Sentences written about this title, gathered by type from the Japanese and English Wikipedia articles (as of 2026-8-30).
Compute!'s Gazette in 1987 praised the detailed gameplay with arcade and strategic aspects, stating that "the designers of Pirates! set themselves a variety of ambitious goals and succeeded on every count".
The game was reviewed in 1988 in Dragon #132 by Hartley, Patricia, and Kirk Lesser in "The Role of Computers" column.
Orson Scott Card wrote in Compute! in 1989 that Pirates use of an unusually strict copy protection was understandable because "the game is so good that even people who drive 55 mph might consider stealing it".
He said that Pirates! seemed misleadingly easy, with players discovering non-obvious nuances to the gameplay.
Pirates! won many awards, including Computer Gaming Worlds "Action Game of the Year" for 1988, and two Origins Awards: "Best Fantasy or Science Fiction Computer Game of 1987" and "Best Screen Graphics in a Home Computer Game of 1987".
In 2004, readers of Retro Gamer voted Pirates! the 84th top retro game, with the staff noting that "people still play the original version, even though Sid Meier himself produced later versions".
In 2011, Polish web portal Wirtualna Polska ranked it as the fifth most addictive classic game "that stole our childhood".
Compute!'s Gazette in 1987 praised the detailed gameplay with arcade and strategic aspects, stating that "the designers of Pirates! set themselves a variety of ambitious goals and succeeded on every count".
PC Magazine praised Pirates!s documentation as enjoyable to read, informative about history, and useful for playing the game.
The game was widely ported from the original Commodore 64 version, first to the Apple II (1987), then later to IBM PC compatibles (1987), Apple IIGS (1988), Macintosh (1988), Amstrad CPC (1988), Atari ST (1989), Amiga (1990), and Nintendo Entertainment System (1991).
The game has sold more than 1 million units worldwide.
The passages quoted on this page are taken verbatim from the Japanese and English Wikipedia articles.Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International (CC BY-SA 4.0) — reusable under those terms. They are the work of the people who wrote them.