Sid Meier's Pirates – In-depth (2017)

Summary

Sid Meier's Pirates! MicroProse Software Inc. Amiga, 1990 (Original C64 1987) $44.95 *Game best played in NTSC mode with 4:3 aspect ratio While there may be many games that we love and come back to time and again, how often do we appreciate the different versions of a game? We usually find ourselves playing the version we grew up with, perhaps even ignoring the best version in favor of nostalgia. If we had no prior experience with said game, we'll ignore the lesser looking versions, even if that might be the original, completely missing out on their charm. How often do we love a game so much that we want to experience as many versions as possible? Sid Meier's Pirates! (referred hereafter as Pirates) is a game I have to have for every system it supports, and I truly love all of the many ports and remakes of this game. ^Starting up the game and some options The original Pirates came out in 1987, written by Sid Meier for the Commodore 64, using the BASIC programing language. The game received ports for just about every system imaginable at the time, and I could not characterize any of them as "straight ports". They were all quite unique for each system, and indeed this Amiga version, released a few years later in 1990, is an obvious loving port. It was rewritten for the Amiga in-house at MicroProse USA, another example of a fine American Amiga product that the European Amiga scene these days almost refuse to acknowledge. The ports based off the original Pirates peek with this Amiga version. The game is so beautiful that some magazines falsely claimed the game used 64 color Extra Half Bright Mode. I tested this out by taking actual screen captures from my Amiga, and found the game was always in a 320x200 32 color mode. However, there are certain screens like the title that do not capture quite right using my screen capture program, seemingly missing colors. Rather than use EHB mode I believe they were manipulating certain areas of the screen in order for some areas to g...