Italian pirated games

Various

Status: Full Game, Findability: 2/5

I’ve cheated a little with this entry to save time, but I had an email from Francesco Milioni today, who helps with the site Edicola 8 bit and looks to find out the original titles for pirated games in Italy.

He highlighted a number of titles which he could not find the original game for.  Some are SEUCK efforts and are probably just the same named game.  But there are some original titles which could well have been intended as something else.

Do you know anything more about them?

The games are:

All downloads can be found here.   Let me know if you can determine the original source game! 🙂

Contributions: Francesco Milioni, James Pitcher, Gaetano Chiummo, Andrea Pachetti

Supporting content

Update history

  • 16/01/21 – Another title found – Ala Radente
  • 18/12/18 – More mysteries solved, plus some new titles added.
  • 28/12/17 – Another game added – Star Wars
  • 27/12/17 – Some mysteries solved.

23 Responses to Italian pirated games

  1. Hello,
    I’ve just found out that “Ala Radente” is “Soviet Bombarder”, which can be found in csdb but not in the Game Base 64.

    Reply

  2. Ciao, sono Alberto Frabetti, il programmatore di rudy hummer. Rudy hummer nasce come demo e nient’altro. Una copia del gioco fu donata a un commodore club fondato da amici e nel giro di pochissimo lo vidi piratato nelle edicole. Questo è tutto. Se volete vedere un’altra mia demo scritta alcuni anni fa interamente in C andate su youtube e cercate “capcom remix frabetti”. Ciao a tutti, un saluto dall’italia!!

    Reply

  3. I’ve made further investigation about the game “Melt”, with the precious help of Antonio Savona. The game has still got the trainer in memory, but unfortunately the original crack intro is not working anymore (the game was “frozen” by the italian pirate after the trainer screen; at that point, the unpacking process had already overwritten the crack intro), but we’ve got a clue: the name of the cracking group (“The Fanatic Duo”). Is anyone still in contact with these (german) people? Are there some disks containing all their releases? The game looks like an early version of Di-Art (http://www.gb64.com/game.php?id=13859), or just a rip-off of that game (it’s badly designed, and the levels don’t seem to be properly linked)…

    Reply

    • That’s great work by both you and Antonio! Sounds like it could well just be a heavily hacked version of Di-Art – as it would have been fairly straightforward to do, as the SEUCK editor is usually still in memory. I’ll add a note to the page!

      Reply

      • Thanks Frank!
        One more note about the game “Di-Art – Moebius II”: there’s an introduction where one of the programmer says: “Now some notes about Moebius: you might [have] seen our preview of it but it wasn’t meant to be released but caused by some sh*t-heads. A mistake went up, so just wait for the final version!”.
        I don’t know if it refers to the game we know as “Melt”, but I guess it’s worth investigating! “Di-Art – Moebius 2” was made by the 801 Designing Crew and The Sarge (Joachim Ljunggren?): are they still around to confirm this?

        Reply

  4. Case closed: Alberto Frabetti confirmed that the game is his own work. It was originally called “Rudy Hummer”, and the original charachter was a bit different (the trees had a different color too). I’ve just asked him if he’s still got an original version. I’ll keep you updated about this. Credits must go to Andrea Pachetti, who guessed right about the author being Alberto Frabetti 🙂 Happy New Year to everyone!

    Reply

    • Thanks Gaetano for the excellent suggestions. I think you’re spot on with Autopolo and you have some great leads regarding the others. I’ll point Francesco to your comments to help update his pages too.

      Reply

  6. About “Raid Mortale”, there’s a “better” version of this game in another tape, and it’s called “Power Station” (http://specialprogramsipe.altervista.org/gioco.php?collana=nova_games&console=c64&codice=powerstation&id_rivista=3). I had a chat with other members of an italian Facebook group about C64; my first idea was that the game was published as a “type-in” in some british or german magazines in 1986; I guessed the author could be Ronald Mayer, whose games I found looked very similar to this. A member of the group, who’s a very good C64 programmer, told me that I could be wrong, because Ronald Mayer’s games in the GameBase have got a completely different programming style. I still think that magazines listings are worth being investigated (the game is very simple, it even lacks a title screen!).
    About “Rudy”, some of the sprites are ripped from games such as Ghosts’n Goblins and Park Patrol, and could be a preview or a demo of some sort. A Facebook User, who’s got a very well documented blog about retro-games, thinks that it could be a programming exercise by Alberto Frabetti, author of Vardan and Dragon’s Kingdom. I don’t know if any of the members of the group are investigating, but I think it’s worth trying, at least…
    “Tank Attack” is clearly made with the Garry Kitchen’s Game Maker, maybe by Leonardo Casubolo, one of the people involved in SIPE magazines at the time. SIPE published some other games made in Garry Kitchen’s Game Maker, which bear the signature of Leonardo Casubolo, so I guess this Tank Attack is his creation as well.

    Reply

    • Thanks. About “Raid Mortale” this is the version I know:
      “Raid Mortale” on “Top Play Games” n.16 and on “Hit Parade” n.14 n.31 n.63 and n.73;
      “Laser Mission” on “Super Top 30” and “Super Game 2000” n.17;
      “Power Station” NovaGames 3.
      It’s a little and unplayable game so I agree with you: it must be published on a magazine.

      About “Rudy” it was also published on “New Special Play Games” n.4 and on “Hit Parade” n. 20 with the name “My Hero”.
      I think it was the only game made with “Ghosts’n Goblins Construction Set” ( http://www.gb64.com/game.php?id=3137 ). For this reason I don’t this is by Alberto Frabetti.

      About “Tank Attack” I think the same as you but with some doubt: not all games published by Leonardo Casubolo was original: for example “The Raid” is a pirated version of “Chopper”: a demo game on “Garry Kitchen’s GameMaker” floppy disk.

      Reply

  7. I spent a lot of time searching for the real titles of these games. About “Melt”, I found that there were some bits of the original crack intro of the game still in memory (I’m not very good at programming, so I’m only guessing about it). Some clues led me to the game “Di-Art: Moebius II” (http://www.gb64.com/game.php?id=13859&d=18&h=0). I searched for “Moebius”, but nothing came out. The two games are very similar, especially in the fact that they look like a vertical scrolling version of Firebird’s “IO”. Maybe someone with a better knowledge of machine language (or someone who’s still in touch with the people involved in “Di-Art”) may help…

    Reply

    • Thanks. A lot of Seuck game are similar especially space game. The ship of “Melt” is the same of “Moebius II” except the colour, but the scenary are completely different. Seuck programmers often made second version about a published game so it could be the unofficial version II of “Moebius” ( http://www.gb64.com/game.php?id=4927 )

      Reply

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