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Sid Meier's Pirates! Remake Hoists Mainbrace
Thanks to GameSpy for its first impressions of the PC remake, Sid Meier's Pirates!, an updating of the seminal Civilization designer's late '80s game of the same name. Meier notes: "We've learned quite a bit about gameplay... we learned how to build on a classic game without destroying it", and the preview reveals: "The game world is a 'fully fleshed-out sandbox' where you'll have your own ship (or fleet of ships) and free reign to do as you please." However, Meier also mentions: "There's a little more of a stronger story pull", since apparently, this Q4 2004-due title has, like other piratical titles, "an über-villain, a pirate captain responsible for killing your parents, forcing you to leave the old world, and scattering your family all over the Caribbean."
Why not remake Pirates Gold ? It was a much better game.
but my floppy disk went duff
oh yes, please be as good
There are places where the networks are not touching,and there are places where they are-Boeing's Lori Gunter
... who thinks that this will be 99% like the first one, only with better graphics and such?
:)
For every feature discussed in the article, I was like "yes, just like the original".
Yes, I loved it, but, after 17 years, I wanted more than a graphics update - I wanted something like a Daggerfal to an Arena. Not "Pirates Gold Plus".
Ah, but it'll have *dancing*. Nice.
Oh well, I'll buy it anyway, but they could have done *so* much more...
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the description sounds like the game will have a GTA feel to it...
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...I think I'll pirate this. ;)
Kids these days. They don't know the difference between classic, and just plain old.
a Pirates game in OSS: http://huntforgold.sf.net Taking shape, needing developers... plays as good as Pirates! Gold
Hopefully the graphics of the governor's daughters will be much better. For some reason they just didn't look all that pretty on my C64.
"Nobody knows the age of the human race, but everybody agrees that it is old enough to know better." - Unknown
games that only play for a certain time period - ie - you have 500 turns to do as much as you can. Let me play for as long as I want, or at least give me the option to do so.
:/
I would have much rather seen Cutthroats, Terror on the High Seas from Eidos get an update.
Oh well, since it's piratical, I'll probably get it anyways, but I already have a feeling I'm not going to like it.
Personally, I think you are perhaps omitting several thoughts in your statement. Sid Meier is saying that this is an 'update', so it's quite obvious that those who are expecting a complete overhaul beyond that of the graphics, for example of the gameplay and the other features, will be somewhat disappointed. If the developers changed the game so much that it didn't resemble the original in many ways, it wouldn't be just an update, but a new-generation sequel -- or maybe, to a certain extent, another game in the same genre. What i think Sid Meier wants this to be is a port of the original game to a modern format, using all the benefits of the latter, which are mainly the graphics overhaul and the power which can render the in-game world.
What you may be forgetting is that these new benefits will be like allowing the player to see the same game through a different eye. The in-game map will be immense and rendered with beauty thanks to the advances of recent technology. What's more, this new perspective must have allowed the developers to add or update some features which they could probably not have inserted before, because they did not have the technology to exploit for doing so. This is the kind of gameplay updates which the game will have done some good to the new version of the game, so the playing style doesn't change so much -- which stays in line with Sid Meier wanting this to be an 'update' of the original game.
As I have already said, I think that all this game is is an update, a port of the original game to a modern format, using all the benefits of this more recent hardware, to overhaul the graphics, features et al, but without forgetting what the gameplay is all about. As Sid Meier says it so well himself, they are "building upon a classic game without destroying it."
"Really, I'm not out to destroy Microsoft. That will just be a completely unintentional side effect" -- Linus Torval
That's not really much of a change from the original game. Originally, the main character's family was scattered throughout the carribean and you had to rescue them. The only real change here is that a "why" has been answered more clearly.
As far as time limit, there needs to be one. Just as the Civ series couldn't go on forever (no new technology changes gameplay fundamentally and for the worse), Pirates has to end too after a certain ammount of time. Or else, your character will be forced to become a video pirate. Arr..?
-- Political fascism requires a Fuhrer.
Intresting idea but unless you live in venice how are you going to get your ship up the highstreet?
Hoist the electic window and shiver me sheet metal does not quite have the same ring.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
But will it have a huge honkin manual, which is more historical primer than anything else, in the classic Microprose style?
Vintage computer games and RPG books available. Email me if you're interested.
Any word yet on the hardware requirements? While I certainly don't expect it to run on a 1 MHz 6502 like the original, it would be nice if it doesn't cost $49.95 plus $1k in system upgrades.
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Do you have to break the CD copy protection scheme to win?
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You actually booted off the game disk, how's that for gettting close to the metal.
Pretty good GUI for that era too. In all its 16-color TGA glory.Used to rush in with an inferior force and win by swordfightng. Fewer guys to split the loot with that way.
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With the game, IIRC wasnt there a printed map of the Carribean?
It was very useful at first for navigating your ship around... but I remember playing the game so much back then that I had memorized the whole thing.
The original Pirates: Gold! had some of the best music I've ever heard in a computer game. I still have the old DOS executable with the General Midi update, although it doesn't work very well in Windows. There were pieces by Bach and Mozart played when meeting the governor as well as folk tunes ("What shall we do...") played in the bar, but there were also brilliant tunes composed by the developer including the title theme and the best of them all, the tune played when your career was over.
In fact, they could just re-use the original music, maybe played by live musicians instead of my sound cards ominous on-board ones.
Switch back to Slashdot's D1 system.
Yeah but there's always that one that you really didn't want to see in Hi-res.... Yeah, just sit there and give me the info babe....
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The phrase should be 'free rein', not 'free reign to do as you please'. Although reign makes almost-sense (as in 'free to rule'), rein is the proper usage (as in 'control of the reins to direct the horse freely').
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I loved Civilization and Railroad Tycoon as much as the next guy [actually probably more than the next guy...], but Sid Meier hasn't made a great game in 15 years. He's had his name on things, and helped out; but I always got the impression he was playing golf in a hat made of money rather than doing actual game design.
Because the whole Monkey Island/ Treasure Island / Peter Pan themeset has been very attractive and marketable. You make a pirate game, movie, cartoon and follow the basic template even if the story is crappy and it'll sell.
I've many caribbean friends, with caribbean accents, and they dont seem they lived such interesting lives back home...
And I wanted go for a $600 vacation to the caribbean, and take a sword with me.
"Give orange me give eat orange me eat orange give me eat orange give me you." -Nim Chimpsky
Pirates of the Carribean on the XBOX was basically a full 3d update of the original Pirates!
I'm surprised direct comparisons weren't made in the article.
It is basically the same game, has next to nothing to do with the film too.
Personally, I'm waiting for Bungie's Pimps at Sea:
can be found at worldofpirates, which actually is a MMOPG (massive multiplayer online pirate game ;). It's still in beta, but I played it for a while and it did really have the feel of pirates except the world was a lot bigger and your character was alot slower, but it's promising nevertheless as the missions could be alot more dynamic then any singleplayer game can be.
Dre
Anyone here play Sea Dogs? I found it was an excellent pirate sim when I was trying to find something close to the original Pirates!.