Pirates! is a fantastic game. What I find fascinating is that some games like Diablo, Dunes II or Doom spawned a whole genera, while other fantastic games could not find a worthy successor. I'm thinking about Syndicate, Lemmings, Defender of the Crown or North & South (god the laughs!), and many others.

Mike Diskett, the lead designer of Syndicate Wars, tried to do a Syndicate remake-ish thang called Satellite Reign recently; it came out on Steam as an early release but never quite made playability IMHO. Shame: the conceptual foundation seems disproportionately more urgently pertinent for mass-comprehension today.

Agreed. Such great games!