''Simulmondo'' was an Italian software house from

Bologna Bologna ( , , ; ; ) is the capital and largest city of the Emilia-Romagna region in northern Italy. It is the List of cities in Italy, seventh most populous city in Italy, with about 400,000 inhabitants and 150 different nationalities. Its M ...

. Specialized

video game developer A video game developer is a software developer specializing in video game development – the process and related disciplines of creating video games. A game developer can range from one person who undertakes all tasks to a large business with em ...

and

publisher Publishing is the activities of making information, literature, music, software, and other content, physical or digital, available to the public for sale or free of charge. Traditionally, the term publishing refers to the creation and distribu ...

, it has produced about 150 video games for

Commodore 64 The Commodore 64, also known as the C64, is an 8-bit computing, 8-bit home computer introduced in January 1982 by Commodore International (first shown at the Consumer Electronics Show, January 7–10, 1982, in Las Vegas). It has been listed in ...

Amiga Amiga is a family of personal computers produced by Commodore International, Commodore from 1985 until the company's bankruptcy in 1994, with production by others afterward. The original model is one of a number of mid-1980s computers with 16-b ...

, PC and

Atari ST Atari ST is a line of personal computers from Atari Corporation and the successor to the company's Atari 8-bit computers, 8-bit computers. The initial model, the Atari 520ST, had limited release in April–June 1985, and was widely available i ...

. Initially founded in 1988 by

Francesco Carlà Francesco Carlà is an Italian journalist, professor, investor and entrepreneur. Among the various activities in the financial field, he is known to the public to be the founder and CEO of the software house Simulmondo, the videogame leader in Ita ...

and Riccardo Arioti, via an agreement with publisher Ital Video, Simulmondo was among Italy's most important game developers in the late 1980s and early 1990s, mainly developing titles for home computers. Simulmondo released games mainly for the

MS-DOS MS-DOS ( ; acronym for Microsoft Disk Operating System, also known as Microsoft DOS) is an operating system for x86-based personal computers mostly developed by Microsoft. Collectively, MS-DOS, its rebranding as IBM PC DOS, and a few op ...

and the

platform. The latest Simulmondo game, the middle 90s, had been released for the Windows 95 platform. For the distribution of the games, Simulmondo used an innovative strategy for the time: Simulmondo branched out into an early form of episodic gaming, by publishing short adventures that could be completed in one or two hours and distributed them on newsstands at a price much lower than that of the complete games sold in a normal shop. In this way, Simulmondo could reduce development costs and maximize profits. Games were usually distributed as tapes or floppies. Simulmondo's most famous games were licensed video games based on comic books, such as

Dylan Dog ''Dylan Dog'' is an Italian horror comics series created by Tiziano Sclavi and published by Sergio Bonelli Editore since 1986. The series features the eponymous character, a paranormal investigator who takes on cases involving supernatural el ...

Spider-Man Spider-Man is a superhero in American comic books published by Marvel Comics. Created by writer-editor Stan Lee and artist Steve Ditko, he first appearance, first appeared in the anthology comic book ''Amazing Fantasy'' #15 (August 1962) in ...

, and

Tex Willer Tex Willer is the main fictional character of the Italian comics series ''Tex'', created by writer Gian Luigi Bonelli and illustrator Aurelio Galleppini, and first published in Italy on 30 September 1948. The series is among the most popular ...

. By 1993, the company had lost many of its original programmers and artists, like Ivan Venturi. By the following year, Simulmondo had all but disappeared from the mainstream video games market. In its final years, the software house developed games for television programs, like interactive games for the kids' program ''Solletico'' and a football engine for '' Processo di Biscardi''.

List of games

Note: We are Angels was developed by Simulmondo but released by ARI GAMES. It's a game based on the TV series Noi siamo Angeli.

Cancelled titles

References

External links

* * https://archive.org/stream/the-games-machine-italia-80#page/n15/mode/1up * https://archive.org/stream/computer-videogiochi-11-speciale#page/n97/mode/1uphttps://issuu.com/adpware/docs/mc178/215 * https://www.advancedstudios.it/forum/index.php?/topic/3340-mos%C3%A8-il-profeta-della-libert%C3%A0/http://www.ag.ru/games/1st-chess-tutor
Once We Were Giants: the History of Simulmondo
on The Genesis Temple, a thorough history of the company in two parts. Companies based in Bologna Video game companies established in 1987 Video game companies disestablished in 1999 Defunct video game companies of Italy Video game development companies {{Europe-videogame-company-stub