Popular Pirates

Pirates must be popular at the moment with game developers. All of this from the Disney movie Pirates of the Caribbean. Considering it apparently took the Australian script writer quite a few years to get this script published it makes you wonder what has turned the tide for the hollywood pirate popularity.

As with anything the gaming industry is keen to jump on the bandwagon and it seems there are a number of pirate related games to be released. Sid Meier was another one to jump on the bandwagon by releasing a remake of his classic pirate game not long after the movie was released. It seems that there is nothing stopping the industry now as we have a number of stand alone buckaneering games (Age of Pirates) to be released as well as an MMO based on the movie franchise.

I was a big fan of Sid Meier's original Pirates game, having played it on the Amiga and PC. The rerelease of this game was definitely an improvement in some ways, however, some of the additional mini games should have not made the final cut. It must be said that Pirate based games have not been overly popular with gamers. The original Pirates of the Caribbean game (released by Bethesda) was good in parts but very short. The ship combat was excellent, but other aspects of the game were lacking.

Hopefully, some of the new pirate games coming out are of a good quality and not just capitalising on the popularity of the movie series in order to make some money with inferior products.