The Great Giant Sisters

Development history

The DOS version of The Great Giana Sisters started as an entry for a game competition during the Mekka & Symposium demoscene event in 1998. The rules required that the size of the submission not exceed 32 kilobytes. This version of Giant Sisters, first released on 11 April 1998, featured 9 levels, 2 monster types, Adlib music and no sound effects, and ended up taking the first place in the competition. Based on its success, author Rainer Sinsch continued development of the game, adding new features, levels, monsters and sound effects. It was planned to eventually implement all game mechanics including the missing powerups, but the development of the DOS version was ultimately suspended in favour of a Windows version that evolved into a separate game known as Giant Worlds.

Game title & copyright issues

During development and some time after that, the project was known as The Great Giana Sisters, but in October 1999 the title had to be changed to Giant Sisters for copyright reasons. Internally the game still shows the title Giana Sisters, as it was never updated since the last release in 1998.

Already during the development of the Windows sequel, Rainer Sinsch obtained permissions from original Giana Sisters developers Armin Gessert and Chris Hülsbeck to use graphics and music from the game, and to distribute Giant Worlds. It is not clear if the permission retroactively extended to the DOS version, but it was not taken down from the site, perhaps for historical purposes.

Level editor

Rainer Sinsch eventually released a level editor for Giant Sisters, allowing users to create their own levels.