Investigating the history of videogames, an in-depth look into their obscure, untold and often troubled development story, trivia and everything else interesting.
Liguria, on the western part of Italy and resting close to France, is home to several immensely popular culinary specialties, like pesto, and wordly-celebrated landmarks the likes of Cinque Terre and, naturally, Portofino. Along with being home to Dynabyte software and, years later, Artematica, the coastal region was also the birthplace of another important software…
Interview with Larry Ahern – Part 1 of 2 – From The Dig to The Curse of Monkey Island In December of 2020 I had the opportunity to talk with Larry Ahern via Skype, we made time for a lengthy conversation on his overall career, from his first interview at Skywalker Ranch all the way…
From its humble beginnings in Francesco Carlà’s private home, seen in Part I, Simulmondo managed to merge talent and business into a successful company which grew almost bigger than the size of a developer like Electronic Arts at the time. From 1992 on, because of the CEO’s stubbornness in continuing to pursue the selling on…
Throughout 2000 years of human history, ever since mankind understood how to package and sell a work of art, a single struggle has resisted, immortal, rearing its ugly head time and time again: the artist against the system. It’s a timeless tale, used in books and screenplays: the desperate toil of a striving artist to…
In the history of Italian videogame development, point’n’click adventure games are, perhaps, the quintessential genre; the love for solving riddles might indeed be stronger than that for soccer and wine. While Sierra Entertainment adventures struggled to find a market in Italy, mainly because their titles were rarely translated and fairly difficult to approach for a…
It is fascinating how the history of video games tends to be skewed towards a USA-centric narrative. Still, to this day, it is relatively easy to come across articles – written by Italians of all people – that keep on mentioning the “console wars” in the 90s or the “great video game crash of 1983”,…
Very few people seemed to care about the history of video games in the 90s: everyone just played them really. Truthfully though, back then the medium was still in its teenage years; it would be rather unreasonable to expect people to start looking back and think about the evolution of the medium, let alone on…
In the infamous history of the years long battle of Nintendo versus Sega, the usual narrative depicts two Japanese companies pitted against each other. Personally, I also see a little of “Japan vs USA”. Indeed, both companies saw unexpected success in the ol’ United States during the late 80s and 90s, while trying to appeal…
Everyone had a favorite videogame shop as a kid, where plenty of happy – or perhaps, not-so-happy – memories took place. Maybe it was EG or a Game, if one is UK based, or perhaps a Gamestop, Blockbuster or a mom-and-pop shop even. As for me, well, most of my games, as a child, I…
Tony Tough and the Night of Roasted Moths is a 1999 2D adventure game, one of the few non-racing games developed in Italy that managed to find an audience even outside of its original homemarket. A point’n’click wearing its influences on its sleeves: Day of the Tentacle, Monkey Island and the classic Lucasarts titles. Set…