Producer: Virgin
Retail Price: £7.95
Author: Millside Software

On 29th June this year, Richard Branson and the Virgin Atlantic Challenge Team broke the record for the fastest crossing of the Atlantic by sea. Now there's a game based on the trip, so you can have a go at setting a new record and even win the Blue Riband for yourself.

The game stars Richard Branson but in this case he's going solo as there's no crew to assist him. Richard must scamper wound the ship whenever the onboard computer alerts him to a hazard in his path, a fault in the ship's engines and so on. But before Mr Branson can even contemplate any potential problems during his voyage he must make sure that everything is ship shape so that he can begin his trip.

Scamper up to the cockpit and start the engines. Not too stow or your fuel will run out before you can rendezvous with the refuelling tanker, and not too fast or else Atlantic Challenger will break up. The voyage is split into three stages as the Challenger cannot carry enough fuel to get across the Atlantic in one go. The position of each refuelling tanker is shown in the radar room, along with the bearing and number of miles between you and the fuel. Once you have the bearing of the next tanker, you can scamper back up to the cockpit and set the Challenger on course. Once Atlantic Challenger is within 100 miles of the tanker, it shows up on the radar screen, and you drive by sight rather than autopilot. Aim the boat at the tanker and re-fuelling takes place automatically.

The screen shows a cut away section of the Interior of Atlantic Challenger covering two screens. The rooms in the boat contain equipment which is used via a window system. To use a facility, stand Richard in front of it and press the fire button. This opens the window option onto the screen. When you've finished with say, the Telex machine, another press of fire returns control to the main game.

Mr Branson is a very busy man who makes a lot of money. Just because he's battling across the Atlantic, doesn't mean he can ignore his business empire. The telex machine continually informs him about various deals in progress, and you must decide whether or not to accept them. Huge amounts of money can either be won or lost this way.

Apart from the boat, Mr Branson must be refuelled - Richard must eat quite large amounts of food to keep his stamina up for the gruelling voyage. If you neglect to keep him fed, his performance begins to suffer and he can't scamper around so quickly. To put some food in Mr Branson's tummy, he must be positioned by the galley window: a press of fire delivers the grub.

In the map room the ideal course which Atlantic Challenger should be taking is shown, along with the three re-fuelling tankers. The engine room shows the stress factors, temperature and the speed in knots. If the engine gets overheated or any of the levels get too high then the boat breaks up and sinks.

Mr Branson can fail in his bid to break the Blue Riband record in several ways: he can starve to death, crash the boat or rupture the engines. If the boat sinks, its time to 'Bring out the Branson' - he always escapes intact and is rescued by a waiting helicopter.

COMMENTS

Control keys: I left, P right, 1 up, A down, SPACE to fire
Joystick: Kempston
Keyboard play: no problems
Graphics: neat caricature, and some good details
Sound: none to speak of!
Skill levels: one
Screens: 3 main screens

I can't say I'm enthralled by this game. Quite frankly, it's boring, and for the price, it can only be described as a rip-off. At first, the little caricature of R. Branson is quite good, but soon, going through all the same actions, steering the ship, receiving telexes, and all the rest of it gets tedious. Playability is fair to start with, but as it gets more and more repetitive, it loses that and also any addictiveness it might have had. Reasonable graphics, but the game isn't worth a fraction of its price.

Yawn! The Virgin Atlantic Challenge game is a real waste of time and your money. Just running around changing your bearing and speed, eating, and making the odd executive decision isn't really my idea of fun. Graphically, this one is a bit on the poor side. Your character is a nicely detailed, jolly caricature of Richard Branson but your ship is very dull and undetailed; there are many attribute problems too. The sound is also pretty useless - there are very few spot effects and no tune or engine noise. Generally, I don't recommend this one as it is highly over priced and unplayable.

Lovely graphics on Atlantic Challenger but the game is very boring. At first Atlantic Challenger proves quite interesting; and waiting for the telex to give you the option to buy certain things is good fun but after a while you soon suss out what to buy. Everything else on the ship is very easy to use and requires no skill at all. The obstacles that appear in the way scarcely vary and are all very easy to avoid. The graphic of Richard Branson is very accurate and looks very jolly all the time - even if you starve him to death! VAC contains very little to keep anyone interested, and is far too expensive.

Virgin Games
£7.95

Oh joyous day! Oh rapture unforseen! The lovely T'zer rang me today. This can only mean one of two things - she's decided that I'm the most desirable hunk ever to walk this planet or she wants me to do some games reviews... and so to the latest release from Virgin Games (sigh!)

It couldn't have slipped your notice that a few months ago Richard 'Keep Britain Tidy' Branson, Le Grand Fromage at Virgin, succeeded in crossing the Atlantic in a powerboat and swiping the coveted Blue Riband (Er... isn't that a margarine? Ed). What better than to devise a fun simulation of Richard Branson's part in this exciting and dangerous event. I can think of a few things. After I spent half an hour trying to get more than a few nautical miles from America I was left feeling a bit like Simon Le Bon and had to check my dictionary for the definitions of 'fun' and 'simulation'.

You start off in control of a very bizarre looking Richard Branson sprite that has to run along a corridor inside the boat checking and adjusting the status of various items of the ship's equipment. For instance you have to regulate the speed of the engines to stop them blowing up and check the map to make sure you're keeping on course. You've also got to keep stopping so you can feed the ever hungry Richard, otherwise his manic movement slows down to positive catatonia - it's worse than having a newborn sprog.

Hazard warnings'll sound at alarmingly frequent intervals to tell you to climb up the bridge and set a new course to avoid piling your lovely vessel into an iceberg or other stationary object. As if all this wasn't thrilling enough (yawn), you're not allowed to forget that the curiously misshapen sprite you control is the head of a global business empire since the telex chirps every now and again to request that you answer some crucial question of corporate policy. Now I know the Virgin empire covers many areas but some of the things I was required to do were absurd. Did I want to buy the Eiffel Tower and did I want to release a film called 'Cheese', being two of the more sensible ones. Pretty crucial stuff alright. Failure to make the right response could plunge Virgin into financial crisis.

About the only redeeming feature of the game was the fact that the graphics of the boat were virgin on brilliant, well they looked nice anyroad. Luckily for the crew on the real voyage they had the constant drone of the engines to keep them awake -anyone playing this game will have to find their own methods.

I can only think of one reason why this rather disappointing game has actually been released at all - racy Richard during the voyage must have given the wrong answer to the crucial question, 'Should we release this game?'

Label: Virgin Games
Author: Millside Software
Price: £7.95
Joystick: Kempston
Memory: 48K/128K
Reviewer: Graham Taylor

Inevitable really. Virgin games has released a computer program based on their heroic gnome-like boss's brave crossing of the Atlantic - alone but for a highly trained boat crew and unhelped apart from by computers, helicopters, a purpose-built ship and unnoticed except by the world's TV crews and a man on board from Tomorrows World.

Virgin Atlantic Challenger broke barriers of self promotion never previously breached.

Now its a game. A perfect budget title in fact. Snag is it costs £7.95.

It isn't what you'd think. The obvious thing would be some sort of scrolling graphics drive-the-boat affair. Instead Virgin Challenger is more of a management game, based around joystick and icons where you must make the right response to a series of problems.

There are three screens depicting two sections of the boat hull and the cockpit.

Tasks, all accomplished via simple joystick controls, include the following: steering to avoid hazards, steering to meet up with a refuelling tanker, eating to restore energy, controlling engine speed while keeping its temperature down, dealing with telexes and using the radar to check your course.

Strangely, it is vaguely amusing watching the little Richard Branson sprite, complete with funny hair and beard trot around the ship and the whole ship management thing's quite entertaining for a while - but I really don't think there is enough to this game to justify its full price tag.

Virgin
£5.95

You've to to admire the man, if there's an angle Richard Branson will exploit it. I suppose you don't get to be a millionaire without that kind of acumen anyway.

It's been some time since I saw a Virgin computer game but, after a shaky start, their products have been quite respectable, so, is this a bit of Branson genius or a right pickle?

Well the game itself is of the Strategy type with the nice frill of a graphic action sequence to lift it out of the usual run of the mill rut. You take the role of Richard (a role I've been trying to emulate in real life for ages!) on his much publicised and triumphant attempt to cross the Atlantic in record time.

You control a recognisable graphic of him along the deck of the Challenger to the Telex, Radar, Galley, Map or Engine room displays. He can also be made to climb into the cockpit to alter direction.

As you may gather, this is not a leisurely decision making exercise but a mad dash around the screen in response to computer messages to adjust the various parameters of direction and speed, eat and to make lightning business decisions to telexed questions.

I was sure he had other crewmen aboard to help him with all of this but in this game he does it all on his own, he really ought to learn how to delegate! If this is a realistic simulation of his day he'll have a heart attack soon.

No it's not easy and I found myself getting quite irritated with it, the number of fishing boats and icebergs floating around seems unrealistically high, also in joystick mode the responses seem rather slow at times.

Probably my biggest moan is the lack of high score table. I know I was gettinq better scores:- 5% and 66 at the time of writing, but it is nice to have previous ones on screen as a reminder.

Finally I must admit to enjoying playing it and if this kind of mental gymnastics is your cup of tea then you'll like it too.