Bug Found in Virgin America’s Red Entertainment System
// November 2nd, 2009 // No Comments » // Bugs
I first wanted to start out by saying that I love flying on Virgin America and I think it is one of the best things that has happened to the American airline industry in a long time. I think that their Red Entertainment System is innovative and I have been fairly happy with it every time I fly with VA. With that said, Virgin America recently removed touch functionality on all of their games. This change didn’t phase me until I actually saw how restrictive this change became with their current game selection.
One of their game choices is a Missile Command clone called Penguin Command. This is a perfect game for a touchscreen since it is fast paced and you have to move quickly. Removing the touch functionality from this game makes it almost completely unusable. The only way to play this game is to use the D-pad on the controller which moves the mouse very slowly to where you want to fire a missile. Another game I noticed that doesn’t work very well without touch functionality is Mahjong. Instead of touching on the tiles you want to select, you have to use the D-pad to scroll through every tile until you get to the one you want. This change makes the game painfully slow to play. Since Virgin removed touch functionality, they should have also removed the games that don’t work well without it and added more games to use with the controller. I’d also like to point out that I think the current game selection is weak anyway, so I’d definitely like to see more games added.
Now even though Virgin America removed touch functionality, I still found a way around this so that you can play the games using the touch screen. Follow these steps to get around this restriction:
1. Start the game you want to play.
2. Click the Home button. (The Back button might also work too)
3. It will bring you to a screen that will have 2 options: If you are currently listening to music on Red, the screen will have 2 buttons, “Start Game with Current Audio” and “Start Game with Game Audio”. If you are not listening to audio the screen will just say “Start Game”
4. In either case, click any of the buttons to start the game.
5. It will bring you back to the game you were playing but with touch functionality.
I’m sure Virgin America will fix this bug soon but until then I would suggest to use this trick sparingly. My girlfriend used this trick on a flight to play Mahjong and she was yelled at by the person in front of her for tapping too much on the seat. I have a feeling this is one of the reasons why Virgin America removed this functionality in the first place. Have fun with this workaround!
