FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Let's Get Ready to Plunder!
GATHERING OF DEVELOPERS ANNOUNCES "TROPICO 2: PIRATE COVE"
Sequel to Best-Selling "Tropico" is a Pirate Simulation Complete
with Captives, Wenches, and the Famous Blackbeard
NEW YORK, NY - March 01, 2002 - Shiver me timbers! Computer and video game
publisher Gathering of Developers, a subsidiary of Take-Two Interactive
Software, Inc. along with developer Frog City Software, today announced
"Tropico 2: Pirate Cove," the sequel to the publisher's top-selling
Caribbean simulation, "Tropico." Set on a hidden pirate island and
starring some of history's scurviest sea dogs, the game is scheduled to ship
this fall.
"We're taking Tropico in a new direction," said Rachel Bernstein,
president of Frog City Software. "It's still the Caribbean, but now the
player rules an island teeming with pirates, complete with the management of
captives, rum supply, and parrot aviaries."
About "Tropico 2: Pirate Cove" As an all-powerful Pirate King,
players must manage a seventeenth century band of buccaneers in "Tropico 2:
Pirate Cove." To attract the most frightening of history's sea-faring bad
boys, Pirate Kings must keep their charges brave and well-supplied between
voyages. The island's "yo-ho-ho's" must stay at a feverish pitch in
order to keep the King and his buccaneers satisfied with drinking, wenching,
gambling, feasting, and the best in pirate accommodations.
Success in "Tropico 2: Pirate Cove" depends on careful management
of the pirate population. As dead men earn no plunder, the King must keep his
pirates well equipped for potentially lethal missions. Sea dogs require muskets,
cutlasses, cannons, and the skills to use them when they venture forth to
plunder the Spanish Main. Pirates equipped with a parrot on their shoulders and
a scary black hat are more likely to strike fear into their victims' hearts.
Three Big Changes to "Tropico" Model "Tropico 2" features
several major innovations to the original "Tropico" game. The
traditional economic model is reversed: the player maintains their wealth not by
production of materials, but by plundering merchants on the high seas and
bringing the victims back to the island as captive workers. In addition, the
pirate characters show a great deal of individual personality, so that the
player becomes truly vested in the characters' well-being. The island is also
zoned so that richer pirates may sequester themselves in their own booty-filled
mansions, which automatically upgrade as their standards of living improve.
"Tropico 2: Pirate Cove" stars Blackbeard and other pirates based
loosely on historical figures, organized in a campaign that takes the pirates
through 100 years of pirate action. Along with dozens of their fictional
counterparts, these legendary fellows are readying their old sea legs for the
game's release this fall.