Another potential great from the Italian game giants Simulmondo, and a nice looking icon driven adventure game. Unfortunately, you can only look at was going to be, as the preview is only a rolling demo, featuring two shots of the actual game.
I haven’t actually seen this game mentioned in any press over here in the UK, but maybe someone from Italy has heard more on this game, possibly from the Italian version of Zzap!64?
Well, GTW received some information that the game was to be a kind of action adventure which was heavily influenced by the movie Blade Runner. A few preview shots at the time were actually scans from publicity photos of the movie.
According to rumours, Simulmondo got into a bit of trouble over a deal with a book publisher. Italian Night 99 got caught up in the mess, and was never to be seen again. It was rumoured that Italian Night 99 was a faked game, but Marco Das found an advert in 1000 Miglia for the game (see scans), with text that translated as follows:
Italian night 1999
Milan, February 18, 1999
Subject: Assignment # 220 (on accident investigation)
Investigator: R. Duomo (CYBORG SIMULATED)
Investigation # 220 commissioned by Carmen Erni, P.za S. Ambrogio 4
Informations about the event: See attachments
Note: The deadline for the handing over of the report: 08.00 of 19 February 1999
Dynamic: Beware off cyberpunks and interactive women
GOOD WORK AGENT CATHEDRAL
Dr Strange/Atlantis in late 2014 confirmed with the author that the project was dropped just after the first preview was released. No further development was made on the game. It was dropped due to lack of time and interest. Sadly any development disks with the game are long gone, so this is pretty much all that now exists.
Interestingly though, an Amiga version was released – though planned Atari ST and PC editions were never to be seen either like the C64 edition.
In late August 2021, Martin/Stadium64 got in touch to provide a rare scan of a newsletter that was released by Simulmondo that talks about Italian Night 1999 – now added to the archive.
Pretty much a closed case now!
Contributions: Dr Strange/Atlantis, Walter Rossi, Marco Das, Martin/Stadium64
Supporting content
Available downloads
Gallery
Update history
- 31/08/21 – Martin/Stadium64 provides a scan of a newsletter that talks about Italian Night 1999.
- 22/02/15 – Marco Das provides an advert scan of the game!
