In April 1983 a small advertisement in Your Computer asked anyone who had written “a games program with good graphics, lots of action and an original concept” and wanted “to be rich and famous” to send a cassette to Nick Alexander at Virgin Games, Portobello Road, London. The company it announced was, it said, “part of the Virgin Group and backed by all its resources”. It started with one employee in an office with no windows. Fifteen years later it had published Aladdin and Cannon Fodder, owned the studio that made Command & Conquer, and had been sold for $250 million. Few publishers of the 1980s went so far, or changed owners so often on the way.
Fast facts
- Founded: early 1983, in London, by Nick Alexander, within Richard Branson’s Virgin Group.
- Names: Virgin Games; Virgin Mastertronic (the distribution business, 1988–1991); Virgin Interactive Entertainment from 1993; Avalon Interactive from 2003.
- Managing directors: Nick Alexander (1983–1991), Tim Chaney (from December 1991).
- Owned: Leisure Genius (from 1986), Mastertronic (45% in 1987, all of it in 1988), Westwood Studios (1992–1998).
- Best-known games: Dan Dare (1986), Dune II (1992), Aladdin (1993), The 7th Guest (1993), Cannon Fodder (1993), The Lion King (1994), Command & Conquer (1995), Red Alert (1996).
Programmers as pop stars
Alexander was 27, an Oxford graduate who had worked for EMI and HMV and then in the home computer software division of Thorn EMI. He told Retro Gamer that Branson had rung to offer him the job of running Virgin Retail, and that he had answered that he was thinking of starting a games company instead. Branson’s reply, as Alexander remembered it: “Yeah, why don’t you come and do that.” Two months later Your Computer reported that “Virgin Records has launched Virgin Games”, and wondered whether the record business would bring software charts, TV advertising and “computer programmers as stars”.
That was Alexander’s plan. The call for games brought in hundreds of tapes, he said, “and most were from 14 to 18-year-old boys programming in their bedrooms”. Virgin’s first releases included Sheepwalk, a sheepdog trials game, Golf and Bug Bomb, and each came with a photograph and biography of its author on the inlay, with the program on one side of the tape and music by Steve Hillage or another Virgin act on the other. The company took programmers round the country on a double-decker bus painted in black and white stripes, with a laughing shark, Alexander’s own cartoon, on the side. He admitted that the games were the weak part: “We were very good at marketing but not so good at knowing what was a hot property and what wasn’t.”
Better games
The market fell apart at the start of 1984, when shops that had over-ordered for Christmas stopped buying and Mastertronic began selling games at £1.99. For a few months that year most of Virgin Games’ staff were lent to Branson’s new airline, Virgin Atlantic, as its marketing department. When they came back, Virgin released fewer games of higher quality. Charles Goodwin’s Strangeloop and Martin Wheeler’s Sorcery were the first signs of it, and an in-house team that Your Sinclair later called Virgin’s “famous Gang Of Five” wrote Dan Dare (1986), based on the comic-strip pilot of the 1950s. Sinclair User called it “a quality blast ‘n’ search with smart comic-book graphics”, and two sequels followed. 1986 also brought an official FA Cup game and Shogun, from James Clavell’s novel.
Virgin grew by buying. In 1986 it bought Leisure Genius, which held home computer licences for Scrabble, Monopoly, Cluedo and Risk: “good, solid business that kept going year after year”, in Alexander’s words, because every new computer needed new versions. From 1985 to 1988 it also put out five Now Games compilations, named after the Now That’s What I Call Music records that Virgin sold with EMI.
Mastertronic and Sega
In 1987 Virgin bought 45% of Mastertronic, the budget publisher, which wanted money to become Sega’s distributor in Britain. The Sega Master System’s Christmas stock arrived on Boxing Day, too late to sell, and the cash crisis that followed led Mastertronic’s founders to sell Virgin the rest. The combined business, Virgin Mastertronic, took on Sega’s distribution in Britain, France and Germany in 1988, and its Master System and then the Mega Drive sold well. Virgin also got to convert Sega’s arcade games, such as Golden Axe and Shinobi, to home computers.
The distribution business came to dwarf the publishing one. In 1991 Virgin split them: Sega bought the distribution side, which became Sega Europe, and Alexander left to run it, ending his eight years at Virgin. The publisher, about 20 people by Chaney’s count, stayed with Virgin.
Virgin Interactive Entertainment
Tim Chaney, who had run US Gold, took over in December 1991, with a target of about $1 million of income for the year. Mirrorsoft collapsed soon after, and Virgin hired some of its staff and signed some of its games; Chaney listed Lure of the Temptress, Apocalypse, Cannon Fodder and Alien 3. “We had a totally different mentality and were hell bent for glory,” he said. He also won European distribution for LucasArts’ games and for id Software’s Doom II. In October 1993 Amiga Format reported that Virgin Games had changed its name to Virgin Interactive Entertainment; Chaney explained that the word “game” was thought “a bit lowbrow” for the coming business of CD-ROM.
The American office had grown out of the one Martin Alper set up for Mastertronic, and in the 1990s it produced Virgin’s biggest hits. It published Trilobyte’s The 7th Guest, a CD-ROM puzzle game in a haunted house that sold more than two million copies on the PC. It made Mega Drive platform games with David Perry: Global Gladiators, Cool Spot and Aladdin, the last drawn, Edge reported, “with the help of 30 artists on loan from Disney”. Aladdin earned Virgin more than $100 million, according to Chaney, and Perry left to found his own studio, Shiny Entertainment. Shiny’s Earthworm Jim (1994) was published in Europe by Virgin and in America by Playmates. Virgin’s The Lion King followed in 1994, on the Mega Drive and the Super Nintendo; Retro Gamer puts its console sales at over four million.
In Britain Virgin published Sensible Software’s Cannon Fodder (1993), whose poppy on the box drew protests from the Royal British Legion, and signed Dino Dini, who had written Kick Off for Anco, to make Goal! for Virgin in 1993 (see Dino Dini). It gained a reputation for advertising that got banned. “We had 13 consecutive campaigns banned by the Advertising Standards Authority,” Chaney said.
Westwood
In 1992 Virgin bought Westwood Studios of Las Vegas, already working for it on Dune II. CU Amiga reported the purchase in January 1993, as Westwood’s first game for Virgin, The Legend of Kyrandia, came out. Westwood went on to make Lands of Lore and Command & Conquer (1995), which by the end of 1996 had sold “well over one million copies”, and Edge called Westwood, “owned by Virgin”, “the most successful videogame company in the US today”. Virgin celebrated the million with a poster of Hitler addressing a rally and the words “Thanks a million”, which Chaney later admitted had upset people.
Owners
Virgin sold the company in stages. The toy maker Hasbro bought 16.2% for $25 million in 1993, and Computer Gaming World reported in March 1994 that Blockbuster Video had taken nearly 20% for $30 million in its own stock. Later in 1994 Blockbuster took control, valuing the business, Chaney said, at $250 million. When Viacom bought Blockbuster, Virgin became part of Viacom’s Spelling Entertainment, and the fit was poor: by 1998 Computer Gaming World reported that Viacom’s interactive business had lost $43.5 million in a year.
In August 1998 Electronic Arts bought Westwood for $122.5 million, together with Virgin’s internal development in America. What was left of the American office was closed, and LucasArts took its European distribution elsewhere. The European business was bought out by its managers, and in 1999 it merged its distribution with the European operation of Interplay, which took a 44% stake. The French publisher Titus, which was buying control of Interplay at the same time, completed its takeover of Virgin later that year, with 50.1%.
Later history
Titus renamed the company Avalon Interactive in 2003, and within two years Titus itself had collapsed. The Spanish office, bought by Chaney and a colleague, carried on as Virgin Play until 2009, the last company to use the name Nick Alexander had chosen in 1983. Alexander went on to Pearson, where he became chairman of Future Publishing, and in 2010 Richard Branson returned to games with Virgin Gaming, an online service for playing console games against other players for prizes.
Sources
- Your Computer, April 1983, p. 154: Virgin Games advertisement for programs, with Nick Alexander’s name and the Portobello Road address.
- Your Computer, June 1983, p. 45: editorial on record companies entering software (“Virgin Records has launched Virgin Games”).
- Retro Gamer Collection vol. 6 (2012), pp. 80–85: Richard Hewison, “From the Archives: Virgin Games” part 1 (Alexander’s background and the founding; the office and first staff; the first releases, inlays and bus; the 1984 collapse and Virgin Atlantic; Strangeloop, Sorcery, Rabbit Software and Leisure Genius; Now Games; Dan Dare, FA Cup and Shogun; the Mastertronic purchase, Sega distribution, and the 1991 split).
- Retro Gamer Collection vol. 6 (2012), pp. 106–113: “From the Archives: Virgin Games” part 2 (Tim Chaney; Mirrorsoft’s games; LucasArts and Doom II; the renaming; The 7th Guest; Aladdin, The Lion King; Westwood; the advertising campaigns; Hasbro, Blockbuster and Viacom; the sale of Westwood, the buyout, Interplay and Titus; Avalon Interactive and Virgin Play; Alexander and Branson afterwards).
- Sinclair User issue 55, October 1986, p. 12: Dan Dare among the month’s hottest releases.
- Your Sinclair issue 28, April 1988, p. 6: Virgin’s Gang Of Five, “the team behind such Virgin greats as Strangeloop and Dan Dare”.
- CU Amiga, January 1993, p. 25: Westwood, the team behind Eye of the Beholder, bought by Virgin; The Legend of Kyrandia just released.
- Amiga Format issue 51, October 1993, p. 14: Virgin Games renamed Virgin Interactive Entertainment.
- Computer Gaming World issue 116, March 1994, p. 14: “Blockbuster Ties The Knot With Virgin” (nearly 20% for $30 million; Hasbro’s 16.2% for $25 million).
- Edge issue 13, October 1994, p. 90: David Perry, Global Gladiators, Cool Spot and Aladdin, the Disney artists, and the founding of Shiny.
- Edge issue 11, August 1994, p. 90: Nick Alexander, “founder of Virgin Games, and then the MD of Sega Europe”.
- Edge issue 39, December 1996, pp. 48–49: Westwood Studios, “owned by Virgin”; Command & Conquer’s sales.
- Computer Gaming World issue 172, November 1998, p. 58: “EA Acquires Westwood For $122.5M” (Virgin bought Westwood in 1992; the sale included Virgin’s internal development; Viacom and Spelling; Viacom’s losses).
- PC Zone issue 75, April 1999, p. 33: Interplay and Virgin merge their distribution.
- Edge issue 73, July 1999, p. 13: Titus and Interplay; Interplay’s 44% stake in Virgin. Edge issue 78, November 1999, p. 8: Titus takes 50.1% of Virgin.
- Edge mastheads, 1995–1998: Nick Alexander, chairman of Future Publishing.
- Nintendo Power issue 70, March 1995, p. 28: Earthworm Jim published by Playmates in North America. GamesMaster issue 29, May 1995, p. 11: British chart listing Earthworm Jim under Virgin.
- Wikipedia, “Virgin Interactive” (accessed September 2026) (web, secondary): the renaming as Avalon Interactive on 1 July 2003; the end of Avalon’s UK operations in 2005; Virgin Play until 2009. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virgin_Interactive