The Magnetic Scrolls fact sheet
About Magnetic Scrolls Ltd.
- Founded: 1983 by Anita Sinclair and Ken Gordon
- Home: 1 Chapel Court, London SE1 1HH, England
- Distribution: From 1985-1989 their games were published by Rainbird, a label of British Telecomsoft. When Telecomsoft was bought by Microprose (UK) in early 1989, Magnetic Scrolls did not participate in the merger and took the distribution of the classic games in their own hands. They bought the remaining stock and distributed the games themselves through Inter-Mediates Ltd. until the stock was sold (see note, taken from Fish! box for the Archimedes). During that time they found Virgin Games as the distributor for the upcoming Wonderland and later for the Magnetic Scrolls Collection. Here are some hints on identifying an Inter-Mediates release.
- Launch: The Magnetic Scrolls era started with the release of QL-Pawn for the Sinclair QL in 1985. QL-Pawn was distributed by Sinclair Research.
- A very special member of Magnetic Scrolls was Murdoch who was a white English bull terrier Anita owned. Murdoch was the corporate mascot and they all loved her dearly.
- In 1988 Infocom had actually planed to release the sequel to Douglas Adams' The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. When it became clear, that the inhouse development might fail due to the lack of ressources, one option discussed among the heads of Infocom was to hand over the development to Magnetic Scrolls. Eventually Infocom agreed on an internal solution, but because of the closure in early 1989 the game was never finished.
