Symbols
Confirmed To be conf. MAME Emulated
Original Under License Bootleg

Olympia


  • One of the best known companies in the italian coin-op scene, was founded by Livio Leante. Their first game, Master's game, was distributed under the brand name Leante.
  • The main administration and distribution site was in Milan.
  • However, Olympia has another site located in Bari. This city was the second city of Italy to have started an university degree in informatic sciences, in 1970, after Pisa (1969) and before Salerno (1973), Udine (1979) and Milan (1980).
  • Early Olympia games have been created in collaboration with Seletron.
  • In 1984, Olympia started managing a games room, called "Astragames", in Milan.
  • Unfortunately, earnings and sales fell down, and the company went bankrupt in the mid 80s.
  • Livio Leante then worked in other distribution companies, such as "Blue Star".
Name Orig. Year Emul. Info
Master's game
1979
Distributed under the brand Leante
Long Beach
1979

 
Speed race
1980

Asterion
1980
Unknown (bootleg of Asteroids?)
Sirius
1980

Copy of Moon Crest (Nichibutsu) ?
Monza GP
1980

Griffon 1980 Copy of Phoenix (Amstar)
Magic Brush
1981
Copy of Crush Roller (Kural)
D-Day
1981

Savannah
1981
Copy of Jungler (Konami)
Caterpillar
1981
Copy of Centipede (Atari)
Monkey Donkey
1981
Copy of Donkey Kong (Nintendo)
Dribbling / Derby
1982
Copy of Model Racing original
Amidar / Amigo
1982
Copy of Konami original
Vega
1982

Armada
1982

Maybe a copy of Sea Battle (Zaccaria)
Nibbler
1983
Copy of Rock-Ola original
Portraits
1983

Master's game


A game similar to Break-out. The flyer does not describe the game in detail, but informs that the board was made by Seletron and the game is sold by Leante (which will become Olympia).

Long Beach

Another game similar to Atari's Le Man or Sprint, it was a driving game with a fixed screen. It was the first game developed in collaboration with Seletron, and perhaps the last.
ANY dumped it, and hap emulated it in MAME 0.152

Speed Race

This game has not been found for years, and it was thought to be a copy of a game belonging to the Taito game series with the same name.
Instead, it is an original creation, very similar to Long Beach and also made with Seletron.
Starting from MAME 0.221 it is emulated, thanks again to hap and the dumping carried out by f205v.

Asterion



A version of Astro Fighter by DECO, or Data East (fully legal, or not?). Note that "DECO" writing of the original has been replaced with "BARI", the city where Olympia owned a branch.

Thanks to PatrYck for the marquee photo.

Sirius

An unit of this game is on sale, but at a rather high price and nobody buys it. Some sources classify it as a pirated copy of Moon Cresta by Nichibutsu, but this information isn't confirmed.

Again, thanks to PatrYck for the photos.

Monza GP



Pictures of an unit repaired by vernimark.

A driving game with high visual and vertical scrolling. From the few people who remember it seems to be very similar to Imola GP by Bacchilega-Alberici; and this game can be a simple version of Monza GP. But the hardware constructions of the two games are different.
Tomasz Slanina (Dox) was the last developer MAME who try to emulate him, with no big success despite the help of the entire MAME Italian team, who also provided schematics. At this time it's included in MAME as not-working game.

Griffon

A pirated version of Phoenix marketed also by Videotron; it's emulated in MAME.

Magic Brush

Emulated in MAME but not assigned to Olympia. It is a version, probably illegal, of Crush Roller (by Alpha Denshi/Kural)

D-Day

It was the most successful game from Olympia, and also their first (and only?) game to land in the USA, distributed by Centuri. MAME emulattion is good enough to make it playable.

There is a completely different and unrelated game called D-Day, made by Jaleco.

Savannah

This version of Konami's Jungler in MAME is listed as Savanna.

Caterpillar

Centipede clone. Probably an illegal copy. It is emulated by MAME, which is not assigns it to Olympia and classifies it as created in 1980 (instead of 1981).

Monkey Donkey

It's a bootleg of Crazy Kong Kyoei, or according to other versions of Crazy Kong Part 2 of Falcon. Both are in turn unauthorized copies of Donkey Kong by Nintendo. It is emulated in MAME, where however, it does not appear as a product of Olympia.

Info and pictures courtesy of tirino73.

Amidar / Amigo

Olympia has produced, on regular Konami license, its version of Amidar. But it was also noted bootleg some copies of the bootleg Amigo with the indication Olympia (not the one used for the MAME emulation).

Vega



Above, the window sticker of the cabinet: below is a screen shot from the Tomasz Slanina site that shows the actual state of emulation.

Space game with vertical scrolling. MAME at this time manages to emulate it partially, with not enough accuration to be fully playable.

Armada

This game was seen for a short time. and hardly anyone remembers him with precision.
It was similar to games like Sea Wolf Midway: ships crossed the screen horizontally, and the player had to hit them.

It resembles Sea Battle (Zaccaria), judging from some prelimary screen snaps of this game.
If so, Armada is likely to be a licensed version of Sea Battle - or vice versa - and in this case the release date of Armada probilmente should be moved ahead, since the Zaccaria game was out in 1980.
There is also, in MAME, a game called "Sea Battle (set 2)", which currently is not working and will never work, because the dumping is missing of all the memory chips who contains the machine-language code. Among the few chips already downloaded, some are called by dumper with a name that begins with "armada".

Portraits




Game with an unique bonus in the world for many years: it was equipped with a video camera installed in the box, and the top scorer could take a picture of him/herself as well as enter his name.
It was also very original as scenario - a photographer must take pictures of animals without being swept, in four different stages - and featured rich graphics and sound.
Olympia licensed it to Zaccaria (it was distributed as "Safari").
Unfortunately MAME emulation is stalled since many years. Currently the game is barely playable: the colors are completely distorted and there is no sound. Also, there are problems with horizontal scrolling, which make it difficult to proceed after the fourth stage.
Olympia was aiming a lot about this game, which instead (perhaps because of its level of difficulty) did not have much success.

In the images above you can see the cabinet and a screen photo (pictures taken from "Videogiochi", issue 12). In the MAME snap below you can see the actual state of the emulation.