Overview
Space Pirates is a sci-fi fantasy full-motion video light-gun shooter developed and released by American Laser Games for arcades (using Amiga-based ALG hardware) in North America in 1992.
Developed for the studio's LaserDisc-based ALG platform, and based on their earlier game Mad Dog McCree, Space Pirates switches the theme to space opera. After rescuing a group of colonists from the evil Black Brigade, the player (as the mysterious "Star Ranger") must scour the galaxy for crystals to power the Star Splitter Cannon in order to destroy the Black Dragon ship and its captain: the dreaded Captain Talon.
The gameplay is based on that from Mad Dog McCree, with players having a laser-based sidearm that "recharges" by "holstering" it away from the screen. One key addition to this style of game are on-the-move segments, as all segments in the previous two games are from a static perspective.
The game later received ports for the 3DO and MS-DOS PCs in 1994. These ports vary in video quality and support not only compatible light-guns, but also controllers and mouse inputs. It later received a DVD-Video game release by Digital Leisure on July 7, 2005, using higher-definition video and simplistic controls (which has players moving the cursor in larger chunks with a standard DVD remote).