Recently, Leeradical42 wrote a blog about some pirate game that I will look up later and it reminded me of an old game I played on the Apple IIe back in college. I worked in the Learning Resource Center as a peer tutor and pulled a six hour shift on one of the weekend nights, I think it may have been Sunday. Sometimes the LRC was busy that night (midterms, finals, etc), but more often than not it was dead. My friend Ed took pity on me and gave me box of 5 1/4" floppy disks of games. I had Risk, some arcadey sorts of games, and Taipan, which is what the Pirate game reminded me of.
Taipan was a very simple trading sim. You started out by naming your company, then deciding if you wanted to start the game with cash and a debt or five guns and no cash (but no debt, either). Then you proceded to sail between your home port of Hong Kong and six other East Asian ports, buying and selling (hopefully at a profit) merchandise, and fighting off enemy ships. And that's pretty much it, just a resource management game, with some blobby pics of ships when you'd get attacked. As the game went on, you might get offered the chance to buy a bigger ship and more guns, you might get busted trading in opium and your cargo confiscated, the head of the local pirates was always after protection money and you had to decide whether it was worth it to keep paying him off.
For such a simple game, it really was quite addicting. But with the obsolescence of 5 1/4" floppy drives, I was sure that my days of trading in the south seas was over. Not so, as I found out when I went looking to make sure that the game really was Taipan and that I was remembering it correctly. I found it here, faithfully ported to the internet for all to play for free. Go on, give it a try. It's an entertaining way of wasting a few hours and what have you got to lose?
a game about smuggling opium? sign me up.
Actually, this game sounds like it needs a reboot. To kickstarter! 
Not so much about smuggling opium as trading in the open.
I am going to try Taipan out. There was a Dungeon crawler that I played on 51/4 but I can not remember the name of it.In the game you were asked questions and the answers you gave determind the outcome of the game. I work in the Library so I could play it more.
I think I played that game, too, Larry. But I can't remember any more about it than that.
I must have missed Taipan I do remember a game I think it was on the snes where you controlled Airlines and had to strategicaly place airports set up flight routes etc and it was a buisness sim and for the life of me I cant think of the name of it. Oh and the blog your talking about was Port Royale 3 which sets its emphases on Trading , and buying low and selling high, and has one of the best economics models I have ever played. but back to the subject had hand Taipan was it only on pc or did it release on any other system. Oh and thanks for pointing out that issue on my site I do beleive I have resolved it.
As far as I know, it was just on the Apple IIe. You can check it out at the link I provided and play it online for free, though.
Cool I will have to do that thanks.
Aerobiz is the airport sim in question, I believe.
That was a cool game, they should do a modern remake of it, I like buissness sims,
I played a lot of games on our old Apple ][+ when I was little. While everyone else was complaining about the crappy port of Pac-Man on the Atari 2600, I was happily playing a near arcade perfect version on my Apple. Seeing how much of a console-only gamer I am now, it's hard to believe that I started out as a PC gamer! My favorite Apple ][ games were Aquatron and Spare Change.
I started out gaming on an IBM clone and was a PC gamer until I bought my Sega Genesis in 1994. It's been primarily console gaming for me ever since.
Thanks for sharing this. I had quite a bit of money but then got robbed of half of it. That Lu Yen dude was one greedy bastard. Like I'm gonna donate $116,000 to some temple when I can easily hit the N key lol.
I usually pay him until I get a bigger ship and more guns. After that, no way!
Right on. Who needs protection when you can protect yourself.
Oh, man. I remember Tai-Pan. I played it on our old TRS-80 computer, and I wrote a version of it for the Atari 130XE in BASIC. I play the browser-based version every once in awhile. The game still hold up, for what it is. It'd be interesting for someone to do a modern graphical update of the game and release it via Steam/PSN/XBLA/Nintendo eShop (the Wii U gamepad would work well with it.)
Glad someone else remembers this one besides me.
A pirate game steeped in oriental history & culture? Interesting!
Not a pirate game. A trading game where pirates try to either extort protection money or steal from you, lol.
I never played Tai Pan. I had a hand me down apple II c. I did play a lot of a game called lemonade stand though. That was a simplified version of what Tai Pan sounds like. Manage buying supplies and how much lemonade is made based on weather and trying to turn a profit.
Yep, that's pretty much it, but without the weather factor.
Somehow, I feel this game's premise might help me with that MBA, if I pursue it, in some vague way. lol Might just try it out.
I forget what games I used to play on Apple IIe. Those floppy disks were huge, though. And flimsy. And I know from my age you wouldn't think I'd have gamed on an Apple IIe, but mom being the computer teacher, there was one lying around at school. I think I played a racer of some sort? I'd have to search through the thing's library to figure out what it was, and I'm not sure I'm up for that kind of "research" right now.
Might have been Spy Hunter, I had that one, too.
No, it wasn't that one, I'd have remembered if it were a franchise like that, and I don't think it was all top-down perspective. I think some of those old floppy disks are in the house though, so maybe I'll find it.
My parents had an Apple IIc and I played Wizardry 1 through 3 on it. I wish I still had the floppies for that. Good memories there playing every Sunday after Church.
I still have the floppies for the first Wizardry game somewhere in a box at my grandmother's. I just don't have anything to play it on. That's if they still work.
Sometimes the simplest of games are the most entertaining.
Which is probably why I played Oregan Trail to death whenever I was younger. It doesn't get any more complicated than travel, rest, and deciding whether or not to forge that river and risk your oxen! lol
That's exactly it, Chris.
Darn you! I clicked that dastardly link and now I'm hooked. I got ships under fire as we speak! My first Apple IIe love was Super Bunny. You can play a ton of old Apple games here: http://www.virtualapple.org/ Some of the controls are hard to figure out but Super Bunny plays fine.
^^ that was me
That was my evil plan all along! Mwahahahahahaha!
I used 3 1/2 inch floppys during high school. Even that short while ago a 1GB flash drive was about 100 dollars!