Pirates! Gold (1993 Sega Genesis):
“The player can play as a pirate, privateer, or a pirate hunter. It features sword fighting, ocean-faring battles, and land battles as its three main arenas of action, connected by role-playing which allows the player to court the favor of local politicos, romance women, and recruit pirates in the local pub.”
-Wikipedia
Pirates! Gold is an amazing game. It's a pirate sim, complete with different ships, towns, treasures, quests, and abilities as you sail the Spanish Main in the 17th century. First you choose your “captain”. This is the player. You can choose what ability you have, you can change your name, (Sidney is the default name.) and your nationality: English, Dutch, Spanish, or French.
Your abilities are fencing, charm, gunnery, or navigation. You only choose one. Fencing makes your sword strength better. Charm lets you get married more easily. Gunnery makes your cannons more effective. Navigation can help you weather storms and not crash on reefs. (And that happens a lot.)
Well, once you've started, you can sail around and attack ships or towns, capturing and plundering, or you can hunt for treasure. You can gain letters of marque to fight on behalf of any of the 4 European nations. So, when you capture enemy ships or towns, you can do so in the name of England, or whoever. This is usually the way I play. It's just too fun.
But, you have to keep your crew happy and well-fed or else they can desert and mutiny. Things that make them happy are like successful attacks or appropriate ship size vs. crew size. (You can capture a large variety of ships, including Galleons, Frigates, Sloops, or Merchant Ships, among others.) Of course, finding treasure makes them happy. You can buy treasure maps at local taverns throughout the Caribbean, sometimes.
Press “C” in sailing mode to check out all your maps, and figure out wherever the heck you are in the Spanish Main. You can also pinpoint places on the Spanish Main map. Often, you'll run into other ships you can choose to engage in combat or sail away. Once in sea combat, you can try to sink enemy ships or capture them. You can also fence the enemy captain by crashing your ship into theirs and boarding.
Other than attacking towns and sinking or capturing ships, you can complete quests too. These include capturing another pirate, getting married, finding lost cities, robbing treasure fleets, finding treasure, or finding each one of the members of your captain's long-lost family. Completing each one of these effects your score at the end when you divide up all your gold. Every game is different.
Some endings are more spectacular than others. If you have a lot of gold, and complete a lot of missions, you can ultimately become a pirate governor or King's Advisor if you do really good. Others include Rich Banker, Rogue, Fleet Admiral or even Beggar or Pauper, if you do really bad. Since I don't do a lot of missions, I usually end up more on the bad side. But, it's more fun to me just to sail around and attack things, rather than figure out where such-and-such lost city is from unmarked maps.
My usually bad final scores aside, Pirates! Gold is an still an amazing game. It looks and sounds great. Frankly, I'm surprised it runs on a Genesis cartridge. If you have access to a virtual Sega Genesis (or Sega Megadrive as the Genesis is known in Europe.), or even a physical cartridge, give it a try today. You won't regret it! I can play this game all day still.
