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Categories: Commentary
Tags: c64, pirates, xbox
My favorite game, growing up, was Sid Meier’s Pirates! Okay, that may be a lie, but it’s definitely in my Commodore 64 top five. First off, it was a perfect pirate simulator and secondly, it was one of the few games I legally owned. Owning Pirates! meant having an awesome manual to study and cool map to pore over. It also meant spending hours of 64K goodness in the Caribbean, assaulting cities, plundering ships, and drinking Capri Sun (cause, dude, I was like eleven).
Of course, there were downsides. I was learning geography, history, and the principles of reckoning by sun sighting–yes, back then (the 1980s) you had to find your location by using a sextant thingy to learn your latitude (and longitude on Easy) and then locate where that was on the map. Pirates! Gold in the 90s removed this bit, simplifying matters. It also added sweet graphics, but I was still using the C64.
In 2004, Pirates! went from looking like this or this, to this (I heart MobyGames). I was [insert geek emotion here] to have Pirates! enter the modern, or Tin Age of Gaming. And I played the hell out of it, before uninstalling it.
Jump forward to this weekend and me getting my ass handed to me by Lost Planet’s final boss for the sixteenth time. Maybe it was being surrounded by snow pirates, but I was really in the mood for old school pirate action (at least, old school brought up to 2004 standards). So I figured I’d dig up Pirates! again.
I was quickly disheartened. I’d have to find the game. Then I’d have to install it. At this point, there were probably patches… but wait–didn’t it come out for the Xbox also? Cool. Normally, I wouldn’t re-buy a game since all my double dip money goes towards DVDs (and thank you for remastering Dracula again, Universal), but I figured that the Xbox version’s additions, combined with the comfort of the game couch and the Aquos made it all worth it.
So I picked up a used copy from a local retailer (one that formerly belonged to a video store–I love the icky, dealing-in-stolen-goods feeling I get from some chains) and had a day o’ pirates with most of the Game Couch crew.
This, anyway, is my excuse for not having a Lost Planet review up today. Further musings on Pirates! may follow.