Gameplay consists of setting out to sea, plundering towns and looting ships, also trading, finding the occasional hidden treasure, etc. Every few years, you divide up the plunder (kill off some of your own men before that in battle, this will increase their happiness and share of the loot), then start another expedition. The length of each expedition depends on the morale of the crew (so frequently check morale by pressing fire or space, then select "party status"). At some point they will mutiny if you go on too long without dividing up the plunder.
==Versions==
The game was ported to most 1980's 8-bit/16-bit machines: [[Commodore 64|C64]] (looks quite a lot like the Amstrad CPC version), [[Atari|Atari ST]], [[Amiga]], [[PC]] and more.
"Pirates!" includes a lot of Graphics (Mode 0) and music.
Despite it's ultimate awesomeness, the Amstrad CPC port was a bit slow and graphics could have been a bit better. They were somewhat obvious as a C64 port in that respect.
As a result, most graphics, while not bad, didn't make the best use of the specific CPC palette and most graphics look like having the C664 Colour Attribute... no more than 4 colours per characters and some bad ink choices.
==Video==