r/todayilearned • u/DueNeedleworker5036 • 4h ago

TIL that the Civilizations games (and others) include creator Sid Meier's name in the title because Robin Williams joked that it would help sell more copies of 1987's Sid Meier's Pirates.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sid_Meier#MicroProse
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u/evowen 4h ago

Sid Meier's Pirates is no joke a fantastic game. I had no idea how to actually play it as a child and mostly just sailed back and forth until everyone on my ship starved, but I've gone back to play it as an adult and I genuinely love it.

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u/x-naut 4h ago

I just learned from this post that the 1987 version exists, I loved the 2004 version as a kid.

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u/Over_engineered81 3h ago

You can buy the 2004 version on steam for like $10, and it goes on sale all the time. I picked it up for $4 about a year ago and started playing it again. It still slaps.

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u/WendellSchadenfreude 1h ago edited 1h ago

Is the 2004 version basically a remake of the 1987 version, or are they two very different games?

Edit: Pirates!Gold is on sale on GOG for less than a Euro at the moment. I just bought it.

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u/Difficult_Fill6387 30m ago

2004 is a pretty faithful remake, just has 3D cartoony graphics instead of pixels and a few improved minigames like land battles that were terrible in the original. The bones of the swordfighting, sailing, and ship combat are basically identical, all the changes they made are improvements like a more fleshed out romance system and a rebalanced plunder economy.

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u/mtaw 27m ago

Pirates! Gold is the 1993 remake that's pretty much identical to the 1987 game but with very nice-for-the-time SVGA graphics.

The 2004 version, besides revamped everything, also added new gameplay elements and stuff but is still fundamentally the same game.