ALGA SOFT cassette for the Commodore 64
In the 1980s, among the many newsstand cassettes with fake names, there were some persons in Naples who decided to sell cassettes containing games with its original names. In short, pure piracy! Among these were Soft Home (very rare), Visa Soft, Penguin Soft, Magicsoft, M.P.Soft and of course the two most important: AlGa Soft (later rebranded New AlGa Soft, then Mr. Games) and F.S.N. (Federation Software & Hardware Diffusion Center of Naples).
This article is a tribute to these people.
Brief explanation of the piracy phenomenon in Naples
Already in the second half of the 1960, with the advent of low pitch projectors (8mm and Super8), various unauthorized 35mm films began to be released on the market. These films cost 100.000 Lire (now in Italy there is the Euro), a price that in many cases was a third of the price of the original film. They made the fortune of the movie-renters, who rented them for 6.000 to 10.000 Lire (you can imagine in what condition the films were after have been watched by so many persons).
Without going into the Super8 (another great passion of mine, but never started due to lack of funds and space at home), let's move on to the 1970s where music piracy was the king: everywhere stalls of people start to flourish who (often with makeshift equipment and on poor media) begin to sell, at a low price (around 3.000 Lire at the beginning, then stabilized to about 5.000 lire everywhere until the advent of the CD) the latest news and compilations of successes, sometimes also real concert bootlegs, of course all unauthorized :-)
With the arrival of the 1980s, the boom began immediately with the advent of the first home computers: dozens of small groups of people (sometimes even composed of one), given the success of "Italian" cassettes with the faked names games (which arrived earlier and were produced mostly in the Northof Italy) agree with a good part of the distributors in the city to resell, at a very low price, cassettes (and later also floppies) with dozens and dozens of titles, especially for Commodore 64, but also for the other home computers (despite in Naples Spectrum, MSX and the other home computers have never particularly success). Soon said: more or less at the same time as the definitive sunset of the Vic20 (about 1984) the Soft Home cassette begin to be released.
Unfortunately I know little and nothing about these cassettes: at that time I had the Commodore 16 (a machine that will be approached only marginally by the Neapolitan pirates, I will talk about it later) and I saw two of my classmates exchanging these cassettes. It was the time when the Ghostbusters logo was seen everywhere, and even the Soft Home (evidently with that game contained in the cassette) had the logo of the classic ghost. This is all I remember.
The Soft Home, I don't know why, were not seen much around: it was probably a kind of "test / experiment".
In 1985 the Visa / Nova Soft also appeared, in two formats: Soft Home style compilation (always with original game's names) and also released in Commodore 16 / + 4 version (I have one cassette of this) sold on newsstands, the latter containing a single game, copies of the originals and sold in stores (!). However, they lasted a short time, especially the first ones.
The fact is that a short time later, starting about (according to my memories) from September 1986, my favorite cassettes came out: the ALGA SOFT.
It was only many years later that I would discover that we should actually write Al.Ga. since they are the initials of Alfredo Gargiulo, well-known owner of a Vomerese stationery, who evidently began to create these cassettes in his spare time.
Taking advantage of anonymous media of dubious quality (but which still work today, so despite the anonymity they were good enough to last at least 20 years), he began to sell these cassettes at a low price (10.000 lire for 2 cassettes) in Naples. It is the boom of the Commodore 64 and the Neapolitans who buy these cassettes are not few. Alga Soft will be able to get up to number 20 plus a special (special containing Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom among others), followed by a chronological numbering starting from January 1988 (1/88 ... 14/88 and then 1 / 89 up to 7/89). A total of 42 releases, 84 cassettes. Newsagents were able to procure even back issues within a few days. In no time, the popularity of these tapes (with original game's names) goes beyond the city limits, it arrives in the province where a (less widespread) distribution begans, and even reaches the other provinces of Campania (even a cousin of mine who lives near Caserta had some). Indeed, according to some testimony on the Internet, some people from Northern Italy who came to Naples on particular occasions were also aware of it.
Just to better understand, I write the contents of cassette Alga Soft 15B: Game Over, Great Gurianos, Operation-Iron Hawk, Cataball, Frenesis, Air Wolf 2, New Ambush 87, Ecuin, Exolon, Rebel, Deliverance, The Enforcer, High Frontier , Sector 90, Dr. Jackle and Mr. Wide. All the games inside one cassette.
It should be noted that the price was fixed: 10.000 lire for two cassettes.
There were also the "Alga da 6000" which were single cassettes and cost 6.000 Lire and contained only one game (often multiload). They were perfect copies of the originals. For me they have a good emotional and collectible value, but no preservation value, since they are equal to the dumps of the original game already present on the net.
Good old Gargiulo had literally invented the cuccagna tree for Commodore 64 users of the Neapolitan city. He managed in one fell swoop to defeat the competition of the "Italian" cassettes (which hardly contained more than 8 games), not to mention the competition to the other pirates who did not dream of putting so many games. In addition, he often also included multiload games (eg on the 15A, sister of this one, there is Road Runner). In the loading screens, the writing Alga Soft often stood out (the legendary one with the Italian flag), always with the usual telephone number: 081/369933 (no longer working because the number has changed at least 15 years ago).
Curious feature: when Napoli won their first Scudetto (June 1987) Gargiulo released the number 11 of the Alga Soft with a scudetto designed.
Starting about a year after the Alga Soft, a newsagent from Portici, Alfonso, who did not know his surname, had, together with other friends of his, the idea of doing something similar. From there they founded the FSN (Federation Software & Hardware Diffusion Center of Naples), giving themselves this "international" name. The distribution was less than the Alga Soft, on the other hand with many more games and with higher quality media (Sony). Often versions with trainers were included. Often Alf (as he liked to call himself) changed the credits of the games, similar to how the Italian cassettes did. Alf also understood the potential of floppies (which unfortunately Gargiulo did not grasp in time), and also sold (at the same price) the software on 3 double-sided floppies.
We are now well into 1988. It is chaos. Every month with 20.000 lire (10.000 Alga Soft and 10.000 FSN) we took home 4 cassettes (or 2 cassettes and 3 floppies) with all the latest release for the Commodore 64, which were regularly reviewed on Zzap! and similar magazines.
Towards the middle of 1989 Alga Soft "closes", but the following month NEW Alga Soft arrives (purple cover and no longer white), also managed by Gargiulo. The cadence becomes fortnightly and one single cassette is sold for 6.000 lire (therefore, an increase of 2.000 lire). Shortly after, NEW Alga Soft also closed, being replaced by Mr. Games (same features and price, except for the color of the cover: blue).
In the meantime, many other competitors arrive on the newsstands who will not have the same luck as Alga Soft and FSN, and who will prefer to rely mostly on floppies: Penguin Soft, Magic Soft, Hotline Soft (which will also continue with the Amiga and partly with PC floppy) and other minor names.
Shortly after, pirate floppies arrive with a court authorization for publication: we are talking about Di.Erre, based first in vico Pallonetto S.Chiara and then in via Mezzocannone (where I was use to spend the days and where I bought empty floppies at 350 lire each! With 14.000 lire I took away 40!). Di.Erre was lucky enough to have a NATIONAL distributor. His publications consisted of floppy plus magazine (one page ... the bulk of the magazine was on floppy), the three most famous were ZIP Disk, Superfloppy 64 and MASH (nothing to do with MSH, Master's Software House, a well-known pirate house in Northern Italy which has also self-produced educational courses on cassette for C64). In addition to this, there was in the last period (1992) a publishing house based in via Toledo (formerly via Roma) also in Naples, whose name unfortunately I do not remember now, and which published single games on floppy.
The bulk was taken off the newsstands around 1993, something lasted outside the newsstands or under the counter until 1995 (and in that time everyone was switched to Amiga and PC). The golden age for these cassettes was (for the Commodore 64) between 1987 and 1990 (basically my 3 years of middle school), where they were really everywhere.
Later many took off the newsstands, in the meantime around 1996 the first pirated CDs arrived (silver made in HongKong), the burners still cost a lot as well as blank CDs. In 1996 there was also the famous arrest of DJ Erry and from that moment a page closed.
In 1997 the price of recorders and CD-Rs collapsed and within 6 months "commercial" piracy (both audio and software, which in the meantime merged) passed into the hands of the organized crime that supplies the thousands of stalls, mostly managed by non-EU citizens. In 2000, VCD and mp3 piracy began, at the end of 2001 DVD piracy began, which continues today as well as that for PSX, PS2 and audio CDs (VHS, on the other hand, are slowly giving way to DVDs, and soon they will have to dismantle a certain copy workshop ...).
