Sid Meier Developing Pirates! Remake

Thanks to an anonymous reader for pointing out a press release at Yahoo stating that Sid Meier's company Firaxis has signed a long-term publishing deal with Atari. This includes the announcement of Sid Meier's Pirates!, a remake of the classic Microprose strategy title, for 2004 release, and another Civilization III add-on pack, Civilization Conquests, for Xmas 2003. Since Atari, formerly Infogrames, purchased Microprose a couple of years back, they've transferred the rights to Silent Service, Colonization, and many more classic Meier titles to Firaxis, and these are also mentioned for possible remakes down the road.

Comments

I loved that game

[tjensor]

Spent FAR too much time playing it on my old Amiga 500.

So many memories...
The countless raids on Maraciabo...
The capturing of all those towns for England...
The first time I managed to get the really Foxy chick to marry me...

Praise Be To One Eye'd Willy!

[th3walrus]

Maybe we'll finally get a decent pirate themed game. Sea Dogs was buggy. Sea Dogs 2 was looking good until it became Pirates of the Caribbean (Blech... Disney). Pirates! still remains the ultimate pirate game.

Anyone tried Tropico 2: Pirate Cove? That's supposed to be pretty decent as well.

Re:Praise Be To One Eye'd Willy!

[SLot]

Let's see. I've enjoyed Cutthroats

Going back to ancient games, my favorite sea faring game was Dreadnaughts (can't find a link for it.)

Re:Praise Be To One Eye'd Willy!

[Anonymous Coward]

Tropico 2 is basically just a strategy game. You do have some control over the pirates, though.

good or bad?

[Anonymous Coward]

i loved most of those games, and im looking forward to seeing sid meiers squels, as i was pretty disapointed with some other pirates clones.
what im wondering is, does that mean one less developer who will actually inovate, but instead only produce sequels?

Re:good or bad?

[tigermonkey]

What Firaxis will probably end up doing is developing sequels (Civ III) or sequel-like games (Alpha Centauri; in a lot of ways, this plays and feels like a highly polished, more flexible version of Civ II) as a means of guaranteeing a steady cash income while they develop more unique titles (Gettysburg, Antietam, SimGolf); if Pirates! allows Sid to finish his dinosaur game (the one he was working on before Civ III), I don't have a problem picking up a copy of Pirates!...*grin*

(And I would love to see an updated version of Sword of the Samurai; no it's not a Sid Meier game, but his name is in the credits, so why can't he remake it? *grin*)

tigermonkey

P.S. One wonders why Sid allowed RRII to be made by someone else; I think PopTop did a great job (I still have the game on my hard dirve, and play it every now and then), but I have to wonder what kind of financial windfall Sid would have reaped if Firaxis would have released "Sid Meyer's Railroad Tycoon II".

Excellent

[taluven]

I spent countless hours playing Pirates! with my friend on his Amiga. What a great game.

Would you like to:
- purchase Pirates when it comes out?
- do nothing?

Also, was anyone ever able to successfully attack San Juan?

Re:Excellent

[Vacindak]

Yes. Several times. With a nice galleon worth of pirates and some sneaky techniques involving land combat, it's very possible. (Use one army as bait and keep the others in the forest.) It's much harder to do coming in from the sea though.

Re:Excellent

[sICE]

Got it severeal times from the sea, even with a sloop ;-)

One thing Pirates! left me is that i dont know about my country geography (belgium), but you can go and ask about any small and forgotten island in the gulf of mexico i probably know about it ;-) (if it was in the game)

btw, on the C64, sometimes the game just crashed, and if i remember well you could list (a part of?) the program in basic. Anyone knows if this was actually the game source?!

Re:Excellent

[taluven]

I was about 12 at the time, and never did get a good grasp of the land combat. I would always just charge in with the ship and then get crushed.

Mabey I'll be better at it the second time around.

Re:Excellent

[MacBrave]

I think that the basic program was some king of bootloader, not the actually program.

I played Pirates! a lot on my C-64. Then when I got my Amiga 500 circa 1990 Pirates! was one of the first games I purchased for it as well.

Microprose ... how about MOO 1 remake?

[ginbot462]

Since Infogrames (we had to change our name to Atari cause Infogrames was just plain stupid. Not that Atari has been "Atari" in years) own Microprose, why not remake the original Master of Orion? Nothing too fancy, just graphics, fix how those slider bars worked some, and allow customizable races. Maybe others, but damnit .. it's still better than MOO3. Maybe I should stop bitching and just buy Galactic Civilizations.

Random Atari Link

Civ 3

[Universal Nerd]

Great, I'm almost done mopping up the Japs in my current Civ 3 game, losing at least two hours of sleep due to the "One more turn" syndrome, and Fireaxis is gonna release a new expansion pack.

Damn, I need to get some sleep folks!

Re:Civ 3

[ude]

I agree. I have also that syndrome. The hours just passed by, and I could never actually restrain to say no! "I'm going to bed now" (Even though it was 2 am in the morning)

But I also had the same syndrome in Pirates! I played it all the time, and had so much fun with the game. It was worth every single penny(gold coins, that is)

Some basic questions about the game.

[immanis]

How much hARRRRd disk space will it use?

How complex are the graphics? Do I need to buy a new video cARRRd?

How fARRR will it be from town to town?

If your characted gets wounded in a dual, will he keep his scARRRs?

When you go into a town, can you shop at the bazARRR?

Will there be a map, or do you have to navigate by the stARRRs?

Can you get into a bARRR fight?

Is it going to be written in java and distributed in a .jARRR?

Can you voyage to QatARRR?

Will you just get gold and jewels, or can you also collect dinARRR?

Does your ship get a minstrel, perhaps someone who plays guitARRR?

Can you practice before a duel? I'd really like to spARRR.

When the cannons go off, do they leave chARRR?

Will I be loved for these jokes, or covered in feathers and tARRR?

Re:Some basic questions about the game.

[Anonymous Coward]

tar definitly. two or three is funny, twenty is lame. now go walk teh plank. yaar.

Re:Some basic questions about the game.

[Dave2 Wickham]

Can you get a pirate copy off KazARRR?
*ahem*

Sorry :/

Re:Some basic questions about the game.

[EddieSam]

HARRR!!

Never tell me the odds

[Anonymous Coward]

I never quite understood how I could march into Panama City with the 50 crewman of my little sloop and take over the city with the Silver Train making a visit, just by beating someone in a sword duel. Winning with the final tally one of me versus 460 of them in the fort always seemed improbable. However it equals an instant "Infamous" rating :)

Mapless . . .

[Dausha]

I bought the original game on the manual alone. My first day with the game was a Friday, so I started at 3p and stopped the first round of playing the next morning around 6a. So, you can bet that I'll buy the new version.

I lost my map in the first week, but by then I developed to the point where I didn't need the map. However, my brother did, so I spent a good deal of time plotting every-stinking-square on the game on graph paper!

Re:Mapless . . .

[Dreetje]

Map which map?

I am a pirate! Aye, matey!

Just to expand on the story

[NetDanzr]

The rights to the following games were transfered back to Firaxis:

• Sid Meier's Pirates!
• Sid Meier's Colonization
• Covert Action
• Gunship
• Silent Service
• F-19 Stealth Fighter
• F-15 Strike Eagle
• CPU Bach

(I've been following this development for some time, due to the fact that this deal would take the games from under the IDSA protection, where Firaxis is not a mamber.)

Re:Just to expand on the story

[Babbster]

Just to be absolutely clear, and on the off-chance that anyone from Firaxis or Atari are reading this, I would buy new versions of every single one of these games. I played all of them (except CPU Bach and the later ones that were only on PC) on the Commodore 64 and in a couple of cases (Gunship and Pirates!) bought multiple copies when I wore out the floppies.

Covert Action was one of the most interesting games I played back "in the day." It was a nonlinear adventure that inexplicably felt like it had a story. Besides Pirates!, it's probably the game I would most like to see redone with current tech - it could blow away games like Metal Gear Solid and Splinter Cell (or, of course, it could suck but that's always the way).

Re:Just to expand on the story

[tfreport]

CPU Bach was actually only available on 3D0. According to Gamespot a while back this was due to the sound quality of the 3D0 compared to the Sound Blaster sound cards of the time (1993). More here

This article also has interesting quotes as to why Sid even bothered with this 'game.' The reason to Sid was that it followed just after he completed Civilization and he did not want to try and top himself with every game. Instead he found trying to make a program that created Bach music much more relaxing and a fun effort.

Re:Just to expand on the story

[Anonymous Coward]

I'd buy old ones as well

Re:Just to expand on the story

[Dreetje]

Will this also mean, it would be possible for Firaxis to put up the ancient games on their websites for download? I mean, I got my hands on a copy of colonization just last year, but I have been looking for it for the last 3 years or so.

If you look for any of those games, they were still being sold by Micropose (now atari), and sure it's a great game, but I feel it would be a great service that games above a certain age would just be put up for the community (for the fans). It would surely be a great way of advertising for the upcoming sequels!.

Great news...

[GriffX]

I'm thrilled that that game is being remade. I still have my Pirates map!

Pirates!

[Tarindel]

was one of my favorite games of all time. I had the apple II version and the apple IIgs version (which was buggy). I have great memories of playing the dutch circa 1620 and plunding the cities along the southern coast of the mediterranean.

Another thing I would be really curious to see is a Sid Meier done version of XCom. There's an interesting article from last August where this deal was being discussed. Amongst other things, interesting relevant paragraphs:

GameSpy: Would that include your old stuff? Like Pirates, F-15 Strike Eagle, Gunship...
Sid Meier: ... Silent Service, Red Storm Rising, Covert Ops. And we're looking at the other games as well.
GameSpy: Like Master of Magic and X-Com?
Sid Meier: Yes.
GameSpy: You realize Usenet is going to go nuts over that answer.
Sid Meier: We're not going to announce our next game until October or so.
GameSpy: You've been asking fans, yesterday I heard people saying Pirates more often than anything else.
Sid Meier: We'd love to do Pirates for the 21st century. People have also asked about Colonization, and a few others.

I can think of at least one or two people who would love to see a MOM sequel... :)

Re:Pirates!

[Dreetje]

Yes please! MOM and Colonization and I won't complain about stupid games coming out all the time.

Pirates must be one of the best games I ever saw. I played the game on the commodore at first, but I didn't understand anything of it (the game was English and I am Dutch). However we soon found out you could attack other ships, conquer cities and enter towns.
Just recently I found another copy of pirates for the SEGA: Genesis/megasystem and I actually played it again for weeks, now understanding everything. It is still a great game.
Which also goes for Colonization which never had a sequel either.
Oh those memories...spending the whole holiday playing Colonization in stead of swimming (I think my mom is still mad at me cause of that ;))

In other news...

[Pall Agamemnides]

Imperial Spain is planning to charge Sid Meier under the DMCA.

Pirate games!

[Echnin]

This is awesome! Will take a while for it to come out, though.

Meanwhile, you might be interested in this game, World of Pirates. It's an MMORPG set in, er, a Pirate universe. That doesn't sound right, but it's cool. Anyway, it's in beta at the moment, and you can sign up for it at their site.

Another good pirate game is Puzzle Pirates, where you do puzzles for piratey stuff. Pretty cool. In open beta.

Really looking forward to this Pirates! remake, though. It'll kick all those games' asses. :)

Alpha Centuri 2

[Anonymous Coward]

Now all i have to wait for is Alpha Centuri 2 R_G

I pirated the game in my vicious youth...

[wezelboy]

so I didn't have the benefit of a map. I was just thinking about how cool it would be to do a remake of Pirates! and lo! I'm sad I'm not going to be able to do it now, but I will actually go out and buy two copies of the game to make up for my youthful folly.

Re:I pirated the game in my vicious youth...

[nelsonal]

I loved the copy protection of Pirates!Gold. I never even had to reach for the manual once I learned that the correct answer was always titled Captain, and it only took your cannons away if you were wrong. I wasted more time with that game...

Re:I pirated the game in my vicious youth...

[Anonymous Coward]

copy protection of sid meyers games always seemed a litle weak. for example, the one for civ asked questions about the tech tree, but like any good game junky i knew it off by heart.

Heck, it's called "Pirates"

[yerricde]

Would you like to:
- purchase Pirates when it comes out?
- do nothing?

- pirate it?

With a name like Pirates!

[yerricde]

Pirates! still remains the ultimate pirate game.

As a pirate game, is Pirates! more fun than KaZaA?

Already Remade?

[Ochobee]

Didn't Microprose already remake Pirates! for Windows 95 platforms? As I recall it was not a big hit...

Re:Already Remade?

[Babbster]

Not quite. They actually did Pirates! Gold for DOS in SVGA (640x480x256) mode - nothing like hunting for DOS VESA VGA drivers - and later came out with a version that ran under Windows 3.1.

The game did okay, though it suffered somewhat because the DOS version was released in a very buggy condition. The Windows version corrected the bugs but it was still the same game and as such didn't generate a lot of interest. Also, it wasn't a "real" sequel in the sense that it added real gameplay changes. It was more a graphic and sound upgrade than anything else.

Thank God

[August_zero]

Pirates! is one of my all time favorite games, and If this remake is handled right it could be a great game.

Pirates are like ninjas in that anything you put them in, becomes that much cooler.