INSIDE THE FIRST INTERACTIVE COMIC BOOK MADE IN ITALY

Developed by three young brothers from Palermo, Striker: Occulta Lapis was the first interactive comic book developed in Italy. A cyberpunk tale influenced by artists like Moebius, it saw Striker, a futuristic punk rebel, in a fight against evil aliens. After breaking out of prison, he is on a mission to free himself and the whole human race, with a spiked baseball bat as his only weapon. While the project started as a simple digital comic book, soon hotspots and choices in the dialogue were added to make the experience more engaging for the player. Characters were dubbed by local voice actors, which makes Striker also one of the earliest games to be dubbed in the country. It used a rich soundtrack with Iron Maiden and Pink Floyd, which was entirely unlicensed, since the young kids believed that as long as they paid the rights to publish the game on CD, they were free to feature any music they’d like. In 1993, after finding a publisher, Striker was distributed in a few copies, before the company tore up the contract, leaving the developers with little choice than to hugely lower the price in order to sell the remaining ones. In the end, Striker sold poorly and the brothers moved on to develop interactive collections of photographs.