Saturday, April 30, 2011

Cover to Cover: Virgin Games 1992 Catalog (pp. 10-11)

Our page-by-page survey of the 1992 Virgin Games catalog continues, with a series of PC titles beginning on page 10:



Thunderhawk is interesting because it's set in the near future -- 1995 -- and features a tagline in questionable taste: "... this one makes 'Nam look like a day at the beach!"  Helicopter combat sims were big business for Microprose back in the day, and it's not surprising that Virgin tried to get in on the act with this title by Core Design (Tomb Raider).  A sequel later appeared on the Sega Saturn.

Page 11features another simulation, with a heavily-touted NASA tie-in:


Shuttle: The Space Flight Simulator doesn't look much more sophisticated than Activision's Atari 2600 Space Shuttle title in terms of gameplay, but it uses 3-D polygonal graphics to provide more accurate simulation of docking maneuvers and was praised for its thoroughness at the time.

PC games are often forgotten soon after release -- there's something about consoles that inspires more enduring nostalgia, it seems -- but Virgin put a lot of its developing and marketing money behind home computer titles, and we'll see a few more coming up soon.

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