Retroist Sid Meier’s Pirates! Podcast
Welcome to Episode 12 of the 14th season of the Retroist Podcast. In this episode, I discuss the smash pirate-themed adventured games from 1987, Sid Meier’s Pirates!
I had actually tried recording this show last year, and it didn’t work out, so I decided to turn it into a post on the site. While doing so, I realized that I would like to give it another go as a podcast. I am glad I did because it gave me another opportunity to dive deeply into this amazing game.
The show begins with a story about a great teacher I had as a kid. He expressed interested in my love of pirates in general, and I thought that was pretty swell.
Then I moved onto the game itself. I discussed the game’s evolution, the history of the company that made it, its reception and so much more.
This game sold well and was well-received, but surprisingly it hasn’t spawned any sequels and just a handful of remakes. Luckily, the original versions of the game are very playable, but I still keep hoping that we will see a remake in the future.
Listen and download Sid Meier’s Pirates! Podcast
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Production Notes
This is the 12th episode of the 14th season of the podcast. It was the fifteenth episode I recorded this season. I had tried to record it last year and failed. I turned that recording into a post and after doing that, I decided to give it another go.
Big news! If you are reading this post and following me on social media, you will see that there is some new style art. That was provided by someone who provided all the early art for the podcast, Christoper Tupa. Really excited to have Tupa’s work back here.
Microprose meant quality for me. I would save up my money for them, and they gave me hours of joy. What a company.
The clincher for me to try this podcast again was getting Sid Meier’s Autobiography. It’s a great read.
I still have my original copy of Pirates! It is one of the few original games that I kept every component of.
I talked a bit more about the evolution of adventure style games. I cut about 90s seconds or 2 minutes out of that.
I like the story of how Sid’s name made it to the top of the game. I always assumed that when someone gets their name on the top of something, they pushed to have it done.
When I worked in video games, I almost got to meet Sid, but sadly the meeting was canceled. I was very depressed after that.
I put in a few commercials, pirate-themed, that made me smile. Sadly, they didn’t make any commercials for the original release. I had a Commodore commercial, but cut it out since the show was getting long.
If you don’t have original hardware, you can emulate the game on a lot of systems, and the Steam version from 2004 still works really well.
All the music you hear in this episode is by the mighty Peachy.
Here is the original art provided by Christopher Tupa. It’s a great call back to the original version’s physical media and the pirate on the cover.
Here is the art I made for further promotion, mixing Christopher’s work with my original box art.
Thanks for listening to the show and I hope you have a great weekend.