Game Info: Pirates Gold

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Review By Ridge

Pirates was originally released on Commodore 64 and became a huge success. The reason is because it was a strategy and action game and you could be a pirate. This game did also make Sid Meier famous. The CD32 version starts with a nice 3D rendered intro where a camera moves along a harbour and is getting closer to a bare with music which gets louder every second. Once inside you can see a bunch of drunk pirates that have fun and a coin is flipped high up in the air. After the intro you get right to the title screen picture with an awesome opening tune.

You start as a broke pirate and to get into the game itself, you must first fight with sword with another pirate. He can be easy to knock out so you get into the first town. The towns are mainly spanish and is spread around a seamap. All the music is awesome and many of them are famous and there is a new tune for every screen of the game. In a town you can usually buy a boat, visit a bank, a tavern and merchants. In the tavern you can hire crew, get rumours and get jobs. When you travel with a bot, you do it on the seamap that is animated and on the sea you will often meet other ships of different kinds and of course other pirates. There is also wind that can be strong and sea hole/swirls that you must watch out for.

When you encounter a ship, you must fight with cannons in the beginning and sometimes the enemy are so weak that they surrender. sometimes the enemy is so strong that you must fight it's captain with a sword too. If you win, you can loot the ship and sink it or just take it with you. If you loose, you will be a prisoner and must be that for awhile until you get released. The thing to go fore is to getting the largest ship possible and find ships with lots of gold etc.. to make you richer. You can even talk with guvenours on some occasions. This game is damn good and is among the best 10 games on CD32.

CD32 vs PC:
There were also released a PC version of the game that had way better S-VGA GFX, but shitty sound and low quality MIDI. there were no intro on the PC version either. This was also a CD version so why not include CDDA from the CD32 version to make it the best version? I prefer the CD32 version because it have way better sound and music and is overall most CD enhanced. I am lucky because i own Pirates Gold CD big boxed on PC and have the original on CD32 in a Digi-Pack cover.