How to play the games today

Magnetic Scrolls disappeared in the early 90's and the games haven't been available for many years. To obtain an original game package you have to try your luck with classic games specialists like YOIS or online auctions like Ebay. Most probably the easiest way to run the old games on modern machines and operating systems is using an interpreter or an emulator.

Interpreter

Niclas Karlsson has developed a portable interpreter for Magnetic Scrolls games - MAGNETIC. The original Magnetic has been ported to all major systems and got enhanced several times during the last years. The newer versions of Magnetic even support the Magnetic Windows games and some of their special features like animated graphics and hints. Start your magic journey here: MAGNETIC - An interpreter for Magnetic Scrolls games

Eager to start playing? Your can run the games immediately in your browser with Magnetic Scripts.

Thomas Dettbarn has recently released a new interpreter called dMagnetic. It comes with some unique features like an ANSI art renderer for the game graphics. It can already run all the games and is constantly improved. You can find dMagnetic on Thomas' page at dMagnetic.

An important feature introduced recently is the support for various disk image formats from emulated systems. You can now load games directly from disk images for MS-DOS, C64, Spectrum+3, Spectrum128, Amstrad CPC, and Archimedes.

For fans of Linux and BSD, it might be very easy to get your hands on dMagnetic. Thomas has started with building packages for the official repositories, so if you are using any of the following systems, you can simply install dMagnetic with the given command:

Ubuntu 20.04: apt install dmagnetic
FreeBSD: pkg install dMagnetic
OpenBSD: pkg_add dmagnetic
NetBSD: pkg_add dMagnetic

Emulators

If you still own copies of the games and you are in a real nostalgic mood, you should take a look at the various emulators. There are numerous packages available for emulating old systems. Below you will find short guides on setting up selected packages to run the original Magnetic Scrolls games. A coverage of all available options is beyond the scope of these pages, but the selected packages are mostly available for multiple platforms and the main steps should be similiar on all setups. Normally, the emulators require image files of the original floppy disks and supplemental files for the emulator like system roms. Please do not ask me to send any of those files. If system roms are available freely or can be obtained legally, directions are given in the guide. The guides only cover the minimal steps required to get the Magnetic Scrolls games running. To unleash the full power of the various emulators, there is a lot more to do, but that is a different story...

Guides available:
           

Coming next:
Amstrad PCW, Atari ST, Atari XL, MS DOS.