Computer nerds discover sex, drugs and rock 'n' roll

Meet Nigel, wannabe rock star. Wild behaviour and a gift for courting controversy come naturally to Nigel; an industry used to such legends as Keith Moon, Jimi Hendrix and the Gallagher brothers will recognise him as one of its own.

Not only does Nigel (pictured right) openly enjoy his drugs - he rolls a fat spliff, snorts plenty of coke and hallucinates on peyote - but he enthusiastically beds as many women as possible. Nor is he worried about remembering the condoms. So what if he dies from Aids in 10 years? Nigel is the frontman of what could be the biggest band in the world, but his fate is in your hands. He is a computer game character.

Sex, Drugs and Rock 'n' Roll is a revolutionary 18-certificate multimedia computer game which has been nearly 10 years in the making, and its developer, Sensible Software, is convinced it will wow audiences when it hits the shops next Christmas.

"It's a concept beyond a game," said Jon Hare, Sensible's director. "It's a multimedia experience and there's nothing else like it."

Sex, Drugs and Rock 'n' Roll takes place in 67 locations and has 150 three-dimensional characters, 15 hours of dialogue provided by several actors, and 6,000 animated sequences providing players with thousands of different routes to sing, snort and screw their way to stardom or failure. Nigel and his band, Magic, sing 13 three- or four- minute songs, which have been mixed and produced at Pinewood Studios over the past seven years. The game will be available in French, German, Spanish and Italian.

It will be marketed as a film in several parts over several years, and its publishers anticipate spin-offs into cartoons, television series, videos and musicals.

Although the characters are presented as cartoons in the style of Viz - the men have absurd hairstyles, the women pneumatic breasts - the game is strongly realistic and Mr Hare admits it is likely to be controversial.

In between feeding his drugs habit, which often makes him sick, Nigel masturbates over porn magazines and develops Aids after sexual encounters with a string of willing babes - if the player does not equip him with condoms.

Sex, Drugs and Rock 'n' Roll is aimed at 28-year-old men - the average age of PC games buyers - who are frustrated New Men looking to let off steam.

"Since the advent of feminism, young men are under a lot of pressure to justify everything they do," said Mr Hare. "They struggle to cope with the instinct to fight, breed and get their own way. This game gives them the chance to explore what it's like to lead that kind of life, but it also shows how easy it is for things to go wrong."

Teenage boys who may be attracted to Nigel as a role model may not be easily put off by an 18 certificate. "The certificates don't make much difference," said Steve Key of Computer and Video Games magazine. "We get letters from 10-year-old readers offering tips on how to play some of the most violent games on the market. Parents often buy them games not knowing the content and some shop owners are not too strict about who they sell to."

The first computer game created by Douglas Adams, author of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, is to be launched this October. Starship Titanic, on which Mr Adams worked for a year, boasts an inter-galactic art deco cruise ship inhabited by smart-alec robots and a talking parrot whose voice is provided by former Python Terry Jones.

Reviewers have hyped the game as a much-needed shot in the arm. It has a sophisticated text-parser, which encourages players to type questions and demands, rather than trying to blow up or dismember other characters.