The Great Giana Sisters

The Great Giana Sisters
German cover art for the Commodore 64
Developer(s)	Time Warp[1]
Publisher(s)	Rainbow Arts[1]
Designer(s)	Armin Gessert Manfred Trenz
Composer(s)	Chris Huelsbeck
Platform(s)	Amiga, Amstrad CPC, Atari ST, Commodore 64, MSX
Release	May 6, 1987
Genre(s)	Platformer
Mode(s)	Single-player, multiplayer

The Great Giana Sisters is a platform game developed by the West German company Time Warp and published by Rainbow Arts in 1987 for home computers such as the Commodore 64, Amiga and Atari ST. Players control Giana (or her sister Maria in the multiplayer mode) to explore a magical world inside their dreams; to wake up, they must find a giant diamond. They traverse side-scrolling stages while avoiding hazards such as monsters and other enemies. These can be defeated by using power-ups, which grant the player abilities such as firing projectiles and making enemies fall asleep.

The game was designed by Armin Gessert and Manfred Trenz. They were tasked with developing the game after Marc Ulrich of Rainbow Arts had seen the popular Nintendo video game Super Mario Bros. (1985). Gessert and Trenz were told to create a game obviously recognizable as being like Super Mario Bros. but still legally distinct. Following its release in West Germany, the game was released in the United Kingdom to praise from publications such as Zzap!64 and Computer and Video Games, who liked the game's gameplay and many secrets, despite taking significant inspiration from Mario.

Following its UK release, the game was almost immediately pulled from shops after Rainbow Arts received a notice from Nintendo. Despite being commercially unavailable, the game grew to become one of the most popular home computer games of its era via pirated and emulated versions of the game. A sequel was made for Commodore 64 titled Hard'n'Heavy which downplayed its Nintendo inspiration while various new Giana Sisters games were released in the early 2000s. The game's music, by Chris Huelsbeck, grew popular among video game music fans and has been used in later games and performed by symphony orchestras decades after the game's release.