My first exposure to the Great Giana Sisters was with some bootleg disk that came from who knows where. I remember reading the documentation that came with it which said that the game looked very Mario-ish, so he changed some of the graphics around to make them looks more like the familiar Mario Universe. It wouldn’t be until years later that I would pick up the original version of this game and realize just how much of a Mario clone it is.
Story? What story? Typical of many games from that time, you were lucky if you got a paragraph or two telling you what was going on. You run to the right, collecting diamonds and powerups, stomping on or shooting fireballs at enemies, and have to reach the structure at the end of the level to proceed. And if you find a hidden room or two? Good for you!
The game itself is relatively solid, though I had to wuss out and turn on infinite lives to finish it (I was 10 and impatient). But the thing to take note of here is the music. It sounds pretty lethargic in the video above, and I can’t find a proper Commodore 64 emulator that will play the song at the tempo I remember it. So either my memory’s faulty or the emulators are. But the music for this game is quite good, and almost certainly fueled my lifelong interest in chiptunes.