The Download Munkey : Tracking the Treasure Down …

As the grandchild of the legendary pirate Euchmich The Loathsome, you’ll command your grandfather’s ship Emilia to raid defenseless towns, sack mighty fortresses to collect weapon upgrades and pick up additional crew to rule the fifteen seas once again.

You’ll travel the world in your trusty Emilia sieging and looting in exotic locales from the igloos bordering the Martonic Ocean to Asian fortresses in the Sea of Konnyaku, before tackling Euchmich’s mighty island stronghold – The Euchmain.

By besieging towns and fortreses, you gain much needed supplies of treasure and food to pay and feed your greedy crew and more cannonballs for the next siege. Your ship gets upgraded with additional cannon or specialist crewmembers the first time you pillage any town or fortress. Before long, the Emilia transforms from a slow and pathetically armed ship with two(!) puny cannons on the port side to a zippy warship bristling with fearsome numbers of cannon firing in multiple directions.

To complicate matters, fifteen other pirates also aspire to the the undisputed terror of the seas just like you. Simply sending them and their ships down to Davy Jones’ locker just won’t do – you’ll have to methodically and ruthlessly hunt down and eliminate every single town and fortress under their control to ensure that their descendants have absolutely no base of operations to pick up their ancestors’ feud against you.

778 days to conquer the fifteen seas

BTW, The Euchmich Legacy was voted Best Graphics, Best Gameplay, Most Innovative & Best Game for the 3rd pirate-themed 72 Hour Game Development Competition in June 2004. Haven’t found any links to this competition though – four years is a pretty long time in the Internet.

Download The Euchmich Legacy from michi.nu. instructions.html in the game package is one of the best “readmes” I’ve ever seen for a freeware game and the light-hearted tone of the writing makes the rather stat-heavy game mechanics much easier to digest.

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Piracy Wallpapers
Promotional Game for Disney’s Pirates of the Caribbean Online & Secret Treasures
Modern Pirates – Photos by Eric Pasquier

Nope, none of that swashbuckling stuff but more of those illegal CD/DVD kind of pirates. Probably the coolest wallpapers that Microsoft has ever put out on their official site under th rather obscure anti-Piracy section in an effort to educate consumers on the the evils of software piracy.

© Microsoft

These illustrations look like stuff from a heist / corporate espionage flick, don’t they?

Download all 10 wallpapers from Microsoft’s Know The Facts.

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Real Pirates – Photos by Eric Pasquier
Pirate Girl by Martin Abel

A beautiful orchestral theme from the Xbox 360 RPG Blue Dragon composed by Nobuo Uematsu who also scored the music for the Final Fantasy series.

© Microsoft Game Studios

If the character design of the boy Shu bears more than a passing resemblance to Dragonball Z’s Gohan, it’s because both characters were essentially conceived by the same artist Akira Toriyama.

My favourite character, Zola (below right), the girl wearing the black bandana with the Jolly Roger, reminds me of the violent alternative personality of Lunch/Ranchi in Dragonball Z.

© Microsoft Game Studios

Two wallpapers featuring Zola and the rest of the characters from the fansite kit.

© Microsoft Game Studios

The contents of the entire fansite kit are follows:
4 MP3s
9 Avatar Images in multiple resolutions
3 Banner Images
2 High Resolution Boxart Images
0 Concept Art Images (Really wondering WTH the concept art folder is for )
4 Logo Images (Blue Dragon, Artoon (Developers), Mistwalker Studios (Producers), Microsoft Game Studios (Publishers))
18 Screenshots
12 Wallpapers (800×600, 1024×768, 1280×960, 1600×1200 resolutions)
17 Assorted Images for building a Blue Dragon fansite.

Look in the Approved Music folder for the 4 MP3s – I heartily recommend the magical 04_piacon.mp3. The first track 01_open1.mp3 is essentially a shortened edit of the same track.

Download the 63 MB fansite kit via Xbox.com. (direct link)

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Martin Abel’s Pirate Girl
Dragonrain Productions Wallpapers
Warren Louw @GfxArtist.com
Anime Wallpapers @ Madman.com.au
Official Tenjho Tenge Anime Wallpapers
Ibara (鋳薔薇) Desktop Wallpaper

© Disney

Desktop Galleon is a promotional mini-game by Yummy Media for Disney’s Pirates of The Caribbean Online game. In this little game, you steer a galleon around your desktop and attempt to destroy enemy ships with your cannons. Anyway, the main attraction of the game is the secret treasures that can be downloaded after capturing the three ports in this mini-game. To capture each port, you need to complete three battles, with the final battle for Padres De Fuego against a ghost ship (the Flying Dutchman?). More about the treasures later.

© Disney

The gameplay is pretty simplistic whereby you attempt to sail alongside your enemy with the cursor keys or mouse, fire broadsides with the Space key and then scoot off to safety with a Wind Boost (Ctrl key). Sorry, boarding the enemy ship is a no-no in this game

© Disney

If the graphics looks depressing, it’s because it is really depressing. A nice sea-themed desktop wallpaper will do wonders since all the sailing and stuff takes place right on your desktop – I just happen to have a white desktop

There’s power-ups to help you accomplish your task, which appear at regular intervals as well as after you sink an enemy ship. A selection of the available power-ups follows:

© Disney

Gold for points

© Disney

Ships for extra lives

© Disney

Shields to absorb attacks (Available in three flavours)

© Disney

Golden cannonballs (There’s more weapon upgrades like fiery cannonballs and faster reloads)

© Disney

Special ammo for the last boss

Steering a ship is much more tricky than a car once you realize that ships can’t reverse when there’s an incoming enemy ship or other obstacle (enemy ships release explosive barrels onto your desktop, err, I mean sea) in your way. The wind also affects the ship’s course, so be prepared for frantic mashing of keys when the wind blows your ship straight into an explosive barrel. Also watch out for the skull-shaped storm which will trap your ship.

© Disney

Here I have captured both Port Royal and Tortuga (denoted by the yellow crosses) which means I have two secret treasures. Next is Padres Del Fuego.

© Disney

After all the trouble, I get three measly 800×600 concept art of the locations in the game. Above is the concept art for Tortuga

Here’s the direct links for the so-called secret treasures.
Port Royal Treasure (403 Forbidden error when accessed directly)
Tortuga Treasure
Del Fuego Treasure

Download Desktop Galleon from Disney’s Pirates of the Caribbean Online site (9.33 MB)

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Real life Pirate Photos by Eric Pasquier

I came across Eric Pasquier’s photos from an article on modern-day pirates by Nick Ryan titled Wave of Terror.

Quoted from Eric Pasquier’s own website at www.ericpasquier.com.

I work as a photo reporter for more than 17 years and I publish on 5 continents in about 45 different countries.
I realise mostly magazine features and I’ m a “specialist” in anything crazy, unique and incredible on earth.

You can read more about his past and future journeys on his biography page.

Of particular interest are the photos he has taken in his travels and assignments around the world on diverse subjects ranging from Muay Boran pre-match rituals in Thailand to South China Sea pirates, Australian road trains and even a butterfly-catching penal colony. Really wonder how he gets access to his subjects, especially when you look at his photos of real pirates.

Two of his photos from his official site.

© Eric Pasquier

A road train in the Australian sunset

© Eric Pasquier

Heavily-armed modern pirates. More photos here.

These photos and more are available from Eric Pasquier’s Reports section.