Games romanticizing the lives of pirates have been popular since the first release of Pirates! developed by Sid Meier for the Commodore 64 in 1987. Over the last 20 years, other titles such as Port Royale, Sea Dogs, and even the space-based Freelancer have attempted to capture the romance and excitement of being in control of a warship, answering to no higher authority, and exploring vast areas in search of booty and fame. Apparently Sid Meier himself couldn’t get enough of the pirate genre either, and so in between running Firaxis (his own game design house) and developing Civilization IV, he found enough time to totally revamp Pirates! and bring it into the next century. Most of the effort put into this new version of the game seems to have paid off.