Formula 1 Simulator

Virgin Mastertronic

Status: No Download, Findability: 1/5

Also known as: Formula 1 Simulator 2

Now then … this is interesting. Check out HVSC, and under Charles Deenen you will find a very interesting music entry in the shape of Formula 1 Simulator, and a very awesome rendition of the F1 theme tune too :-)

However, track down the music demo which the music was ripped from (and can be found here to download), and you’ll note the Virgin credit. So, we can confirm that there was a game behind this tune (I bet we can find hundreds more GTW titles in HVSC if we searched hard enough). It was thanks to CSDB that this came up and a discussion on the tune.

Interestingly, in GTW already there is a Car Game which Simon Nicol is credited to (No download) which is linked to Martech and also Virgin games. Charles also confirmed that his F1 tune was for Virgin Games back in the late 80’s upon request. (Charles has done music for a previous Simon Nicol game – Back To The Future 3 – probably just a co-incidence?).

Just to check – we are now trying to find Simon again to ask him some more and see if there is any link at all with this Formula 1 game and his car game.

Just as an aside, another question came up with the Martech link and if Simon Nicol was behind the C64 conversion of Nigel Mansell. However it is widely known to have been underway by Andromedia (Just who within Andromedia, I don’t know) – so it could well be likely that Simon was just working on another title for Martech.

Martin/Stadium 64 found a very interesting advert for what must be the game – advertised in a US based catalogue. Here it is called “Formula 1 Simulator 2”, suggesting that it was a budget sequel to the original Mastertronic classic. It is very likely that this is the same game that Charles Deenen composed for.

It is thought that Virgin may not have got the F1 licence, which could have been already nabbed by Electronic Arts, or they deemed that there were too many F1 games at the time. Still, its an interesting one, and could be very hard finding out more about it. But check out the very cool music at least for now!

Contributions: CSDB, Cybergoth, Charles Deenen, Martin/Stadium64, Adam Huemer

Supporting content

Available downloads

Update history

  • 14/04/22 – Fixed Charles Deenen’s name.
  • 27/03/17 – New scans added thanks to Martin / Stadium64
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