Magnetic Scrolls
Adventures in elegance
Magnetic Scrolls created the most sophisticated British text adventures—beautifully written, gorgeously illustrated, and technically advanced.
Magnetic Scrolls set out to beat Infocom at their own game—and often succeeded. Their adventures featured prose quality that approached literature, illustrations by professional artists, and a parser that understood natural English. The Pawn, Guild of Thieves, and Corruption represent the pinnacle of 1980s interactive fiction.
Fast facts
- Founded: 1984 by Anita Sinclair, Ken Gordon, Hugh Sheridan.
- Based: London, UK.
- Speciality: premium interactive fiction with graphics.
- Technical: sophisticated cross-platform engine.
A 68000 house first
Magnetic Scrolls wrote for the 16-bit machines and brought the results down, which is the opposite way round from most British adventure publishers and explains an otherwise odd fact: they barely register in the Spectrum press. Magnetic Scrolls appears on 68 pages of the Spectrum magazines held here against 616 for Level 9.
CRASH introduced them in June 1986 in exactly those terms — “a company specialising in adventures written for 68000 based machines” — in a report from that April’s Consumer Electronics Show, where Rainbird announced tie-ins with Magnetic Scrolls and Level 9 at the same time.
Rainbird was Firebird’s premium imprint and, like Firebird and Beyond, a wing of British Telecom’s software operation. So the two best-regarded British adventure houses of the period both ended up published by the phone company.
The Spectrum versions
They did reach the Spectrum, and they reviewed well when they did.
| Game | Score | Where |
|---|---|---|
| The Pawn | 5/5 | Sinclair User, January 1987 |
| The Pawn | 90% | CRASH, June 1987 |
| The Pawn | 9/10 | Your Sinclair, July 1987 |
| Jinxter | 92% | CRASH, April 1988 |
| Jinxter | 10/10 | Sinclair User, May 1988 |
| Jinxter | 916/1000 | ACE, February 1988 |
The Pawn went out at £14.95 — roughly twice a typical Spectrum game, and a price that says plainly which market the company thought it was in. CRASH’s review singles out the presentation: “superbly redesigned and readable text against a dark background”, with the text intensity adjustable by the player.
Key games
| Game | Year | Setting | Notable for |
|---|---|---|---|
| The Pawn | 1985 | Fantasy/surreal | First commercial graphic IF |
| Guild of Thieves | 1987 | Fantasy heist | Refined puzzle design |
| Jinxter | 1987 | Magical England | Lighter tone |
| Corruption | 1988 | Corporate thriller | Dark themes |
| Fish! | 1988 | Surreal comedy | Cult favourite |
| Myth | 1989 | Greek mythology | Ambitious scope |
| Wonderland | 1990 | Alice adaptation | Technical showcase |
Technical excellence
The engine
Magnetic Scrolls’ virtual machine:
- Ran identically on 8-bit and 16-bit platforms
- Sophisticated memory management
- Incremental game loading
- Graphics integration
The parser
Among the most advanced of the era:
- Full sentence understanding
- Context-aware pronoun resolution
- Multiple object handling
- Extensive vocabulary
The graphics
Professional illustrations on 16-bit versions:
- Each location illustrated
- Consistent artistic style
- Integrated with text display
Writing quality
Magnetic Scrolls invested in prose:
- Professional writers
- Consistent voice and tone
- Puzzle-narrative integration
- Often reviewed in mainstream press
Competition with Infocom
| Factor | Magnetic Scrolls | Infocom |
|---|---|---|
| Platform | 68000-first, ported down | 8-bit first, via the Z-machine |
| Graphics | Yes, on 16-bit versions | No, text only |
| Parser | Comparable | Industry standard |
| Writing | Literary ambition | Genre excellence |
| Output | ~10 games | ~35 games |
What the period record holds
Worth stating plainly, because it constrains what can honestly be claimed about the company’s reception.
The Pawn took 90% in CRASH (issue 41, page 58), published under the Rainbird imprint — which is to say under Telecomsoft, British Telecom’s software arm. Magnetic Scrolls was a developer with a phone company for a publisher, in the same group as Firebird’s £2.50 budget shelf.
⚠ Beyond that, the CRASH index of January 1988 is thin on Magnetic Scrolls, and the reason is a scoring convention rather than neglect: the magazine reviewed most adventures in its Adventure Trail column, out of ten, not as percentages, and those ratings are not convertible. Guild of Thieves, Jinxter and Corruption do not appear in the percentage index at all. Any statement here about how Magnetic Scrolls “scored” relative to percentage-rated arcade games is comparing two units.
The same caution applies to Level 9, and for the same reason.
The clause that survived the sale
The most consequential thing Magnetic Scrolls did with Telecomsoft was not a game. It was a contract term.
In 1989 British Telecom sold Telecomsoft to MicroProse, which meant the new owner inherited BT’s software catalogue — Firebird, Rainbird, and whatever they published. ACE reported in July 1989 that Magnetic Scrolls had anticipated exactly this:
According to Anita Sinclair, [Magnetic Scrolls’] contract with BT was “assignable” — that is, in the event of BT being sold, the rights to distribute Magnetic Scrolls product was not to be sold with it.
So when the phone company sold its software arm, the Scrolls games did not go with it. A small London developer had written a change-of-control provision into its publishing deal and it held.
What followed was conspicuously civil. Sinclair on the buyer:
MicroProse are a very competent organisation, and I’ve got the greatest respect for Stuart. We are ready to discuss the situation at any time.
And Telecomsoft’s Stuart Bell on the games he had just failed to acquire: they are “quality adventures that we’d be proud to sell”.
⚠ Note what this establishes about the period. Publishing contracts of the mid-eighties were informal enough that the bedroom-coder entry records authors losing their games when a publisher went under. Magnetic Scrolls was on the other end of that spectrum — professionally advised, and structured to survive its publisher changing hands.
Anita Sinclair
One of the few women running a British software house in the period, and the press treated her as a figure rather than a curiosity. ACE called her, with evident affection, “the infamous Anita Sinclair”.
She was also asked to represent a position she flatly declined. In January 1988 ACE ran a feature on why women were not playing or making games; Sinclair objected to a competition aimed at women players as a cynical and patronising marketing device, and then refused the label the magazine offered her:
“I cannot stand or tolerate feminism of any form.”
The same feature notes she “doesn’t have much time for arcade games” — adventures “demand thought” and are “something you can stop and start” — which is as good an account as any of why the company made what it made. It also names Hanan Samara, who ran the development house Dalali, as “one of the few women making a living from developing arcade games”.
⚠ Recorded here as printed. The quotation is a period statement by a named public figure about her own views, and it sits oddly beside her later status as the most-cited woman in British 8-bit publishing.
The family in the credits
Level 9 is the family business of the British adventure scene. Magnetic Scrolls was partly one too. ACE, December 1987, on Jinxter:
Jinxter has some great text, in part written by Georgina Sinclair, sister of the infamous Anita Sinclair from Magnetic Scrolls, with additions from other quarters.
The prose the company is praised for has a name attached to it, and it is not one of the three founders listed in the fast facts.
End
The adventure game market collapsed in the early 90s. A planned Magnetic Scrolls collection for CD-ROM never materialised; the company closed in 1992.
Legacy
Their games remain playable through:
- Modern interpreters (Magnetic)
- Magnetic Scrolls Memorial homepage
- Influence on later interactive fiction