A PIONEERING software company has designed a war game so realistic it has been enlisted by the Army.

Wargasm is a virtual reality shoot 'em-up which started life as a simulator to train gunners in Warrior tanks. The award-winning game, which took £1 million and two years of work to develop, was launched on PC format at Christmas.

Now, Wargasm is being deployed as a secret weapon in the Army's nationwide recruitment drive, beginning this month at the Jobscene Recruitment fair in Liverpool.

Wargasm creator Digitial Image Design, at Tanners Lane, says the game's cutting edge technology blasts competitors off the battlefield.

DID spokesman Roger Godfrey said: "Wargasm reflects the co-ordination required between branches of the modern British Army. You can switch at any moment between tanks, helicopters and infantry, and it's realistic right down to the suspension on the tanks.

"There's also a strong strategic element to Wargasm. You can play the game like a simple shoot 'em-up, but you won't get very far!"

The game is set in 2025, when the governments of the world have signed a treaty committing them to total disarmament. All wars are fought on a virtual battlefield called the World Wide War Web.

The game's realism is the result of painstaking research, based on military hardware manuals and soldiers' personal testimony.

But Roger admitted the game's suggestive name had proved controversial.

"The Army had a few reservations about it at first," he said. "We are considering changing the name to something more socially acceptable.

"But I don't think it trivialises war because it brings home the fact that you die. In fact, most of our staff are pacifists. We have had a few conscientious objectors who preferred not to work on the original simulator project, and we respected their views," he said.

Converted for the new archive on 13 March 2001. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.