Virus

1988

"Virus" built on Zarch and was published by British Telecom (under the Firebird name) for the Atari ST, Commodore Amiga, and IBM PC in 1988. It was an instant success as many people had seen "Zarch" on the Archimedes but had not been able to play it on the more popular computers of the time. "Virus" won "16 bit Game of the Year" at the Computer Industry's InDin awards of 1988 and was later (incredibly) ported to the Spectrum in the following year by Steve Dunn. Most magazines gave it their top rating, and it got the highest ever score of 981 in the industry's leading magazine "ACE".

Chris Sawyer (now of Rollercoaster Tycoon fame) did the PC port, and later went on to work on PC "Elite+" and PC "Frontier: Elite II".

Zarch and Virus very much raised the ante for games on the 16 bit platform. It was one of the first solid 3D games. It was the first to have 3D lighting effects and shadowing. In fact it generated the shadow silhouettes on the fly - also a first.