In preperation for February, and my study of the seventeenth century, I made a list of games that take place in that period from the wiki pages on the subject. I ordered one from my retro store, Jay Street Video Games (which I'll mention when it comes in the mail) and picked up Port Royale 3: Pirates & Merchants from Gamestop for $9. Here's a pic:
Port Royale 3 is a business sim with real time battles. You do business with towns on the Caribbean islands. You can be a pirate or a merchant. I believe I played a demo of this way back and felt a bit daunted by it at first, but I'll give it some more time this go round.
I feel a bit weird playing a game about the European colonies on Caribbean islands now that I've read several books on the subject. There's quite a bit of ugliness and unethical behavior that went on; it's a period of ruthless imperialism and exploitation. I do like controling the sailing ships, designing trade routes, and taking a look at the map of the region though. It should be interesting to see how certain ugly details of the times are left out, for the sake of entertainment.
I'll bet a lot is left out. But oh well. I heard those games aren't bad. I played my share of Pirates!
Why are you studying the 17th century?
It's just a thing I thought of for this year. Each month I focus on a different time period. I started with the 16th century in January. I wanted some structure to my reading, then I carried it over to other media. It goes like this:
Jan - 16th
Feb - 17th
Mar - 18th
Apr - 19th
May - 1900-1949
June - 1950s
July - 60s
Aug - 70s
Sep - 80s
Oct - 90s
Nov - 00s
Dec - 10s
I will say that though Wiki is a good place to get ideas on where to investigate, there's nothing like old fashioned nonfiction history books. Since I was researching on the time after the civil war up to WW1, I read a bunch, and it was really nice.
I just use wiki as a starting point. Then I go to the library and get books. I'm excited about these Time-:Life series of historical period books. They give a good summary of events all across the globe and with pictures and maps.
This is the one I just read.
You and goaztecs get a lot of obscure titles I don't ever really hear about outside your blogs.
I'm getting on in the mail in a few days that's even more obscure.
I'm curious about this game. It kind of sounds like Sid Meier's Pirates. Hopefully there isn't a dancing minigame in this game, and I'll be on the lookout for it the next time I get back into buying games
I played the demo a while back. I remember it was similar to Sid Meier's Pirates but more complex and certainly no dancing mini game. I'm going to make an effort to play it again this weekend as long as the lure of Destiny doesn't take me. Oh, who am I kidding, I'll be playing Destiny.