Viz: The Computer Game is a single player

Single player

A Single-player video game is a video game where input from only one player is expected throughout the course of the gaming session. "Single-player game" usually implies a game that can only be played by one person, while "single-player mode" usually refers to a game mode for a single player, where...

 racing game

Racing game

A racing video game is a genre of video games, either in the first-person or third-person perspective, in which the player partakes in a racing competition with any type of land, air, or sea vehicles. They may be based on anything from real-world racing leagues to entirely fantastical settings...

 based on the Viz adult comic

Viz (comic)

Viz is a popular British comic magazine which has been running since 1979.The comic's style parodies British comics of the post-war period, notably The Beano and The Dandy, but with incongruous language, crude toilet humour, black comedy, surreal humour and either sexual or violent storylines...

 which was released in 1991 by Virgin Interactive

Virgin Interactive

Virgin Interactive was a British video game publisher. It was formed as Virgin Games Ltd. in 1981. The company became much larger after purchasing the budget label, Mastertronic in 1987. It was part of the Virgin Group...

. The game's lively music was composed by Jeroen Tel

Jeroen Tel

Jeroen Godfried Tel is a Dutch composer. Best known for numerous computer game tunes he wrote in the 1980s and early 1990s for the Commodore 64, Tel is a founding member of the computer music group Maniacs of Noise....

.

Summary

Popular characters Johnny Fartpants

Johnny Fartpants

Sex Maniac was arguably the first character in Viz magazine to achieve UK-wide notoriety, and was certainly on a lot of teenagers' T-shirts in the late 1980s. He is, on the face of it, an ordinary boy; except that he suffers from extreme, excessive flatulence which is not only offensive to the nose...

, Biffa Bacon

Biffa Bacon

Biffa Bacon is a cartoon character in the British comic magazine Viz.- Overview :Biffa and his family—Mutha and Fatha —hail from the Tyneside region of North East England and speak in the Geordie dialect...

 and Buster Gonad

Buster Gonad

Buster Gonad is the name of a cartoon character in the British comic Viz. It involves the surreal adventures of "the boy with unfeasibly large testicles". During a storm, Buster's gonads were zapped by cosmic rays which enlarged them to an enormous size. Buster's gonads are so large, in fact, that...

 compete in a series of five races around the fictional town of Fulchester

Fulchester

Fulchester is a fictitious town in North East England where most of the comic strips in the humour-based Viz comic are set. From the accents used and the cultural references, it is presumed that Fulchester is either close to, or based upon, Newcastle upon Tyne. The name was taken from the British...

 for some unnamed prize

Prize

A prize is an award to be given to a person or a group of people to recognise and reward actions or achievements. Official prizes often involve monetary rewards as well as the fame that comes with them...

. The races are run in the park

Park

A park is a protected area, in its natural or semi-natural state, or planted, and set aside for human recreation and enjoyment, or for the protection of wildlife or natural habitats. It may consist of rocks, soil, water, flora and fauna and grass areas. Many parks are legally protected by...

, Fulchester High Street

High Street

High Street, or the High Street, is a metonym for the generic name of the primary business street of towns or cities, especially in the United Kingdom. It is usually a focal point for shops and retailers in city centres, and is most often used in reference to retailing...

, a building site

Construction

In the fields of architecture and civil engineering, construction is a process that consists of the building or assembling of infrastructure. Far from being a single activity, large scale construction is a feat of human multitasking...

, the beach

Beach

A beach is a geological landform along the shoreline of an ocean, sea, lake or river. It usually consists of loose particles which are often composed of rock, such as sand, gravel, shingle, pebbles or cobblestones...

 and a nightclub

Nightclub

A nightclub is an entertainment venue which usually operates late into the night...

. The race commentator is Roger Mellie

Roger Mellie

Roger Mellie is a fictional character featured in Viz magazine. His catchphrase is "Hello, good evening and bollocks!", satirising David Frost's catchphrase "Hello, good evening, and welcome". The character is foul-mouthed, an obnoxious misogynist who manages to maintain a career as a television...

, who provides irreverent chat throughout the game, and many of Viz's popular characters pop up to help or hinder the contestants.

Before the race, each character has the chance to earn tokens by playing a minigame

Minigame

A minigame is a short video game often contained within another video game. A minigame is always smaller or more simplistic than the game in which it is contained. Minigames are sometimes also offered separately for free to promote the main game...

 which then can be used during gameplay to give him a temporary advantage

Advantage

Advantage may refer to:*In military terms, advantage is the superiority in elevation which one side enjoys over the opposing element...

. Biffa is able to punch his way through some obstacles or gets into a fight with himself boosting his speed. Johnny can use his "pump power

Flatulence

Flatulence is the expulsion through the rectum of a mixture of gases that are byproducts of the digestion process of mammals and other animals. The medical term for the mixture of gases is flatus, informally known as a fart, or simply gas...

" to jump over small obstacles or to take off and fly a short distance. Buster can use his "unfeasibly large testicles" to jump over small obstacles or put them in a wheelbarrow

Wheelbarrow

A wheelbarrow is a small hand-propelled vehicle, usually with just one wheel, designed to be pushed and guided by a single person using two handles to the rear, or by a sail to push the ancient wheelbarrow by wind. The term "wheelbarrow" is made of two words: "wheel" and "barrow." "Barrow" is a...

 and gain a burst of speed.

Each contestant must stick to his race lane otherwise the referee

Referee

A referee is the person of authority, in a variety of sports, who is responsible for presiding over the game from a neutral point of view and making on the fly decisions that enforce the rules of the sport...

 from Billy the Fish

Billy the Fish

Billy the Fish is a long-running cartoon strip in the British comic Viz that first appeared in 1983.Created by artist Chris Donald and writer Simon Thorp Billy the Fish is, like many Viz strips, a lampoon of British comics – In Billy the Fishs case, that of football-themed strips such as Roy of...

 will hurl bricks at the errant racer temporarily stunning him. The courses are set so that each character cannot help running in and out of each other's lanes. If the character is hit, he loses a life. If he loses three lives, it's race over for the human player - the AI characters have unlimited lives.

Although the game received mediocre reviews in the gaming press with the Commodore 64 version coming under particularly heavy criticism for what was perceived to be excessive loading times, the game did sell very well, particularly for its adult humour which was seldom seen in video games in 1991.