Leante/Olympia's First Game- Master's Game (PCB designed by Seletron)

Dillweed

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Here's a weird one for you. Before Olympia became "Olympia", Livio Leante, founder of the company, first named his company after his last name. Under this name, only one game was produced- Master's Game. To describe it, it's essentially Breakout with several new, cool and ultimately brutal features. First of all, to get the facts straight, I'm unsure how many units of Master's Game sold, but I assume the number is quite low. Especially when all the information states this game had come out in 1979, (My board's date code reads Nov. 07, 1978.) and the fact that barely anybody has heard of this before. All I can muster up is a poor image of a flyer showing the cabinet. The game only uses +5v, and somehow uses an amplifier. There is an on-board power supply, but it goes bypassed. And yes, I replaced the broken cap. Pretty sure that happened when it shipped from Italy.

Key things to note about this game;
Breakout "bricks" color is inversed. This might be a fault within the board.
The game uses a six-figure score. Absolutely common in the 1980s, not so common in the 70s. Unheard of in TTL.
The gameplay. Layers of bricks score steep. First layer scores 2 pts. Second layer scores 10, Third scores 50, etc. I also have reason to believe that the game doesn't end (like Breakout does). The physics are the real elephant in the room. Very punishing for new players, as the title suggests.

Does ANYBODY recall it? Being Olympia, it never saw release in the States, and probably quite rare outside of Italy. Maybe perhaps someone has artwork of it? Schematics? History is cool too.
 

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Nevermind, the game just does it's own chaotic thing after awhile. Bricks start revolving, I scored 300 points in a matter of seconds. What a blast, Super Breakout has solid competition with a freakin' TTL game.
DSCN8003.JPG
 
Does ANYBODY recall it? Being Olympia, it never saw release in the States, and probably quite rare outside of Italy. Maybe perhaps someone has artwork of it? Schematics? History is cool too.

Well, you're in luck! 😄 Here's my story, maybe you'll find it interesting. While I was searching for pinball machines, I befriended the son of an old arcade operator, here in Turin (maybe you already know that Turin is the city where Sidam/Sipem and Bertolino, some of the biggest italian arcade manufacturers and importers, had their headquarters). Some years ago he closed the family business, and he let me have a look in the small warehouse, before clearing all his stuff. There wasn't much left, but I spotted a bunch of arcade marquees and bezels lying in a corner. He explained to me that, in the golden years of the arcade business, they always had to demolish old arcade cabinets to make room for new stuff - sadly, that wasn't uncommon at all, especially since collecting wasn't a thing; luckily, they often kept the artwork before sending the cabinet to the dump, like some sort of memento.

Long story short, he didn't want to sell the stuff, but I knew it was my only chance to save a piece of arcade history, so I made him an offer he couldn't refuse (after all, I'm italian) and I took home the whole bunch. There's lots of Sidam/Sipem and Bertolino editions of Namco and Atari games, and lots of Exidy games; but one of the marquees was this strange game I never heard about, Master's Game, and the artwork looked very Seventies and very italian. I also had a bezel that seemed to match the marquee artwork pretty well... and now, looking at the tiny flyer, I know it's the right one.

Well, tonight I was looking for more info about this "Master's Game", and I came across your thread 😉👍 Quite a coincidence! What you're seeing here could be the first decent photos of the artwork that's ever been uploaded on the net (sorry if the focus isn't that good, I'll take better shots if you're interested). It's very thick, really heavy silkcreened glass.

iWDAO89.jpg


eDjYI8F.jpg
 
There's lots of Sidam/Sipem and Bertolino editions of Namco and Atari games,
woah!
do you happen to have any pictures? looking for scans of sidam dig dug art in particular but pictures in general would be awesome
thanks :)
 
woah!
do you happen to have any pictures? looking for scans of sidam dig dug art in particular but pictures in general would be awesome
thanks :)
I'm afraid I don't have Did Dug, but I'll post pictures of the whole collection soon, in a dedicated thread. ;) There's lots of interesting stuff, like a basically complete Pac Man set ("Puck Man", Super Pac-Man, Pac-Land, Pac-Mania and Pac-Man & Chomp Chomp).
 
I also just learned that is this isn't a two player game. The start buttons on the front of the control panel are essentially "NOVICE" in which the ball plays with normal physics, and "PRO" which plays with wacky physics. Interesting.
 
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