Pirates of the Barbary Coast
Aye aye, Captain!
By Matthias JaapSeptember 4, 2002
Pirates are a popular topic for computer game. Besides the famous
Pirates! there were Plundered
Hearts, Skull and Crossbones and ... Pirates. The
latter is less known than the Microprose game although they have some things
in common. The full game title is Pirates of the
Barbary Coast.
The story is quite simple: your daughter has been captured by pirate
Bloodthroat. He demands 50,000 gold coins to set her free. If you do not
give him the coins after 30 days her life may be in danger.
You are both a trader and a pirate although it is wise at the start to
concentrate on trading. The big harbours at North Africa's coast are great
trading places. Each harbour has a master trader who will show you his ware
house. Trading goods can be almost everything from tea to weapons.
Unfortunately, not everything is cheap and if you have bad luck and buy
expensive goods you may not be able to sell them for a higher price. Each
harbour has a shop which is a wealth of information. Although each
information costs money, it is much cheaper than compare prices via visiting
each harbour. At the start you have 5000 gold coins.
Just like the more known Pirates! there is the option to fight enemies.
You may encounter other pirate ships on your journey. If you manage to sink
one of them you will gain information and treasure. Attacking a ship
requires some skill as you have to set the cannon elevation. But the best
cannon cannot fire without gunpowder which you have to buy, too. You have
fifteen cannons on your ship. Each of them has to be loaded with the
joystick (XL) or mouse (ST).
The harbours are also a place to repair the ship and buy food for the crew.
It is therefore not that easy to earn enough gold coins. If there are less
than 50,000 gold coins, the only option will be a hand-to-hand fight against
the evil pirate.
The Atari XL version has good graphics although there are only a couple of
images and few animation. The 16-bit conversion feels more like
some early GFA-Basic games: the standard system font is used - although it
would have been quite easy to use a custom one. The images look simple and remind a lot
of similar games like "Hanse" and "Fugger". The sea is animated with a nice
attempt to imitate parallax scrolling (waves in the front move faster than
waves at the horizon).
The sound consists of a few chip sound tunes which tend to get annoying but
trading games were never popular for their great music.
Of course this game suffered pretty much from its competition with
Pirates! but the software company had the good idea to publish it for both
the ST and XL. The ST version of Pirates! was delayed for a long time and
was never programmed for the XL. Unfortunately, the ST
Pirates of the Barbary Coast looks not as good as the ST version of
Pirates! - maybe it was rushed out to avoid competition. Overall, this game can be a lot of fun
if you are into trading games.
Game Data |
Scores
|
| Title |
Pirates of the Barbary Coast |
Graphics |
61% |
| Publisher |
Cascade Games |
Sound/Music |
75% |
| Genre |
Strategy |
Gameplay |
65% |
| System |
Atari-ST |
Control |
75% |
|
|
Overall |
75% |
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