Overdrive (Holografix) ⭐ Unreleased MS-DOS Version
Overdrive is a top-down arcade racing game originally developed by Psionic Systems for the Commodore Amiga and published by Team 17 Software Limited in 1993. In the same year, the Italian team Holografix developed an MS-DOS version which was never released.
Some would say there was a DOS version of this game. That's true, but it was from a different team, East Point Software, which came out in 1995. So, what happened?
Well, Francesco Iorio and his high school classmate Matteo Tesser were studying ever since they were teenagers how to develop video games and used to regularly send materials to the Italian magazine The Games Machine. It was through the magazine that Holodream Software, which already released several titles for years, got in contact with those guys. In that time, they were recently signing a publishing agreement with Team 17.
It was the publisher Team 17 who asked Holodream if they know someone who has enough skills to port Overdrive to the MS-DOS platform. So, they gave this idea to Iorio, who then worked on a prototype and sent it to Team 17. They seemed to like it and gave permission to Iorio and Tesser to handle the DOS port. These two guys called themselves Holografix.
However, this didn't last long. Team 17 never provided any source code of the original Amiga version, so Holografix had to write everything from scratch. After sending several beta versions, the publisher decided the project was going too slow and they commissioned East Point Software to do the DOS port.
Unlike the official DOS port, Holografix' version of the game featured four opponents on the track instead of two, completely different AdLib / Sound Blaster music, and it was designed to run smoothly at 60 FPS even on a 386SX.