PIRATES
A very modern pirate voyage, rebuilt as a real game for the original PlayStation.
PIRATES began as an eccentric interactive movie created by Retro Shack CD-i Cinema in the United Kingdom. Its star, Cap’n Cat, takes a modern 31-foot yacht to sea in search of pirate treasure. That sounds straightforward enough. It does not remain straightforward for long.
The voyage mixes real boating footage with deliberately ridiculous threats, improvised weapons, unexpected characters, strange interruptions and branching decisions. The tone is knowingly homemade and tongue-in-cheek: part boating adventure, part interactive movie, part fever dream from the heyday of CD-ROM gaming.
From interactive video prototype to an actual PlayStation game
The original 2024 release was built around Video CD playback. Retro Shack sold it as an interactive movie for the Philips CD-i and noted that the VCD could also be played on other VCD-capable hardware. Choices were made by returning to chapter screens and selecting the next part of the voyage.
That earlier version is the source material for a much more ambitious experiment: turning Pirates into native PlayStation software.
Robert Frasure is rebuilding the experience specifically for the original Sony PlayStation. Instead of asking the console to behave like a Video CD player, the new version has a PlayStation program controlling the experience: displaying menus, following player choices, managing progression and launching the appropriate video sequences as part of the game.
In other words, this is no longer simply a VCD that happens to play on certain 1990s machines. It is being made as a PS1 game.
A yacht with entirely reasonable armaments
You play through the voyage as Cap’n Cat, accompanied by his seemingly indestructible sidekick Parker. Somewhere out there is the pirate equivalent of the holy grail, and getting to it means making choices while the trip becomes progressively less sensible.
The boat encounters supposed enemies. Weapons appear where weapons probably should not be. Plans go wrong. The sea itself seems to participate in the joke. Some choices lead to success, some lead to disaster, and several outcomes can be considered satisfactory — but the original game promises only one big win.
The appeal is not slick Hollywood production. It is the opposite. Pirates has the enthusiasm and unpredictability of the early multimedia era, when somebody with a camera, an idea and enough determination could make something that did not resemble anything else on the shelf.
Why PlayStation?
The original PlayStation arrived at exactly the moment when developers were experimenting heavily with full-motion video. Thirty years later, the hardware is an oddly appropriate home for a project like this.
It is also a genuine technical constraint. Modern source video cannot simply be dropped onto a PlayStation disc. The footage has to be prepared for the console, storage and streaming have to fit within the limits of the CD-ROM format, and the game itself has to coordinate video playback, choices and progression on hardware designed in the early 1990s.
That conversion process is part of the fun. The goal is not to make a modern PC game that merely looks old. The goal is to put a disc into real PlayStation hardware and have Pirates exist there as software for the machine.
About running the PS1 release
This is an independently produced PlayStation release, not a Sony-licensed retail pressing. On original PlayStation hardware it therefore requires a console capable of booting independent/homebrew discs, such as a system with an appropriate modchip or another compatible boot method.
The familiar black underside of licensed PlayStation discs was part of the look of the original format, but the practical issue is the console’s disc-authentication system rather than the color of the CD itself. Compatibility details and tested hardware will be documented before release.
The original adventure
Retro Shack’s original description framed the game as a search for pirate treasure aboard Cap’n Cat’s 31-foot yacht. Players could keep a ship’s log to record their choices, retrace a bad decision after getting sunk, or simply take their chances and see where the voyage went.
That branching structure is what makes the material interesting to rebuild as a console game. There is already a journey, a sequence of decisions, multiple endings and a wonderfully peculiar personality. The PlayStation version gives that material a new structure designed around the console itself.
And after PlayStation?
- Sony PlayStation — current primary version.
- Sega CD / Mega-CD — planned next.
- TurboGrafx-CD / PC Engine CD — planned.
Those are not intended to be generic video discs carrying a different label. The point of the project is to investigate what it takes to make the experience belong on each machine.
Why this belongs on RetroGamesX
RetroGames began in the 1990s selling and supporting machines that the game industry had already started leaving behind. The idea was that older hardware did not become worthless simply because something newer had arrived.
Thirty years later, the more interesting question is no longer just how to preserve those machines. It is what else we can make them do.
PIRATES is one answer: new software, strange ideas, and another reason to turn on an original PlayStation in 2026.
Release information
The PlayStation version is currently being prepared and tested. Final physical-edition details, pricing, ordering information and release timing will be announced here when they are ready.
Development notes will also document the process of taking the original video material and turning it into a real PlayStation build, followed by the Sega CD and TurboGrafx-CD experiments.