Background
Virtual XI's title tied in with two extra-musical events; the release of the band's computer game, Ed Hunter, and the fact that the 1998 FIFA World Cup would be taking place in June of that year. Harris explains, "We figure our fans are pretty much the same as we are, with pretty much the same interests, so we thought, 'It's World Cup year in '98. Let's get the football involved in the new album.' And we were already working on a computer game at that time, so we thought, 'Well, let's bring that element into things, too.'" Prior to the album's release, the band organised a publicity tour in which they held football matches across Europe with "guest musicians and pro-footballers from the UK."
While most of the artwork in the album's booklet was taken from the Ed Hunter game, the cover was created by Melvyn Grant. According to Grant, he was asked to design something related to virtual reality, but was later asked to alter the artwork by adding a football game, the band then having decided to link the release with the World Cup.
For this album some keyboard parts were performed by band founder/bassist Steve Harris whereas on previous albums all the keyboard parts had been handled by Harris' bass technician, Michael Kenney.
As with their previous world tour, several U.S. shows on the Virtual XI World Tour had to be cancelled as Bayley had vocal issues, although the official reason was instead that he was suffering from a severe allergic reaction to pollen.
This would be the second and final studio album to feature Blaze Bayley. In February 1999, the band had announced that Bruce Dickinson and Adrian Smith, who left in 1993 and 1990 respectively, would be returning to the line-up and Bayley was asked to leave the group.
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