I recently started a game of Pirates! When I sat down to play today, the pirates were no longer the only ones spicing up their speech with arrs and ahoys. The merchants were doing it. The military were doing it. The nobles were doing it (awkwardly). The barmaids were doing it. Even the user interface was doing it.
I thought at first that it might have always been that way, and just escaped my notice, but that seemed unlikely. Next I thought I might have accidentally enabled a game option for it, but I didn’t remember reconfiguring anything.
Then another possibility came to mind. It seemed like a long shot, but just in case, I looked up today’s date. Sure enough, today is International Talk Like a Pirate day. This 20-year-old game apparently knows it, and switched every bit of its dialogue and writing into pirate speak to honour the occasion.
I love this.
Running it wasn’t exactly straightforward. My CD-ROM copy was a no-go, but I managed to get the GOG version working in a 32-bit Wine prefix with DXVK. (I’m on linux.) Remaining problems are lack of wide-screen support (so I run it in a full-height window) and pauses between various scenes (which I might be able to solve with an older Wine version). It’s playable already, though; I’m glad I put in a little effort.
Other linux users wanting to try it might want to use Lutris, which seems to have install scripts for it, or a console emulator. Or maybe the Steam version works fine through Proton? I haven’t tried it.
I am on windows, so I’m not quite sure why my steam version of the game just…stopped working one day. And the work around fixed it. Until it didn’t. But now it’s better? Maybe? I haven’t checked in a few months, maybe it’s back to Not Better.
Ahhhh computers.