Loot, loot, and added loot. Did we acknowledgment the loot? By David Smith, 12/08/2004 at 00:00 Sid Meier's Pirates! is a attainable assignment in the advantage of restraint. Sometimes, the makers of activity and simulation amateur acquire to acquire that "more" is "better" -- the added variables, the added options, the added nested menus, the added advantageous a bold will apparently be for the player. The bodies who fabricated Pirates! apperceive better, though. This is a bold whose developers apperceive in actuality what to leave out. It's a bit like Diablo, actually, with the aloft affectionate of tightly-designed focus. Dungeon advance ambition action, atmosphere, and loot, which Diablo delivers to the exclusion of all else. Basal buccaneers ambition action, fame, exploration, and a accomplished lot added loot, which Pirates! delivers in spades. Both amateur accumulate the clip quick, and the controls are chargeless of accidental complications. Sailing about the bold apple and activity in sea battles is simple to apprentice -- already you can tack into the wind, you're on your way -- but appropriately catchy to master. There's a big aberration amid artlessly accepting from point A to point B and in actuality authoritative the best attainable time at it, or amid acceptable a simple barter of broadsides and in actuality outmaneuvering a battling vessel. The ascendancy arrangement and graphical user interface are rather abundantly retro. Admitting you can ascendancy movement and added options with the mouse, it's attainable (and bigger in a lot of cases) to handle the complete interface with the numeric keypad. Read the abounding Sid Meier's Pirates! 8 Mario Activity 6 Something old, something new, something about fun. By Chris Kohler, 12/08/2004 at 00:00 Just if aggregate seemed to be traveling well, there's agitation in the Mario Activity apple again. This time, Brighton and Twila -- the sun and the moon, appropriately -- are accepting a friendly, acquiescent argument about which of them is added awesome. Both bits to aback down. That's if Mario and friends, with their accepted active hey-kids-let's-put-on-a-show aplomb, adjudge to achieve the agitation by accession as abounding Stars as possible! Yeah, we're not abiding how that solves a gosh accursed activity either. But it's Mario Activity 6, and we are not meant to acquire its logic. So accession Stars it is, and the plumber and pals are off to accession alternation of bold boards on which they shall aggregate coins, play mini-games, and bear aberrant affairs to in actuality spiral over their complete best friends. It's yet accession Mario Party, but to Hudson's acclaim they've fabricated abundant tweaks to the blueprint to accumulate the alternation adequately fresh. The a lot of apparent accession to the Activity comes in the anatomy of the GameCube Mic ambassador included in every box. Yes, the GameCube is a bit of a Johnny-come-lately to the articulation ascribe amphitheatre -- the PS2 and Xbox accepting accustomed microphone controllers continued ago -- but at atomic it's about free. It slides into the GameCube's anamnesis agenda slot, abrogation amplitude for four controllers. Accepting the Mic about doesn't abundant affect the capital four-player Activity Access game, aback there are alone 5 mini-games that use articulation ascribe (and these can be affronted off if one of your "friends" "accidentally" breach the Mic by application it as nunchaku). Read the abounding Mario Activity 6