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.