Pirates Gold!

[Danish Warrior]

I have Pirates Gold! for windows, ive had it for a while. Tryed to install it onto my computer. Could never play it, Ive got Windows XP. I even tried to use a MS-Dos Start up disk to play it, but cant play it. Anyone who knows anythin, your help would be greatly appreciated. I need to Plunder the high seas again, and i cant wait 4 months or so.
Thanks.
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Viking Power

[Falconer]

Hey Danish,

What's the problem that's keeping you from playing? Please be a little more descriptive.

[Danish Warrior]

Thats just it Falconer, I dont know, i got it to the MS-Dos promt screen, and type in the code thing(sorry not to good with computer lingo) and it dont work. the game is installed on the computer i just cant run it. Actually what i was hoping was for someone who has XP, and plays the game on it. And they could tell me how they got it to work.
Thanks
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Viking Power

[dclare4]

I asked this over at subsim but they didn't know. The problem is when I engage an enemy ship in ship to ship combat, the game suddenly speeds up ridiculously so I just breeze right by him or he breezes right by me and narry a shot is fired. There goes a load of dough!

Is there a way to fix this? It really shouldn't be doing this right? I have a PIII 566 with about 500+RAM and a Win 98 system.

Thanks,
Clare

[KingWilly]

You'll need to use a slow down program such as Mo'slo or cpukiller. I recommend CpuKiller as it worked better on my PC than Mo'slo.

I hope this helps.
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Shiver me timbers!!!
"It's good to be the king" - Mel Brooks

AKA. Will Scarlett.

[Butcher]

hello sirs and madams. i have found this post on the net, im not sure if it will work (i havent tried) but some people claim that it works.

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Greetings all –

After digging through these ezboard pages, I finally got Pirates Gold working! So let me summarize my knowledge, hopefully it will help other people.

(Note that I have a Windows XP system. This may be different if you have another version of Windows.)

First, note that you need Pirates Gold FOR WINDOWS, not the DOS version (classicpcgames.com has the DOS version only!) I was having the same problem that a lot of other people had (immediate crashes), until I managed to track the Windows version down. The place I got it from was:
juegomania.metropoligloba..._gold.html
You have to wait in the queue for a while, and the download is painfully slow, but I couldn’t find the windows version anywhere else.
(Perhaps some kind webmasters out there could help to make this version available on a bunch of sites!)

Then after you load and install the program, you need to run it in Win95 compatibility mode (you can search for compatibility mode in the Help screen for more info). To do this, right-click on the pg.exe program, wherever it is (or your Pirates shortcut), click Properties, then go to the Compatibility tab, and set it to Win95 mode. I also turn on the options for 256 colors and 640x480.

Now the game should always work. Unfortunately, there will be a few things you have to do every time you run the game, which is a hassle:

Right Click on the desktop, select Properties, Click the Settings Tab, Click the Advanced Button, Click the Adapter Tab, then click the “List all modes” button. Note the current setting – you’ll need to reset to this after you’re done playing. Then select 640x480, 256 color, 75hz refresh, and then click OK a bunch of times until you are back on the desktop. Yes, the screen will look funny, but that’s necessary. Now run CPUKiller (available from www.cpukiller.com). If you don’t do this, the ship battles run way too fast. I found that 75% worked pretty well.

Now go ahead and run Pirates! Note that the very first screen is still messed up, unavoidably, and you can’t see what your four options are. But FYI, they are, top to bottom: Start a new game; Load; Scenario; Exit.

Now, after you finish playing, and you’ve exited back to Windows, don’t forget to reset everything. First restore CPUKiller to 100% and exit it. Then go back through desktop properties like you did above, and restore your old settings to whatever it was before the change. For me it’s 800x600, 250 colors, 60Hz.

(Note: using CPUKiller to slow down the PC seems to make the computer a little choppy. But the other suggested alternatives, Turbo and MoSlo didn’t seem to work for me.)

Oh, and supposedly you also need a “flag list” from the original manual, which was a form of copy-protection. You can find that at this neat site:
www.geocities.com/piratesgold1987/

I hope all this helps a few people. I know there’s a lot of frustrated people out there trying to get this to work, which is a shame because it’s really a classic game!

Enjoy,
-t
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if this doesnt work, you can always do what i do : get the genesis/mega drive version or even the old original version

[KingWilly]

One thing I forgot to mention about CPUKiller. If you download the freeware version (where registration has not been paid) CPUKiller will disable after about a while (i think somewhere between 15-30 minutes, haven't really timed it), so it is a good idea to save your games regularly.

You won't have this problem with the full version of CPUKiller though
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Shiver me timbers!!!
"It's good to be the king" - Mel Brooks

AKA. Will Scarlett.

[El Diablo]

here an interview with Daniel, Dumont Lead Designer of Ascaron's Port Royale and Tortuga/Pirate Hunter about PR2
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Don't consider a creation to beeing perfect, unless you sat on it from dusk till dawn

[Falconer]

What's the link E.D.?

[El Diablo]

its the here. maybe, it is possible, that links are underlined, so you can identify them directly...
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Don't consider a creation to beeing perfect, unless you sat on it from dusk till dawn

[Falconer]

Hmmm yeah, damn, that needs work.

[El Diablo]

or in italic or something, yust that you can directly see the link, somehow.
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Don't consider a creation to beeing perfect, unless you sat on it from dusk till dawn

[Guest]

[Falconer]

Hail guest, identify yourself! (register)

Dosbox doesn't always make things work properly. It's definitely the best option to get most old DOS games running and quite a few have reported that Pirates! works fine using DOSBox, but quite a few still have problems (like me for instance, sailing is still impossibly fast, no matter how far I slow the game down) so it doesn't always help.

Still, it's a great tool and I've had quite a few things running with DOSBox that failed with anything else, so it's worth a try right?

[PiratesFan]

I have a better solution--- Get the Limited Edition that comes wiht the original Pirates! or like me..pull out your old tandy 1000 hx throw in the bootable 3.5" floppy disk and boot to it and play away .... I know ... stupid reason to keep the old 8088 running but I like it the same.