Zarch

This article needs additional citations for verification. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. Find sources: "Zarch" – news · newspapers · books · scholar · JSTOR (July 2011) (Learn how and when to remove this message)

Zarch
Cover art (Acorn Archimedes)
Developer(s)	David Braben
Publisher(s)	Superior/Acornsoft, Firebird
Platform(s)	Acorn Archimedes, Amiga, Atari ST, DOS, ZX Spectrum
Release	EU: 1987[1]
Genre(s)	Third-person shooter
Mode(s)	Single-player

Zarch (also known under its ported name of Virus) is a computer game developed by David Braben (better known as the co-author of Elite) in 1987, for the release of the Acorn Archimedes computer. Zarch started off as a demo called Lander which was bundled with almost all releases of the Acorn Archimedes.

In 1988, Zarch was ported (under the new name, Virus) to the Atari ST, Amiga (coded by David Braben), and IBM PC (coded by Chris Sawyer). It was later ported to the ZX Spectrum by Steven Dunn.

The game was groundbreaking for the time, featuring a three-dimensional mouse-controlled craft (the "lander") flying over a tile-rendered landscape that dazzled reviewers in a primarily 2D-dominated game industry - ACE (Advanced Computer Entertainment) magazine led with the headline "SOLID 3D - the future of games?" when it reviewed Zarch with a score of 979, the highest rating ACE had given at that time, only bettered by the later Amiga port Virus at 981.

Virus was one of the first solid 3D games and was also the first to have 3D lighting effects and shadowing, although these are less sophisticated than those of Zarch.