Pirates!

Sid Meier is one of the gods of the computer games industry, mostly for the Civilisation series but the game I have most enjoyed of his over the years has been Pirates! (and yes, it does have the exclamation mark as part of the title). I remember playing this on an original IBM PC in glorious 4 colour CGA nearly twenty years ago, and I was grabbed by the open ended, go anywhere and do anything gameplay in much the same way as I was grabbed by Elite several years previously.

The premise is simple – you are a young privateer in the 1660s with a ship and the freedom to do whatever you like. Raid ships of French, Spanish, Dutch or English origin, either on your own or under a letter of marque, hunt for buried treasure, trade, fight duels, sack towns, woo the governor's daughter, and sooner or later grow old and retire with your reputation for better or worse. The sailing model includes tacking against the prevailing winds, cannon fire with ball, grape or chain shot having different effects, and similarly the duelling model has cutlass, rapier and longsword with their own advantages and disadvantages.

I picked up the xbox version of the game yesterday, and the old magic is still there. The graphics have been given a very noticeable polish – the ships are wonderfully detailed, particularly as they start to suffer damage and the sails become ragged. The sound is excellent too, with appropriate music for each nationality in port and spot effects of timbers being shivered, buckles being swashed and plenty of yaaars and yo ho hos to be heard. New additions include mini games during boarding actions and a superb dancing game to sweep impressionable governor's daughters off of their feet.

It strikes me that this game would be simply perfect for a DS conversion, and the fact that I have to negotiate time on the xbox to play it is the only thing that is stopping it from displacing Animal Crossing at the moment.