Si Senor Fugitivo, there was a NES version of ze game:
http://www.gamespot.com/nes/strategy/pirates/
I have not played it though and cannot say weather it is as wonderful as the Amiga version.
The DOS version made me have too many LSD flashbacks with those funky colors but coming from a spectrum fan like you Waz, it does not surprise me
I'm going to expand my rant a little more to make the thread at least a little more useful.
I'm going to get in on the SPECIFICS of why the new games are absolute rubbish.
Article A, Paragraph 12: 3D is gods gift to inflated budgets and does make the aesthetics of the game a little nicer. The best thing about 3D is of course the freedom of movement and action it is supposed to bring (GTA3 would be a GREAT example on a nice job for 3D conversion).
Now I need to stress that it is absolutely USELESS to implement if the 3D environment will have the movement ability barely available in the 2D version. Both of the sequels have spent many resources on making a 3d environment of the towns you visit. WHATS THE POINT? When you get to a town you want to go to the tavern, shop or shipyard and GET OUT as fast as possible without waiting for the bulky 3d town of uselessness to load up. Plus your character walks around like C3PO and can 'interract' with all of the nicely modeled citizens of the town to get absolutely USELESS trivia and hear the same voice actors generic 'hello sailor' loop.
Now that's what I call a great game... a fully modelled 3d town in which you walk around with the ease and freedom of movement as a full suit of armor would offer... under water. All this so you can walk around the useless town just to get to a few USEFUL screens: The Shop/Tavern/Shipard/Governor interaction screens. Those are the ONLY important screens (count em 4!) in most towns and you have to go through the 3d town mess of doom to get to them and waste your time. Fast travel? Even they were too ashamed to admit the uselessness of the 3d town and made 'fast travel' but you still have to wait for the fucking 3d environment to load!
You REALLY want to waste money and make 3d towns? FINE, then ADD interaction, and make moving through the town fast, easy and a bliss of controls. Sure it would have been great if the towns in these modern pirates games were as interactive as the GTA3-Vice cities. Now that would be a worthwhile 3d implementation. If you could have the freedom to mess everything up and get chased by the gurads all without feeling like your'e playing in slow mo or watching an underwater ballet, I'd be jumping for joy. Let me go into all the houses and rob them dry, let me break the furniture and harass the old people, let me start a bar brawl let me punch and kick as well as stab and choke the people in town and then we'll talk about 3d towns.
You can imagine, that since the controls for the 3d sections don't change, all the oher wonderful 3d things they did in the game such as the ship battles and sword fights have the playability of a rotten dead kitten as well. Okay so you end p fighting more than just one person when you take over a ship and Sea Dogs 2 does have a new dungeons section... but please you could have done better than that. Don't make me feel like the boat decks are seperate 3d maps, link them up better. Same for the dungeons. I mean this is bethesda doing the dirty work, even segmenting the 3d world like in morrowind would have been okay.
Had they added a better way to attack towns and explore the island without being bored out of your mind... I'd have liked it. But the island exploration and sword fight scenes are as fun as walking around the 3d town of no interaction. Get a better 3d engine, if you can't make your own for crying out loud.
Now why is the old game still better? Well... you don't waste time walking around a useless town; you have just about the same movement and attack options ikn the 2d, 8 button fencing section and the naval battles as in the slow unresponsive 3d version we have now; and you have the same game options (governor, shop, tavern, etc) and even more nationalities in the old game (as well as historic scenarios) to play with. Same freedom of movement/choice and same game, but with a faster better 2d environment... no brainer for me.