| Posted By
Luca
on 2007-07-09
03:58:17
 |  Nike Hawk found!
Another incredible Plus/4 story you'd surely never heard before, is going to be solved.
This is page 12 taken from Zzap! Italia magazine issue 11, published in April 1987. They received a letter (that one in the right bottom corner) and a tape from two young C16 fanatics. Briefly, Marco Ricci and Carlo Alberto Bentivoglio sent'em a copy of a finished C16 game, called "Nike Hawk". The former was the graphician, the latter was the coder, and the game itself had been described in that letter as a "vaguely Uridium-inspired game for C16". People at Zzap! Italia answered positively, nonetheless suggesting for better movements for the player's ship and for a better intro screen.
I wondered about that game for so many years. I was almost sure that our ItaloDynamic Duo had probably sent their beloved production to some software houses, and the game had become...dunno, Liberator maybe, or Battle Star...
That memory came back in these years, so, you know I have some nerve  , I tried to search the author along the internet waves...and I found him on Skype!
Mr. Carlo Alberto Bentivoglio nowadays is an engineer, and a very friendly and polite person. In a short time before a rising monday at work would begin, he told me they had tried to send the game at Mastertronic, but they didn't answer back and Nike Hawk had been doomed in the dust of time and roofs...
...until now! because Mr. Bentivoglio seems to be interested in spreading his own work, in order to preserve stuff'n'story once forever. Moreover, I'll try to have the complete history, that will fulfill the whole future Nike Hawk page on this site, and I guess that story would be also interesting for an interview...
Mr. Carlo Alberto Bentivoglio got my coordinates, and he will send the original tape to me via snailmail. A friend of mine has built a X1531 cable for me (omg, thanks Albman!), hence I can try to recover the game from tape, but I never used it before, so probably I'll ask help to all of you 
Also, he had a look at those suspected games, then he told me they're different (and a lot better, he added!) compared to his own game.
Ok, now I only have to sit down, wait, and see how this story will finish! Nice tale, isn't it?
|
|
Posted By
SVS
on 2007-07-09
05:16:40
 | Re: Nike Hawk found!
Luca, next days you'll re-live the gold era when every day we waited for the postman passage (hoping arriving of disks or cassettes with new software!). At my home he passed on 13:20 but I listened his bike since kilometers...
|
|
Posted By
Csabo
on 2007-07-09
16:11:16
| Re: Nike Hawk found!
Very cool story indeed! Can't wait for the next chapter
|
|
Posted By
Degauss
on 2007-07-09
19:53:31
| Re: Nike Hawk found!
I'm very surprised, as always. Luca should change his handle to "Prospector Pete"
|
|
Posted By
Luca
on 2007-07-12
14:20:54
| Re: Nike Hawk found!
The game is here, I'm playing it right now!
I recovered it from an almost damaged master tape which contains several other well known stuff (i.e., the game file is turbotaped and uses a modificated Turbo Tape), hence there's no need to dump the whole tape: I'll take the .prg in order to put it there!
The game is a 16K Uridium-ish shmup, with an horrible charscrolling, a terrible char-by-char movement and a nervewracking tune, but it has that silly feeling (like with Hyper Sports that you can't leave until you see the next level.
Retrorecreational archeology rules!
|
|
Posted By
Chris
on 2007-07-12
17:18:23
| Re: Nike Hawk found!
Thanks Luca,
I can't wait to have a play
|
|
Posted By
Luca
on 2007-07-13
14:41:34
| Re: Nike Hawk found!
...and case closed!
|
|
| |
Copyright © Plus/4 World Team, 2001-2024 |
