Vintage

To get the ball rolling I'd like to let everyone know about another game that had slipped under while I was away. I found out about this in a thread over at the EIC forum.

While not directly pirate related it should hold a few of you while you wait for some of the big name releases coming up soon.

Ironclads: American Civil War - 3D naval historical turned-based strategy game based on the Civil war in the USA. Battle of the civil war ironclads. Take part in battles from USS Monitor vs CSS Virginia before battles between armored squadrons of steamships and other vessels.

The campaign based on alternate outcomes of events which assume a more favourable position for the Confederation in the first two years of the conflict, including diplomatic recognition and construction of a stronger, more balanced Southern fleet in European shipyards.

The player operates a squadron of warships of the United States or Confederations Navy: broadside ironclads, ironclad rams, ironclad turret ships, monitors, sloops-of-war, gunboats and screw commerce raiders.

The primary goals for missions will include conducting and lifting blockades, commerce raiding on the high seas, suppression of coastal batteries, and fleet battles featuring everything from gunboats and sloops to cruisers and ironclads.

Visit them HERE

 It's been quiet a while but I am hoping that I will be able to make some more appearences updating you all with piratey goodness.   Reason being is mainly we have hired a guy at my real life company to do most of my work which free's up time for me (I own half of the company, so it's no problem) 

Firstly, and most importantly, you will notice that the forum is down again.  This is due to the "excessive CPU use" which happened to us back when the servers were hosted in Malaysia.  We will be moving the server back to William's (Located in the future Mexican sate of LA) soon and with any luck it will be sorted in the coming few days. 

Meanwhile I will try to catch up on t=some pirate news which has happened over the last few months (ie. Somalia pirate, Buccaneers on Steam, POTBS, Playmobiles, etc..)  

BTW, Merry Christmas to you all and happy new year from us (Me & William) at PA!

It looks like the DB crashed somehow. I'm trying to get that back up ... Sorry for the delay in transmission, mates.

[EDIT:  As of 7:26AM GMT-8 on 12/23/08 the PA! forum is back up! w00t!]

Feral Interactive shipping Sid Meier's Pirates!^® for Mac on August 29th

Feral Interactive has today announced Friday, August 29th as the release date for the Mac version of Sid Meier’s Pirates!®, the best-selling adventure game developed by 2K Games’ world-renowned game studio Firaxis Games™.

Based on Sid Meier’s masterpiece, Sid Meier’s Pirates! invites you to live the life of a 17th century Caribbean pirate captain in this epic, open-ended seafaring adventure. Face down dogged enemies, duel enemy captains, woo fair maidens and raise the Jolly Roger high above the seven seas in pursuit of glory and riches.

"Feral Interactive is thrilled to release Sid Meier’s Pirates!,” said Feral Interactive’s David Stephen. “Its universal appeal and wonderful gameplay makes it the perfect launch title for the Feral Legends series.”

Feral Legends is a new label of Macintosh games being launched under the Feral brand. Legends will be top quality, older titles previously un-released on the Mac. They will run on all Intel Macs including MacBooks and be sold at mid-price.

Lighthouse Interactive, publisher for East India Company announced on their forum the new release date:

East India Company has a new release date. The game has been pushed from Q4 2008 to Q1 2009.

"The development team at Nitro Games is very passionate about this project. They are dedicated to delivering the best gaming experience possible for strategy fans," said Raymond Snippe, Senior Development Manager of Lighthouse Interactive. "Once gamers get their hands on EIC I'm sure they'll agree it was worth the wait."

6 new screenshots are available as well. This game is looking sweet!

You can find the screenshots HERE.

  While on my rather extended vacation, it appears that PA! made the news and I had not the slightest clue!

Katherine Mangu-Ward writes in the May 2008 publication of Reason:

"At least eight video games inspired by the film have appeared, with varying degrees of official sanction. A mobile phone game released by Disney's Internet unit received lackluster reviews while a popular, unauthorized Xbox game borrowed the tide, The Black Pearl, and little else. But instead of suing the peglegs off their unauthorized competitors, Disney simply pulled alongside and joined the melee with its own (free) Pirates of the Caribbean online role-playing game, fighting it out on the pirates' own terms. Disney has stopped seeing at least some of the world's pirates and remixers as thieves, and started seeing them as opportunities for a vast, multi-faceted marketing campaign.

Using the customizable characters from the role-playing game, fans were soon creating original YouTube videos-digital clips of pirates skewering British officers on their cutlasses, for example--from within the world of Pirates of the Caribbean Online. Some of the best were made by the 10,000 fans given passwords for the beta test of the online game at a pre-screening of the third movie, making them officially sanctioned pirate remixers (many of whom take their role literally, showing up to the screening in eye patches and tricorns).

Lots of these fan-fiction films have developed narratives of their own. They are part of a growing movement of machinima, where fans use video game environments to create their own animated movies, many of them borrowing characters or settings from Hollywood blockbusters. *Meanwhile, the unauthorized Xbox game has in turn become the basis for 14 (and counting) user-modified versions at the PiratesAhoy.com online community. "