Overview
Virgin Games was a video game development studio and publisher founded in 1981. It began as an extension to the Virgin Group and became a sizeable company after buying out Mastertronic in the late 80s.
The first games released by Virgin Games were for the UK home computer the ZX Spectrum. Over the course of its existence, the company published and developed games for many platforms and systems, including PC, Amiga, Game Boy, SNES, Genesis, C64, Jaguar etc. The number of games published, ported and distributed far exceeds the number of games developed in-house.
Virgin Games, Inc. was renamed Virgin Interactive in 1994. Virgin Games (by the renamed Virgin Interactive Entertainment) was acquired by Titus. The brand ceased to be used in 2003 and was renamed to Avalon Entertainment. Both Avalon and Titus went defunct in 2005.
After the studio's demise, many of Virgin's former employees went on to work in other successful game studios, including Westwood Studios, Shiny Entertainment and Synergistic Software.
In 2003 the Virgin Games brand was resurrected for the Virgin Group's various gambling services, such as poker tournaments and online gambling sites. It has nothing to do with Virgin Interactive, nor its previous incarnation Virgin Games Inc.
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