Most games of 1987 told the player what to do. Pirates! handed over a ship, a crew and the Caribbean, and left the rest open. You could trade sugar between ports, carry a letter of marque against Spain, sack a town, hunt for buried treasure or a missing relative, and fight your way up to a governor’s daughter, while the years ran on and your character slowly grew too old for the life. Sid Meier wrote it for MicroProse, the company he had co-founded with Bill Stealey and which was known until then for flight and submarine simulations, and it was the first of his games with his name in the title.
Fast facts
- Publisher: MicroProse, Hunt Valley, Maryland.
- Design and programming: Sid Meier, who was “the sole programmer” on the original.
- First version: Commodore 64, 1987, $39.95 in the US and £19.95 on disk in Britain.
- Conversions: Apple II and IIGS, IBM PC, Macintosh, Amstrad CPC 6128, Atari ST, Amiga and, in 1991, the NES.
- Awards: Best Fantasy or Science Fiction Game and Best Screen Graphics at the 1988 Origins Awards.
- Remakes: Pirates! Gold (1993) and Sid Meier’s Pirates! (2004).
A privateer’s career
A career began with four choices: an era, a nationality, a difficulty level and a special skill. Computer Game Forum‘s reviewer, M. Evan Brooks, listed six eras, from 1560, “The Silver Empire”, when Spain was at its peak and there were few safe harbours for anyone on the run, to 1680, “Pirates’ Sunset”, when “the ‘civilized nations’ are beginning to sweep piracy from the seas”. The default was 1660, “The Buccaneer Heroes”. The player sailed for England, France, Spain or the Netherlands, at a level from apprentice through journeyman and adventurer to swashbuckler, with a skill such as fencing, gunnery, navigation or charm. Players who did not want a whole career could instead take command of one of six famous expeditions, such as Drake’s or Morgan’s.
The map ran from Vera Cruz in the west to Barbados in the east and from Bermuda to Panama, and the box included a chart of all 57 ports, ZZAP!64 noted. The ship sailed across a scrolling overhead map, and wind and distance mattered, since a long voyage could run out of food or water. In port the player could visit the governor for news of who was at war with whom, recruit in the tavern, trade with a merchant or divide up the plunder. Much of the strategy was political. England was usually at war with Spain, so raiding Spanish shipping won English favour, and a patient player could trade peacefully with a Spanish town, recruit there, “and finally turn and sack the town!”
Each activity had its own screen. Ship battles were fought from overhead, manoeuvring for the wind and firing broadsides; boarding led to a sword duel between the two captains; attacking a town meant a land battle. Story threads ran underneath: players could search for lost members of their family and for buried Incan treasure, and taverns sold treasure maps, at a price. The career ended in retirement, and the rank you had reached decided how you spent it. Brooks wrote that true success led to “Adviser to the Crown” and failure to life as a beggar; Computer Gaming World later put the extremes as a king’s adviser or a bartender.
How it was made
Computer Gaming World’s M. Evan Brooks visited MicroProse in 1987 and learned that Pirates! had been started two years earlier and then put on hold. “Twice as much code as was actually used in the game was developed.” The plans had included four or five characters in every town, sailing with whole fleets, and a sub-plot setting religion against the nobility, and all of it was dropped “because of memory and playability restrictions”. MicroProse told the magazine that Pirates! had appealed to more women than its earlier games.
Meier explained the rest to Retro Gamer in 2007. He had always loved pirates: “As a kid I would play pirate games, read pirate books and watch old Errol Flynn pirate movies.” He was “the sole programmer on the original version programmed on the Commodore 64”. He had been programming at home on an Atari, “but we felt the Commodore had the largest market”. The team was “maybe five or six” people. The other versions were done by other teams with his oversight, and he named the Mega Drive and Amiga versions as excellent. Putting his name above the title was the idea of his co-founder, Bill Stealey, who wanted buyers to know who had designed each new game.
The copy protection was part of the game. As Meier remembered it, the C64 version asked the player to look up in the manual where the treasure fleet would be in a given month, an approach that “helps the player learn an important aspect of the game”.
Reception
The American press took to it quickly. Computer Gaming World’s first notice said that its graphics and interface looked “a lot like certain earlier games” but that it offered “more decision points and painstaking historical detail”. Brooks saw debts to Seven Cities of Gold and SSI’s Broadsides, and complained that every ship needed the same crew of eight to sail it, “whether that ship is a small pinnace or a gigantic treasure galleon”. He still concluded that “Pirates! is fun and may well teach some history”. Version 1 had a bug: the program could crash with a “String too long” error, and MicroProse offered a corrected version free to anyone who sent in the old disk.
British reviewers were cooler. ZZAP!64 gave the C64 disk version 68 per cent in September 1987. Its reviewer found that the character never changed, so that a long career could be spent getting caught and rescued “without getting anywhere”: “This is one of the first games where I’ve really wished my character would die.” Amstrad Action liked the CPC 6128 version more, calling it “excellent swashbuckling stuff but expensive” at £19.95 on disk. The Amiga version, published in 1990, scored 80 per cent in ZZAP!.
At the 1988 Origins Awards Pirates! won Best Fantasy or Science Fiction Game and Best Screen Graphics, and MicroProse’s advertisements added Computer Gaming World’s 1988 Action Game of the Year. By 1993 the magazine had put it in its Hall of Fame and called it “one of the best ‘hybrid’ game designs to come along”.
Later versions
The NES version came out in 1991, published by Ultra Games and programmed by Rare, and Nintendo Power listed its skills as navigation, gunnery, fencing, medicine, wit and charm. Pirates! Gold (1993) redrew the game in 256-colour VGA for the PC, with versions for the Mega Drive and the Amiga CD32. Computer Gaming World’s reviewer found it “a great game engine with some body work and a few coats of high quality paint”: the main additions were a full map, a time-compression option for long voyages and the chance to marry a merchant’s daughter instead of only a governor’s.
Meier came back to the game himself at Firaxis. Sid Meier’s Pirates! (2004) was a 3D remake for Windows, published by Atari, and Meier was its designer and “primary gameplay programmer”. It added a story about a family scattered by the villainous Marquis Montalban and turned the courtship into a dancing game. Computer Gaming World found it “little more than a collection of minigames”, but an “addictively entertaining” one. Versions for the Xbox and the PSP followed.
Sources
- Computer Gaming World issue 39, August 1987, p. 10: new-release note (“adventure/simulation”; $39.95 for the C64).
- ZZAP!64 issue 29, September 1987, pp. 26–27: review of the C64 disk version (£19.95; career options; six expeditions; 57 ports; the reviewer’s verdict). Issue 38, June 1988, p. 59: index of reviews (68 per cent). Issue 62, June 1990, pp. 21–22: Amiga version review; issue 73, May 1991, p. 44: index of reviews (80 per cent).
- M. Evan Brooks, review of Pirates!, Computer Game Forum issue 1, Fall 1987, pp. 8–9 (published by Computer Gaming World’s publisher): the six eras, nationalities, levels and skills; the expeditions; trading and politics; the crew of eight; the “String too long” bug; retirement.
- M. Evan Brooks, “Titans of the Computer Gaming World: MicroProse”, Computer Gaming World issue 41, November 1987, pp. 16–17: the game’s two-year history, the dropped features and its appeal to women.
- Amstrad Action issue 32, May 1988, p. 45: review of the CPC 6128 version.
- Compute!’s Gazette issue 67, January 1989, p. 11 (news) and p. 55 (MicroProse advertisement): the 1988 Origins Awards; the advertised CGW award; versions for the C64, IBM PC, Macintosh and Apple II.
- Nintendo Power volume 29, October 1991, p. 85: the NES version from Ultra Games and Rare.
- Computer Gaming World issue 111, October 1993, pp. 54–56: Pirates! Gold review (the original’s family and treasure quests; retirement; Hall of Fame; the changes).
- “The Making of Pirates!”, Retro Gamer issue 38, 2007, pp. 58–61: interview with Sid Meier (inspiration; sole programmer on the C64; the team; Stealey and the name; the ports; manual-based copy protection; the 2004 remake and Pirates! Gold).
- Computer Gaming World issue 248, February 2005, pp. 86–87: review of Sid Meier’s Pirates! (2004).