Unofficial conversion of Pooyan?

This appeared in late 1986 with the name Poyans on a Special Playgames Italian tape magazine - the ones which featured a selection of pirated (and sometimes butchered, or just demo versions) Spectrum and C64 games for a small price.
Looks like an unofficial Pooyan conversion. It is faithful to the original, albeit simple, coin-op and features redefinable keys and Kempston joystick support.
Tested under emulation (Fuse, ZX Spin) and real hardware. On the 128K machines it will load under 48K BASIC.
The TZX file I made myself from the original tape can be downloaded from here:
alessandrogrussu.altervista.org/bak/Poyans.tzx (should the URL point you to the Altervista page, click on "qui" to download)
Post edited by Alessandro Grussu on
Comments
http://www.worldofspectrum.org/infoseekid.cgi?id=0025296&loadpics=3
I noticed there's some sort of signature in the lower right corner, something like "ENTARITA". Who knows if someone can shed some light on this.
Well, I can't shed light on that, but the game's language sure looks like Italian
and contains the text "Game by G.B.Max"
The awkward writing throughout the game suggests a (bad, as it was always the case with "G.B. Max"'s tape magazines) translation from English - eg "favorite" translated as "favorito", whereas in correct Italian it would be translated as "preferito".
"the g.b.max's autobiography: earning on the work of other".
anyway, i was surprised that i've never found the original version of special playgames's poyans. so, i've concluded that it's or it could be an original effort, which would be a rarity in g.b.max's publications: but, if you remember, on the last page of his booklets you would usually find an announce asking for original games, offering a reward of 500.000 lire per published game.
poyans could have been sent by an italian amateur programmer. or, even, it could have been programmed by g.b.max himself: after all, he even published a couple of games in the real spectrum market: pippo with mastertronics, and draughts genius with rack it.
because g.b.max couldn't write in other ways anymore...
anyway, the "favorito" thing is not even uncorrect - it's a valid synonim for "preferito", and, hence, an acceptable translation of "favorite".
the message in the "high score" screen, when you have to type in your name, is a bit clumsy or strange, though -
but i think that poyans is an original unofficial conversion, anyway.
it seems sufficiently well done, with decent graphics - if it was a pirate copy, i doubt that the original would have disappeared without leaving a trace, and no one remembering it - especially considering the monstruos work done by the spectrum community in trying to find even the most obscure pieces of software, type in's included.
Interestingly enough, there is an official conversion available for the C64 and MSX, made by Datasoft.
i mean, nobody seems to remember it, except us.
I became interested about Spectrum in Italy at some moment. Soon I discovered that a lot of cracks were done in Italy, with titles changed and translated to Italian.
Among them there are however original titles, hard to find and mostly absent on WOS but still original.
This Pooyan looks like a hack however with the original missing. Look at the loading screen:
Quite good and detalied picture with ugly, blocky title. For me it is obvious that someone without artistic skills removed the original title, which was probably different and much nicer to look at and added this blue-white thing.
But as you say the original is missing and unknown. The quality is really good but it still could be created by some boy in his bedroom.
they would put that kind of blocky title even when it wasn't necessary: for example, in the same issue of special playgames there's a pirated galivan, renamed dalidan or something, using the original logo, and, in addition, the blocky title.
what i wrote some posts ago means: if it's a hack, and an original version was published, then, theorically, somebody else must have seen it, and played it - and someone should rememeber it: but the only ones remembering it are us italians who bought that special playgames - in spite of the fact that it's a decent conversion of a coin-op that had no known official conversions and just one or two unofficial ones..
no spanish people, no english people or whatever.
this seems to indicate that it was published exclusively in special playgames.
anyway, alessandro, if g.b.max wrote in that mailing list that you mentioned, couldn't he be contacted and asked about this game?
and would you please link me his "memoir" about his pirating years, i'd like to read it.
Of course he was. He was even interviewed at the 2005 Varese Retrocomputing (sorry, Italian only):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SG01UvIpOek
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mgLa0mYyHYY
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u0ydSRQlN2M
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W7yv2tIe7OU
A synthesis of the interview - which provided the basic source for the part of the Spectrumpedia where I deal with SIPE tape magazines, together with my personal recollections of the time - can be read here (again, Italian only):
http://zxvideos.speccy.cz/zxnotizie10high.pdf
Indeed ;)
But I will also check the links Alessandro provided, surely there is interesting info there.