Sunday, December 12, 2004
Cruising the Main
In 1987, a game designer named Sid Meier released a little game for the Commodore 64 (or was it the Amiga? -- it doesn't really matter) named PIRATES!
PIRATES! was a groundbreaking game in many ways. It blended many genres of game -- adventure, role-playing, action, and strategy -- into a seamless, and largely open-ended, non-linear whole. In previous videogames, you had an objective -- blowing alien invaders away, or navigating a castle full of monsters -- and were limited in how you could achieve that objective.
In PIRATES!, your objective was simple but broad: accumulate as much wealth, influence, and fame (or infamy) as possible, by means of piracy, or trade, or (almost invariably the case) a combination of the two.
You'd sail your ships around the Caribbean, on the lookout for other ships to take, and hope that whatever governments had given you letters of marque would be at perpetual war with each other so that taking the ships that would make you wealthy would also lead to promotion. You'd sack towns, engage in swordfights with dastardly villains (including ones that had kidnapped members of your family), fight off pirate-hunters of various nationalities, and track the elusive Silver Train and Treasure Fleet so that you could spring a trap to net yourself wealth beyond the dreams of avarice.
That was 1987. I got the PC version of the game in 1991. It addicted me instantly; a game that could be played any way you wanted, that did not force you to go to place a at time b but allowed you to go anywhere (within its defined gameworld, a relatively accurately-modeled version of the Caribbean and the Spanish Main, ca. 1600) and do anything. It was the best game I'd ever played, and so it remained for a number of years.
Now, Sid Meier has released the new, updated, 3D version of PIRATES!, and it's just as good, just as fresh, just as entertaining, and just as addictive as its illustrious predecessor. I won't gush here about the beautiful graphics, the updated story-telling elements, or even the new ballroom-dancing minigame; there are plenty of gaming sites you can go to for that.
I just wanted to let you know why posting has been so light lately. I've been cruising the Main.
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PIRATES! was a groundbreaking game in many ways. It blended many genres of game -- adventure, role-playing, action, and strategy -- into a seamless, and largely open-ended, non-linear whole. In previous videogames, you had an objective -- blowing alien invaders away, or navigating a castle full of monsters -- and were limited in how you could achieve that objective.
In PIRATES!, your objective was simple but broad: accumulate as much wealth, influence, and fame (or infamy) as possible, by means of piracy, or trade, or (almost invariably the case) a combination of the two.
You'd sail your ships around the Caribbean, on the lookout for other ships to take, and hope that whatever governments had given you letters of marque would be at perpetual war with each other so that taking the ships that would make you wealthy would also lead to promotion. You'd sack towns, engage in swordfights with dastardly villains (including ones that had kidnapped members of your family), fight off pirate-hunters of various nationalities, and track the elusive Silver Train and Treasure Fleet so that you could spring a trap to net yourself wealth beyond the dreams of avarice.
That was 1987. I got the PC version of the game in 1991. It addicted me instantly; a game that could be played any way you wanted, that did not force you to go to place a at time b but allowed you to go anywhere (within its defined gameworld, a relatively accurately-modeled version of the Caribbean and the Spanish Main, ca. 1600) and do anything. It was the best game I'd ever played, and so it remained for a number of years.
Now, Sid Meier has released the new, updated, 3D version of PIRATES!, and it's just as good, just as fresh, just as entertaining, and just as addictive as its illustrious predecessor. I won't gush here about the beautiful graphics, the updated story-telling elements, or even the new ballroom-dancing minigame; there are plenty of gaming sites you can go to for that.
I just wanted to let you know why posting has been so light lately. I've been cruising the Main.
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