The history of Simulmondo
The history of the video games, in particular the rise of home consoles after the infamous collapse of the industry in the early 80s, is rich in unique events, innovative ideas and, in particular, talented and motivated individuals who made their way through the thorns of this unknown and little-studied digital-world. Coming up with more and more unusual and ingenious discoveries and ideas, some of these "pioneers" were able to completely turn over the idea of "video game" as we know it today.
The most successful and high-profile achievements have already been forever strengthened in the annals of history, as well as in the memory of most people who are not indifferent to the topic. But on the other hand, there are also more local stories, which at best are known to a narrow circle of residents of one country, but to a certain extent deserve no less attention.
Simulmondo is one of those stories.
Simulmondo was the first Italian computer game company to develop and publish its own games, anticipating several of today's marketing ideas along the way. At the same time, the company was a few steps away from becoming a world-class developer, but cruel fate decreed otherwise. To fully understand how the company has been important in the videogame industry, we'll start at the beginning.
1. Francesco Carlà and his "Virtual World"
The history of Simulmondo begins and ends with a man named Francesco Carlà. Francesco Carlà was born on September 12, 1961 in an entrepreneur's family. From an early age, Carlà became interested in video games as a subject of art, and even then he saw in them a huge potential for the future. In 1984, he defended his dissertation on the history of video games, and immediately after worked as a journalist and editor in several Italian magazines, among which was MCmicrocomputer, a fairly popular periodical of its time.
In the late 1970s, I was looking for a suitable name for this new interactive world.
I was 18, and then I thought that the basis of video games could be anything.
Video games imitated worlds, allowed you to interact with distant planets, participate in crazy races and simply exploded the imagination. They imitated their surroundings so well that you felt like a part of this digital world, enclosed inside the screen.— Francesco Carla
It all started overnight in the summer of 1983. While in a London hotel, thinking about video games, Francesco comes up with an image, an idea that will soon change his life: a projection of a virtual world inhabited by video game characters that directly respond to the actions and commands of the player.
Carlà called this concept “Simulmondo”, which literally means the world of simulation, or virtual reality.He decided that he would devote his life to creating this futuristic world, but he did not know how and where to start bringing his vision to life ...
He had no experience in managing a company or any technical education. For a while his dream seemed impossible until he met Ivan Venturi, a budding teenage game designer. The two subsequently become partners in a company named after Francesco Carlà's dream world, Simulmondo.
Enlisting organizational and economic support from Riccardo Arioti, son of Mario Arioti (Mario Arioti, manager of the publishing company Italvideo, and also a well-known figure in the early piracy market in Italy), the newly minted studio set about developing its first game.
At the suggestion of Carlà, the topic of the game was bocce (from Italian - “balls”) - the original Italian sports game. Bocce was published and sold by Italvideo and was the very first game to feature the Simulmondo logo. The game was released on the Commodore 64 in 1987 and would be ported to the Amiga a year later.
At the end of 1987, on the eve of the New Year holidays, Mario Arioti himself asks Venturi to develop a game that is a piece of typical Italian daily life in the Christmas period. It was Tombola.
Tombola, at its core, is a lotto, which, according to an old italian tradition, is played in many Italian families during christmas time.
Venturi completes the game within a month, but had strong doubts about the success of the game, because he did not think that the electronic version is in any way able to compete with a real board game.
In June 1988, Ivan finally graduates from high school, continuing to work for several more months on his own game, Simulgolf.
Simulmondo soon moved from Carla's house, where it was based for the first period, to an apartment in the city of Bologna, which became the company's first office. At that time, the company consisted of Francesco Carlà as CEO, Ivan Venturi as chief programmer, and a third person, Federico"Wiz" Croci, in charge of distribution and PR.
In addition, Francesco, still the editor of MCmicrocomputer, actively used his connections in every possible way pushing the Simulmondo brand into magazines and advertising.
In the autumn of 1988, after the official launch of the company, an important historical event takes place: Simulmondo organizes a party that, in fact, has become the country's first gathering of the programming community. Carlà, taking advantage of the opportunity, planned to meet with several potential employees. As a result of this event, programmers Riccardo Cangini and the Dardari brothers (Davide, Francesco and Marco Dardari) joined Simulmondo.
Soon the first "real" Simulmondo product was released, a football simulator for Amiga computers, Italy Soccer '90. The game was developed by the Dardari brothers and published by Carlà's company in the summer of 1988, but was still distributed via Italvideo. This meant that sales had to be shared with the Arioti company. Carlà remarked that Italy '90 Soccer was the first Italian game to actually enter the market without first being pirated. And at that time it was a great achievement.
Piracy in Italy by the end of the 80s reached unthinkable proportions and for a long time was practically completely legal. Hacked games were in high demand and were sold to retailers by the crackers themselves at high prices. Some pirates managed to get rich in a fairly short time, as it was a shadow economy without government control and taxation. The risk of prosecution for the sale of illegal copies was minimal beause, at that time, the software did not appear in the lists of products protected by copyright law. It even got to the point that seemingly legal, at first glance, retail outlets did not shy away from additional income, making copies on the order of customers right on the spot. By 1986, clandestine products were so common that some of the pirate companies reported selling a million copies of certain titles. Only towards the end of 1992, probably due to the EU requirement, a law was passed in Italy that takes into account all types of copyright protection.
In September 1988, Simulmondo was in desperate need of a new game release in order to get enough money for setting up an office and purchasing the necessary equipment. Venturi begins work on porting Italy '90 Soccer to the Commodore 64 in an effort to get the game out as quickly as possible before the begin of the Christmas season.
“Six months of development turned into a month and a half ,” says the developer, who during these 45 days actually become a hermit, although it seemed that he did not really mind: Ivan was always at home at the keyboard. Several magazines reviewed the port, with the UK edition of The Games Machine giving it a dismal 8% rating, calling it "yawn-inducing" due to the screen's very slow scrolling. But this hardly mattered against the fact that the Commodore 64 version sold quite well, and Ivan, according to him, did not receive any money for the development.
The following year, Ivan begins working on what would eventually become his favorite creation: the Formula 1 Manager version for the Commodore 64, originally released for the Amiga. Venturi somehow managed to squeeze a fairly sophisticated F1 manager onto a limited 8-bit home computer, one of the highlights of his Commodore 64 development career.
By the end of 1989, Riccardo Arioti and Francesco Carlà follow separate ways. Francesco said that he was mostly unhappy with Arioti's "pirate connections", while Arioti apparently did not agree with Carlà's business plan. Arioti was replaced by Francesco Carla's father, who had experience in management and whose efforts were enough to keep the company afloat. Arioti would soon form a new company, Genias, which would become one of several Simulmondo competitors and release several games designed by the Dardari brothers.
In 1990, Cangini, along with Mario Bruscella as lead programmer, began work on what would become the first game in the successful "I Play" series, IPlay: 3D Soccer. Carlà came up with the idea of an alternative football simulation in which the player would control one football player on the field and follow the action through his eyes, in the first person.
Cangini recalls this idea with a smile:
“Of course, he came up with the idea, but I was tasked with bringing a first-person football simulator to life on 64 KB of memory!”
As a result, I Play: 3D Soccer is remembered as one of the best and most successful Simulmondo games. Cangini still mentions it as his best work during his time in Bologna.
Despite the fact that by 1989 Simulmondo had already turned into a full-fledged software development company (software house), where some people worked at home and others at their workplaces, it was the year 1990 that most of the people remember as the beginning of the "golden century Simulmondo", which will last until the end of 1992. At that time, Simulmondo was the best place to work in the country, not to mention that it was one of the few game development companies.
By the end of 1990, Simulmondo had become the number one independent software manufacturer in the Italian market. Thanks to the current recruitment policy, the number of permanent employees of the company increased to thirty, and this is not counting the interns, who were also numerous. The company could afford various experiments with genres and ideas - and it was still doomed to success. Simulmondo was loved by gamers, loved by its employees, loved by critics. It seemed that nothing could stop the success.
Quality games like 1000 Miglia (Carlà says in the October 1991 issue of MC Microcomputer that the title "took 20 months" to develop)
and Formula 1 3D, or the sequel to the "I Play" series, I Play: 3D Tennis, are selling surprisingly well, especially for the Italian market, still plagued by piracy.
On the other hand, there were other interesting experiments, such as the point-and-click adventure Italian Night 1999, released in 1992.
Simulmondo offered entertainment that rivaled products from the UK or France, which was always Carlà's real goal. In every sense, the development company has achieved its goal: it has become synonymous with Italian game development for the whole world.
Be for Francesco Carlà, this was not enough to fully satisfy him.
Videogames like comics
Later in 1992 comes a turning point in the production of Simulmondo. The popularity of sports games, which the company was famous for in the first place, begins to fade. It seems that the developers have lost the freshness of ideas and concepts that characterized early projects, stagnating in the endless repetition of successful formulas. As a consequence, Simulmondo decides to radically change its offer. Simulmondo is changing direction towards adventure games, embarking on a path that, on the one hand, will lead the company to the greatest success with the public and a completely innovative method of distributing games, on the other hand, will lead it to closure, undermining a well-built corporate organization.
Given the market niche that Simulmondo occupied, the company is betting on a new distribution method. With an audience predominantly made up of comic book fans, it was decided to start distributing the products at its most visible location, the newsstands. Replacing specialized video game stores with regular stalls, Simulmondo has guaranteed a wide distribution of its products throughout the country, allowing it to directly reach the hearts of the target audience. And that's not all. Simulmondo games will not just be sold on newsstands, but will also be released monthly. Yes, like comics. That way, fans could read about the adventures of their favorite characters and then try on their costume in a video game they bought at the same counter.
In 1989, I had two ideas at the same time. First, making series games that are shorter (and much cheaper) like series compared to feature films. […] Second, to use in these video games the most popular characters in Italy and in the world of comics in general, loved by the public and well known to newsstands. […] It was no problem to get licenses for Dylan Dog (Tiziano Sclavi generously shared beautiful ideas with me), Diabolik (Luciana Giussani advertised us in her issues), Spider-Man and X-Men (Marco Lupoi was and remains a big fan of innovation, and also a very good creative manager). The real problem was Tex. But Tex, along with Spider-Man, was my favorite character. And I wanted him at all costs.
— Francesco Carla
Games that are designed to be short, yet exciting and interesting enough to make the consumer want to buy a sequel. Moreover, the price of one "comic game" was significantly reduced compared to those games that were sold in the store, and amounted to about 15,000 lira (Italian lira was the national currency of Italy until 2002):
How long does one Dylan Dog's game last? About an hour. And how much does it cost? 3 euros. The game takes twice the time to read the comic. The amount of money you spent on the game was comparable to the amount you spent on the comic.
An efficient and innovative distribution method that is becoming a deterrent to piracy due to its historical advantages in the Italian market, as well as the less successful distribution and high price of "traditional" video games. To further scare off the illegal consumer, access to the games required entering a code that was in the box with the game. When asked why this format had every chance of success, Carlà answered the following:
Mainly due to three factors: newsstands, 35,000 points of sale hungry for interesting products; price, I could release games for sale for 10 or 15 thousand lira, while the price of games in stores was 4 times more expensive; the popularity of characters such as Tex, Dylan Dog and Spider-Man, who made their way to the newsstands for us. So it really was.
According to Carlà, no one abroad even thought about this method of selling video games. Yes, and could not, in principle, because such a method of distribution was possible only in the historically established conditions of Italy, where the very fact of selling comics in newsstands was a kind of tradition.
Today, episodic games by Telltale Games or Square Enix are quite common in the gaming industry. However, back then in the nineties, the distribution of games in a periodic format was the most unique system of its kind. In addition, this method relied on the long-established phenomenon in the culture of the already mentioned comics. The games had an episodic narrative structure, in which the storyline could last for several issues, or just one.
The first three episodes of Dylan Dog (a game based on the comic book of the same name “Dylan Dog” by Tiziano Sclavi, published by Sergio Bonelli Editore and Diabolik (“Diabolik” - a comic by the sisters Angela and Luciana Giussani, publishing house Astorina) were developed in 1992 and released shortly after Dylan Dog: Gli uccisori.
Later, a game about the Texas Ranger will be added to the series (“Tex” - a comic book by Gian Luigi Bonelli and Aurelio Galleppini, Sergio Bonelli Editore. New games, due to very tight development times, require, as expected, a huge effort from the Simulmondo team. If earlier the project moved into the final stage of development within about six months, now newsstands demand that a new game be released on PC and Amiga literally every month.
Carlà, in order to somehow speed up and simplify the development process, creates a company procedure manual, “something like handicraft self-certification ISO 9000” (ISO 9000 is a series of international standards containing the basic principles of quality management, which will bring the various development activities to an unambiguous and systematized format. This decision turns out to be correct and at some points it really makes the work of developers easier, but leaves a negative imprint on the creative aspect of new games. All projects eventually become similar to each other in terms of structure, gameplay and storytelling, all being a hybrid between adventure and platforming, the quality of which has gradually declined over time. The situation becomes so difficult that one day, due to the rush of developers, the fifth episode of Dylan Dog (Dylan Dog 5: La Mummia) enters the market with a serious bug that does not allow you to complete the game to the end.
Francesco then lights up somewhat, given the already difficult position of the company, with a dubious desire to release a new series for newsstands. The fundamental difference of this new project from others was that it was not based on a comic book, but on Carlà's original idea. The plot of the game under the symbolic name Simulman tells about the special agent of the same name (with the appearance of Francesco Carlà himself), who watches over the order of the virtual world on the other side of the screen.
The game was filled with many pop culture references. In particular, the appearance of the antagonist with the no less symbolic and caricatured name SS-DOS was inspired by the eminent American artist Andy Warhol. Gameplay-wise, this project did not offer anything significantly new compared to other comic book games. The series eventually has 11 issues.
From 1993 to 1994, Simulmondo produced 13 issues of Tex and 12 of Diabolik, and Dylan Dog, the most successful series, reached 17 episodes. To complete all the work by the scheduled date, employees were forced to spend at the workplace all seven days a week for 12 or even 14 hours a day. Ultimately, overproduction had several consequences within the company, jeopardizing relationships among employees, not to mention relationships with management that have already been undermined since the development of games for newsstands. In addition to that, titles released in recent months have become some of the worst Simulmondo products ever made.
Although the end result was not, to put it mildly, absolute perfection (I swear we ourselves were aware of this), the process was quite complex, albeit linear. The fact that episodes of different series had to be released in parallel to each other at a strictly scheduled time, and that various freelancers were involved in their development for guidance, internship or just help, also imposed additional difficulties.
[...]
Each of us was technically trained in our field, but in terms of the organization of work we were a bit "dilettanti allo sbaraglio" (literally "amateurs in danger / disorder", i.e. people who are not aware and do not try to be aware of the problems in their professional activities - amateurs in the worst sense of the word), but in the end, by empirical methods and by successive approximations, we were somehow able to gradually find our bearings, even if the working rhythms were tedious and increased in proportion to the increase in the number of series and episodes that needed to be "released" every month.— Ciro Bertinelli, Simulmondo Graphic Designer
However, production problems were only the first bell, indicating the inexorably approaching collapse of the company. While Simulmondo releases its games on kiosks, great strides have been made in the rest of the world in developing the video game experience. This is especially true in the area of storytelling, where the Bologna development company was just starting to take its first steps. The beginning of the 90s is also characterized by experiments with 3D graphics, in which the European studios Delphine and Infogrames have already achieved certain results, while in America a momentary masterpiece, a historical moment and a new step forward for the video game industry, was already being prepared in full swing, Doom, from the developers of Id Software.
In addition to the long-term exploitation of rapidly obsolete technologies and therefore the inability to keep up with the times, another problem of Simulmondo was the localization of the games. Yes, the games were popular in the italian market, but the method of distribution of products almost cut off any attempts to reach the world level.
… a very big mistake that we, especially the leaders, made at that time, and which influenced the development of Italian video games in general, was not enough internationalization. We released games only for the domestic market, Dylan Dog is the clearest example of this. Dylan Dog is an all-Italian character, the comic book and the newsstand where he was sold, too. Bonelli comics simply could not exist abroad at the same level; in France, comics can only be found in specialized comic book stores. It was not an export model.— Francesco Carla
Simulmondo's new approach, coupled with the erratic work schedule, is causing several, including key employees, to decide to leave the company. About three months later, to everyone's amazement, Ivan Venturi himself, the second man in Simulmondo, leaves the slowly but surely sinking ship.
The departure of Venturi, the author of the first Simulmondo games and head of production, was a heavy blow for the Bologna company, but not the final one. Production, in fact, continues, and management passes to another full-time programmer, Riccardo Cangini.
From 1993-1994 the company releases its latest hit, Time Runners. The game was born as a result of cooperation with the publishing house Rizzoli-Fabbri Editori. The plot revolves around a young man named Max, forced to travel through time to save his girlfriend, who was kidnapped by evil robots.
Through the influence of Fabbri, which finances and distributes the project, this Simulmondo series is available in six languages (Italian, English, Spanish, French, German and Portuguese) and published in many countries, selling a record 200,000 copies in the first 7 days. The colossal success by the company's standards leads to Time Runners becoming the longest-running series on newsstands, with 30 episodes. However, this exceptional case turned out to be the swan song of the newsstands.
Spiderman Games
In 1993, Marvel Comics decided to create an Italian branch, which was finally formed in 1994 as "Marvel Comics Italia srl" in Bologna. It happened thanks to the efforts and personal interest of the editor of Star Comics, as well as a fan of comics to the marrow, Marco Marcello Lupoi. Lupoi convinced Marvel to take back the Italian publishing rights for a number of series that had been scattered among four independent publishers (Star Comics, Comic Art, Play Press and Max Bunker Press) and take over the distribution of their products themselves.
Shortly before that, at the beginning of 1993, Simulmondo enters into an agreement with Star Comics to release a new series of games dedicated to Spider-Man.
I remember the emotion when I told dozens of partners and employees of SIMULMONDO that after TEX, DIABOLIK, DYLAN DOG, MARTIN MYSTERE, we can also start developing video games about SPIDER-MAN and X-MEN...
The first Friendly Neighbor game, L'Uomo Ragno: Il Ritorno di Hobgoblin (Italian for Spider-Man: The return of the Hobgoblin), was released just in time for Christmas in December 1993 for Amiga and MS-DOS. The image of the Spider on the cover of the game is taken from a poster by RonLim.
Before talking about the plot, it would not be out of place to touch on one interesting fact that the Italians almost faced head-on after buying the game. The fact is that the local Spider-Man comic book series, which at that time was published by Star Comics, lagged behind the current Marvel releases by about two and a half years. If in America in the month of the release of the game the 384th issue of The Amazing Spider-Man was released, then in Italy only The Amazing Spider-Man #350 (L'Uomo Ragno #134) could be found on newsstands. On the pages of Italian fumetto Jason Macendale, hiding under the guise of a Hobgoblin, only a year ago became possessed by a demonic entity, when, as in mainstream comics, Demogoblin existed for almost a couple of years. Focusing on the current story was done mainly with the expectation of publishing games outside the country, which the game manual happily reports, at the same time explaining to the Italian fan the current state of affairs with Peter Parker. However, in reality, Carlà did not succeed in bringing the Spider to the world market, apparently.
The first episode in the L'Uomo Ragno series focuses on the confrontation between Spider-Man and the Hobgoblin, who seeks to get the formula for the Green Goblin serum to significantly increase their physical capabilities. A known copy of the formula is kept in the home of the tragically deceased heir to the original Goblin, HarryOsborn. The plot is simple and short, but, somehow, it gives off the spirit of the comics of those years and is generally perceived as one of the regular adventures of Spider-Man, not to mention how closely it is connected with the events of the last issues.
The gameplay is identical to the parallel series of comic book games. This is the same point-and-click adventure game with elements of action and platformer that has become boring for dozens of Simulmondo releases. However, if we consider the game in isolation from the general conveyor of kiosk series, then it copes well with the role of one-time projects that are worth playing just for the sake of the plot - which was the main focus. According to Carlà, copies of the debut Spider-Man game sold "like hot cakes", which is not surprising.
The next episode, subtitled “E ora... Carnage!” (from Italian. "And now ... Carnage!") was released in February 1994. The cover was borrowed from the iconic first issue of Spider-Man Unlimited, which marked the beginning of the famous event "Maximum Carnage". The author of the picture is Ron Lim.
Peter, as a photographer for the Daily Bugle, along with Mary Jane visit the church where the murder of a police officer took place earlier. On the spot they are met by Father Brewell, who was on duty that ill-fated evening and later became the only eyewitness to the crime. The priest describes the assailant as a mysterious and fearsome demonic being who, in the blink of an eye, ruthlessly dealt with the unfortunate policeman. It's not had to guess that this "demon" was none other than Carnage, the psychopathic killer and infamous offspring of Venom, although for the Italian audience it hardly had any special meaning. Their direct acquaintance with Venom happened only a year ago, and here Spider-Man communicates with Cletus as if he had known him for a long time. And it was so in reality, but before the first comic book appearance of Carnage in Italy, there were still a couple of months left. Therefore, the players had to be initiated again into a brief excursion into the biography of the symbiote. Presumably, in order not to spoil the origin of the character, both in the manual and in the game itself, the mention of Venom is avoided in every possible way.
The third and, unfortunately, the last episode of "Destino Incrociato" (Italian for "Encounter with Doom") was released in March 1994. Box art taken from the cover of The Amazing Spider-Man #350 by Erik Larsen.
The plot, or rather, the plot is partly inspired by the same 350th issue of The Amazing Spider-Man. A few years ago, DoctorDoom, under the pretext of creating a positive image for Latveria, donates part of the royal jewels to the Monegasque Museum's charitable foundation. One of the workers involved in the shipment of treasures in Monaco from the vault allows the theft of a valuable family artifact. This artifact was the Dragon 's Egg, a large green diamond with great magical power. And more importantly, owned by the most powerful sorceress and most wonderful woman on the planet -Cynthia Von Doom (Victor's mother). It is not known whether the Black Fox was involved in the theft, but it turned out that at the moment the stone is stored in an American museum. Doom personally heads there to return the family heirloom to its rightful place. With the help of his combat robots, Victor successfully breaks into the museum, but, unfortunately for him, does not even realize that Spider-Man is somewhere nearby on his daily patrol.
This ended the Spider-Man series. By that time, the interest of the audience in such projects had almost cooled down, but this was by no means the main reason for closing the series. Judging by the recollections of Federico Croci, there was a stupid embarrassment that happened with the rights to Marvel characters. Carlà did not realize that the license issued in January 1993 was only valid for 12 months, that is, it would end in December, and only by the summer did he understand the catastrophic nature of the situation. Croci remembers very well the moment when Francesco flew into the office, shouting and demanding that the development of games be completed as soon as possible. In addition to the Spider-Man, additional games were planned for the X-Men and Wolverine, but were never released.
The cancellation of Spider-Man also leads to the closure of the new Martin Mystère series (comic book by Alfredo Castelli and Giancarlo Alessandrini, published by Sergio Bonelli Editore). As Cangini recalls, Martin Mystère was no longer considered a viable product at that time, so work on it had not even begun.
Reasons for the closure of newsstand production, in addition to declining public interest, include Simulmondo's excessive activity. The release of a large number of titles in a very short time in order to satisfy the hunger of consumers in the end leads to the exact opposite effect - to a glut of the market. The sheer volume of games has overwhelmed buyers, leaving most of the products unsold and players dissatisfied with their quality.
With the end of the newsstand games, Simulmondo's slow decline begins as the Bologna's company moves further and further away from the video game market.
4. Sunset Simulmondo
Between 1994 and 1995, as Sony and Nintendo consoles were slowly eating into the Amiga and PC market share, the company seemed to be stuck in limbo. Carlà didn't seem to fully understand the potential of the new market segment, although Cangini recalls he never objected to developing games for Sony or Nintendo. Croci said that when Sony's CTO offered Francesco an expensive PlayStation Development Kit, Francesco turned it down because he saw no benefit for Simulmondo. However, in an interview in 2015, Carla admitted that he did not want to make games for consoles on principle.
I didn't want to make games for consoles because they conflicted with the company's productive freedom. Publishers required developers to tell them the name of the game, submit the script for approval, and count off at various stages of production so that suddenly nothing was added that they might not like. Then it was necessary to observe the deadlines clearly set by them, physical copies were also made by them. I didn't like these production constraints and didn't want to release one or two games a year on a console budget.
In subsequent years, Simulmondo undergoes massive reductions in production and management staff. The company begins to work to order, for example, developing projects for television, and the creation of video games is gradually being abandoned. There are fewer and fewer original titles, especially compared to the numerous releases that have characterized previous years.
Massimiliano Calamai, a graphic designer, left the company in 1994, tired of endlessly working on kiosk games.
It was only later that I realized what a force Simulmondo was in the market. I still remember that moment during the ECTS (European Computer Trade Show) in 1994 - then I was just beginning to hatch the idea of creating my own company (Light Shock Software) - when I realized how well organized and structured for Italian realities Simulmondo was. The company was even bigger than Electronic Arts and other giants of that time! Despite my attachment [to Simulmondo], objectively it was a company with great potential. It pained me to watch her fade away.— Massimiliano Calamai
In 1996, Francesco Carlà released the adventure game Mosè: Il profeta della libertà based on the Bible and therefore the story of Moses. It was a typical educational point and click game for kids with decent 3D graphics. "Moses" perfectly illustrated Simulmondo's strategy in the mid-90s: focusing on low-budget multimedia products with modest ambitions, far from the high-profile releases of the past.
A little later, Riccardo Cangini leaves Simulmondo to create his own company Artematica. By that time, he said, there was not much point in staying, since the company was no longer involved in game development.
Soccer Champ was the last game the company managed to release in 1998 after months of hard work. The game was positioned as an “RPG-strategy-action-football” and, it would seem, was a return to the idea of I Play: 3D Soccer, but it could not gain great popularity among the people.
In 2000, Simulmondo completely ceases to exist. Carlà leaves and the firm finally falls apart.
Simulmondo was a once in a lifetime opportunity. A software development company full of young talents and fresh energy, well organized and connected to major corporations. One could easily foresee the bright future of Simulmondo as one of the most important companies not only in Italy but in the whole world of computer games. Unfortunately, it did not happen.
Mistakes on the part of management, the young age of all participants and the market, which began to change suddenly since 1992, are the primary factors that first stopped the development of the company, and then led to its closure. Francesco Carlà seemed to be so taken with the idea of "Simulmondo" and the virtual people who inhabited it that he forgot that at the same time, flesh and blood people work in the real Simulmondo company. Good intentions and brilliant ideas of a journalist were clearly not enough. His stubbornness about market preferences, although it made sense from a purely economic point of view, still could not bring results in the long run. This same stubbornness eventually led to the alienation from Simulmondo of the most talented individuals that the company itself had once attracted.
As for the Marvel games, within the framework of their Universe, these were far from the best, but by no means the worst projects at that time. The concept of an interactive adventure with a combat system and platforming is quite an interesting idea. With proper implementation, enough time and, finally, a unique approach to development, there could have been only one, but a very good game. And Simulmondo in her best years was able to create such a project.
The obsolescence of Spider-Man games now, and even then, was felt quite strongly. The old low-performance engine, slow, uncomfortable controls and primitive gameplay did not leave games a chance in the modern world, forcing them only to rely on the plot component and short enough duration so that the process does not start to tire. From this side, it is not at all surprising why these games are still extremely rare and unknown to most gamers in the world. You should personally get acquainted with the L'Uomo Ragno series only if you have your own interest to touch an exceptional relic of the time. By the way, this game can also be played in English thanks to an amateur translation, but only the Amiga version.
And yet, with all the negative points, it’s a pity that there were so few games about Spider-Man, and Wolverine and the X-Men didn’t see the light at all.
I have always loved Spider-Man, or as we kids of the 70s and 80s called him in Italy: “Luomo Ragno”. So I was in seventh heaven when Simulmondo was able to release 3 video games about my favorite wall climber.— Francesco Carla
