called Santiago de la Vega (almost all encyclopedias have it as this) but colloquially it had been shortened to Santigo Vega, a fact that the researchers of Pirates! somehow dug up. Anyway, return in 1660, and you'll find it in the hands of the English, with Port Royale as its capital. (The town was destroyed in 1692 and was replaced as the capital by Kingston, a fact that I learned with horror on my first trip to Jamaica.) The developers even researched the populations and economies of the various cities.

A city ripe for invasion.

         
Through this bounding main you sail a fleet of ships, and no less detail is given to the style of ships you can engage and capture: English merchantmen, French pinnaces, Dutch cargo fluyts, and Spanish war galleons among them. You command a crew of rowdy pirates numbering from a handful to several hundred, plundering ships and towns, trading goods, finding treasures, and romancing governors' daughters.

Gameplay consists of five main features:

• Navigation. As you sail from town to town, time passes. To maximize your useful life, you have to take the shortest routes possible, contend with wind and weather, avoid shoals, and keep track of your coordinates. The original version of the game, unlike Pirates! Gold and later versions, is realistic in its depictions of navigation. While your navigator's sextant can fix your latitude, he can only guess at your longitude based on the position of the sun. And you don't want to check too often, because taking coordinates burns an entire day. You have to be careful not to get stuck in an unpopulated area with no food, or with a discontented crew, who might suddenly mutiny.

• Ship-to-Ship Combat. When you choose to engage in combat with a pirate, enemy ship, or hapless victim, you enter a tactical combat screen in which you sail around the other ship, firing your cannons and simultaneously trying to avoid his. Your crew reloads at a speed based on their current morale, so it pays to keep them happy. You have to set the appropriate sails (battle sails for damage reduction or full sails for maximum navigability), carefully monitor your damage, and make sure that you don't riddle your enemy so full of holes that the ship sinks, taking useful cargo and hostages with it. The game uses a variety of this combat system to attack a town from the sea; you fire not on another ship but on the town's forts.

• Fencing. If the enemy doesn't surrender in ship-to-ship combat, you enter a fencing minigame in which choose a weapon and you and your foe swipe and lunge at each other until one surrenders. The point of surrender depends not only on how well you fence, but also on how many crewmembers you have relative to each other. If you have 60 pirates and you've reduced his crew to 6, he might fall on his knees after one thrust. If your crews are evently matched, it might take a good 10 minutes of thrusts and parries before one of you wins. You not only fence when capturing ships, but also when trying to extract information about a family member, fighting a rival lover for the governor's daughter's affections, or getting caught sneaking into town.

Four hits later, he surrenders.

• Diplomacy and Trade. When you enter a town, you have a number of tasks to accomplish, including schmoozing the governor for a quest or promotion; recruiting new pirates at the tavern; seeking treasure maps and intelligence; repairing ships; and trading goods and cannons with merchants. You can only save inside towns, so visiting frequently is important. Sometimes towns are hostile to pirates--or to you in particular, if you've been pillaging that nationality's ships--so you have to sneak in. This limits your available options.

Sugar is so cheap here, I could make a nice profit buying it and selling it in Havana.

• Land Combat. If you feel like attacking a town an alternate way, you can anchor your ships along the coast and have your band approach the town on foot. If they have a lot of soldiers, they may send battalions out to meet you; otherwise, you can storm the walls and attack the town's commander in one-on-one combat. Sacking a town results in the plunder of its valuables (if the residents haven't hidden them), and occasionally the governor flees, allowing you to install a new one of a more friendly nationality.

Oh, but really, this only scratches the surface. The key to Pirates! is how well you plan, organize, manage, and strategize. Among the many elements you have to consider are:

• Keeping the men happy. Your crew's morale is dependent on how long you've been at sea, how much gold they see in the hold, and how many fellow crewmembers they have to split it with. A disgruntled crew performs badly in combat and might eventually rebel, so you have to watch it carefully, and every once in a while you have to divide up the plunder, sell all but one ship, and mount a new expedition. Since this process takes about four months of game time, you want to prolong it as long as possible, but not so long that your crew mutinies. You also want to keep a large crew for fighting towns and such, but not so large that they perceive a small share of the gold.

After a month of sailing, my crew has only 27 gold pieces each and thus are only "pleased," not terribly happy.

• Optimizing your fleet. You want the right balance of ships to be effective in combat (I prefer the maneuverability of a sloop or barque, even when taking on a galleon) but also with enough cargo space for goods and a large crew, but not so much that you slog through the Caribbean at a snail's pace (that's called "mixing metaphors").

• Politics and intelligence. If you want to rise through the ranks among the English, then you have to attack England's enemies and avoid attacking its allies. But enemies and alliances can change constantly, and you have to keep careful track of it. In worst cases, your favored nation is suddenly at war with no one, and you have to resort to peaceful ways to make a living until they get belligerent again. Meanwhile, successfully sacking towns involves keeping track of the town's population, economy, and defenses. As you visit taverns and hail ships, you get news of faraway events, such as new gold mines, plagues, and Indian attacks, all of which change the desirability and ease of plundering those towns. You can also get some intelligence on where the Spanish treasure fleet or silver train is going to be at a particular time, intercept and plunder it, and enjoy a bounty of gold.

From this I can discern that Gran Granada and Puerto Bello would make lousy targets right now, but Bermuda might be a ripe fruit, and if Santa Marta has changed hands, I might find a friendly port there now where previously it was hostile.

• Interpreting treasure maps. As you explore, you'll find random treasure maps, but more important, you'll find maps with clues as to the locations of your family members. Sometimes these maps have sections torn away or hidden, so you have to carefully study the available features and determine where the X is most likely to be. You also have to be sensible about heading off to find treasure--sailing all the way to Central America for 6,000 gold pieces rarely makes sense, for instance, but if you have other business there...

This one is comparably easy.

• Optimizing your travel. Let's say you have a treasure map indicating a point on Cuba, a quest to capture a pirate operating near Panama, and a clue that someone with knowledge of your mother is in Trinidad. Meanwhile, you have a cargo hold full of sugar you want to trade in Port Royale, and it's been six months since you last visited a French port to get a much-deserved promotion. Taking into consideration the season and trade winds, you have to construct something like a traveling salesman algorithm to minimize the amount of time it takes.

Eventually, you get older and less healthy, and it's time to retire. The game gives you a final score, and outlook for the rest of your life, based on your accumulated wealth, title, and family. The top rank is the "king's advisor."

The original game manual came with a delightful series of embedded commentary called "memoirs of captain Sydney" that provided useful clues and context to the game. These were repeated in the 2004 re-release.


             
Embedded in all of this gameplay is a wealth of information, both historical and technical. Because of this game, I learned a lot about the geography and history of the Caribbean. When I was invited to visit Trinidad and Tobago on business, I knew where it was, and that it had been owned by the Spanish, French, and English at various points in its history. I know that running before the wind is not the most efficient way to sail. And the game teaches real skills about logistics and management. If I thought it was a real CRPG, the answer to "What have you learned?" would be easy.

For my character, I chose to play in "The Bucanneer Heroes" time period, which starts in 1660. I decided that I would be Spanish, but furious that the Spanish system of justice had allowed my family to be robbed and torn apart. I would ally with whoever was an enemy of Spain, and wage war against my former country while simultaneously trying to recover my family members. I chose "skill at medicine" for my "special ability"; I almost always do, as it prolongs your useful life and increases the chances you'll be able to accomplish all your objectives within your career.
          

"Wit and charm" would naturally have been more true to life.

        
As I started the game, Spain was at war with France, so I headed off to find a French port and obtain a letter of marque (another term I learned from this game) allowing me to attack Spanish ships on France's behalf. Tomorrow, I will relate the adventures of Captain Gatomalo but then get back to games that are more defensible as CRPGs.

Coincidentally, yesterday I was teaching a day-long class that wasn't going so well, and I grinned as said to myself, "No matter how the rest of the day goes, tonight you can go home with a bag of Doritos and a six-pack of Coke and play Pirates!" Well, ha ha, joke was on me, because I couldn't get it to work, and my wife asked when I'd stopped drinking diet, and an entire bag of Doritos doesn't sit so well when you're 40. But now I'm playing again, and all is right with the world. Arrrr.