Overview
Two pirates are tasked by their captain to find three pieces of a treasure map on the islands Shetland, La Isabela and Papeete, before finding the hidden treasure cash on the obscure island Tiuanapa. Every stage has the player in third-person perspective shooting at pirates and scenery, throwing bombs, and doing slide maneuvers to dodge enemy attacks. Powerups are obtained from shooting a flying witch repeatedly or other passing creatures. A stage is won when the enemy meter at the bottom is depleted or a boss enemy is beaten.
Trivia / History:
The organization behind "Pirates" was an obscure company from Spain, NIX. Both the game code and hardware were based on "Blood Brothers" by TAD. Hardware that could not be reproduced was replaced with chips reverse engineered from Capcom hardware. As the arcade game was only distributed locally, Capcom never caught wind of it nor took legal action. Nor did TAD, as that company had already gone bankrupt.
The game engine is very similar to Playmark's "Hard Times" which was also derived from "Blood Bros" (but was even closer to being a hardware clone). The code is so similar that one might say it is what one would expect to see if they were looking at the work of the same freelance assembly coder.
