I’ll admit that, for me, there aren’t a ton of NES games which I can’t put down as an adult. That’s probably in part due to the fact that most games for the NES you can play through and beat within an hour or so. Pirates has the distinction of being one of the few games for the NES that, despite its repetitive gameplay, I rarely get tired of.

Let’s Play Pirates!:

I had this game on a 5 ¼ inch floppy disk set as a kid with my brother in the early 90’s and you had to switch disks around and consult the manual for pirate flags as a kind of antiquated password protection, but it was fun as hell

When I found it for the NES years later, I bought it figured I’d give it a go for a bit of nostalgia and it was just as fun as I remembered (again, something I can’t say about most of the games on the NES).

There was a week stretch when I was a year or so out of college where I played the game pretty compulsively and obsessively, trying to retire with the best ending and feeling guilty the entire time I played because I knew there were much more important things I should be doing at that stage in my life, heh.

There’s just something about storming a city like Havana with a shoestring army and overtaking an army of 400+ men, sometimes all on your own by the end of the battle. Yep there was something about it that I couldn’t put it down and never tired of it.

It’s kind of funny how much effort we can put into games such as these where the endings only vary ever-so-slightly depending on a lot more effort on your part (Castlevania 2 and Ducktales come to mind).

Nevertheless, I enjoyed this let’s play a lot and even did it live which is an anomoly for the actual let’s plays I upload to the channel, especially with older games. I figured it was the kind of game where it’s not the same playthrough every time and would be a bit more engaging to anyone who tuned in.

I got a decent number of views in playing it live and a lot of good feedback as I found I wasn’t the only person familiar with and fondly remembering this very replayable game. I have since bought the remake of Pirates! and look forward to playing it sometime in the future for the channel as I didn’t have nearly as much experience with that.