By Jim Rossignol on September 24th, 2008 at 3:08 pm.
Right, hands up who is a Virtual Skipper addict. Come on, there must be some of you out there, as Ascaron send word that they’re releasing the fifth iteration in the series in the UK on 3rd of October, and it’s already available in North America.
A sophisticated wave animation model replicates tidal movement and wind flurries, forcing players to adapt whilst racing. Other variables include day and night settings that affect climatic conditions and visibility, all helping to reproduce a realistic sailing environment.
Sounds posh, if you’re into virtual sailing. I was always more a Ship Simulator guy. Yes.
I wonder if anyone will make a Cruise Ship simulator. Dodgeing icebergs, picking what performance to put on in the theater and running firedrills, it all sounds such fun. I’d much rather sail a cruise ship than then sail with the wind.
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Cruise Ship Tycoon could make a good series. Start off with the Titanic era, then end up in space by game four.
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/raises hand
And the Silent Hunter series. Woop woop!
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I bought one of the earlier ones of these, installed it, and my CD-writer stopped working. I later discovered it came with Stardock. So I guess I’ll not be bothering with it again.
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I read that as Wind Furries and shuddered :(
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I’m still waiting for PT Boats: Knights of the Sea, it seems to have been in development forever.
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No coast guard encounters after playing chicken with the passenger liner? :(
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This is the same lot as did Trackmania, isn’t it?
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@parm: Do you mean Stardock or Starforce?
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Emmmm, the fifth iteration has been out for quite some time:
http://www.play.com/Games/PC/4-/3337178/Virtual-Skipper-5-32nd-America-Cup/Product.html
[Edit: Amazon UK lists release date as 11 May 2007]
Virtual Skipper 4 and 5 are really good games… if you are willing to forget about the fact that they are protected by our old friend StarForce.
Nadeo should have dropped that protection years ago. At least they did drop it for Trackmania United Forever, although it took years of complaining, and even buyers being insulted by Florent Castelnerac (see the famous 0/10 thread at joystiq).
All of it way surpassed by Sporegate, though. But not by much. StarForce’s recorder breaking code trumps SecuROM any day.
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I would be interested in playing Cruise Ship Tycoon. You listening, developers?
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Those chaps sitting on them boats look mighty bored. I mean, you’d think they’d be excited by their achievement of Australo-Brazilian synchronised boat-leaning, but they’re just sitting there, clearly so bored that they’re being distracted by an errant seagull, or possibly a breaching marlin. Okay, a breaching marlin would be worth their attention, but you’d expect to see a few raised arms, a few whoops, cheers, the occasional holler.
I dunno, “Hey amigos! A breaching marlin!”
“Golly mate, look at it go!”
“It’s gonna take that poor seagull’s head clean off!”
“Ay ay ay!”
“You taking the piss, senor?”
Er. Where am I going with this?
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From the website it looks like the game being released is Virtual Skipper 5: 32 Americas Cup
(wot is a famous sailing race I fink).
I was quite impressed by the link to Panogames.com, where they have screen shots of games as panoramas, which is one of those, “why doesn’t everyone do it?” kind of ideas…
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Yes, yes it is! Which is… pretty weird! They should try doing a racing simulator too :)
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Clearly I meant Starforce. I am an idiot.
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Cruise Ship Tycoon, only if we can have Futrama Type Titanic.
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I played America’s Cup on C64 does that count? :p
Do they have a simulator for an aircraft carrier? Like be able to control the ship move the elevators for the planes to come on deck, make decisions on which planes can leave and land etc? I’d play that! :D
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I like Virtual Skipper. I have 4. It helps of course if you sail.
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@SPEEDCORE: I make games like that. Ever wanted to play a game about the operational logistics of a large (multi-division, multi-nation) peacekeeping operation? With a text interface? That’s my latest. I love it. It’s actual a pretty damned fun game, but the UI is brutal.
If you have weird, esoteric gaming needs, I would suggest writing the games yourself.
On topic: I sailed competitively when I was younger. I think I’d probably miss it too much if I played a game about it. I can’t imagine being able to sail in-game without being able to get out on the water (which I can’t). Hmm.
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I just had to mention that Cruise Ship Tycoon already exists, is part of the 5 fucktons of cheap, badly produced Tycoon games by all sorts of unknown developers, is a very, very horrible game, and was actually covered shortly in the very first PC Gamer UK I bought. (The last one was just a random, pointless coincidence.)
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