At the beginning of April 2016 Peter Verdi's Magnetic Scrolls Chronicles website went offline. So far all my attempts to contact Peter failed. His site carried some invaluable interviews with former Magnetic Scrolls people. To preserve the work I temporarily uploaded a dump of his site taken in summer of 2015. All you can see below is 100% Peter's work! Hopefully his site will reappear soon! Peter, if you read this, can you contact me?
Remember how it's like to ride on a cloud? How it feels to be squashed by a bus, or how to get that damned gold disc from Micky? Well, here's your chance to relive all these situations.

Have a chat with the devil in THE PAWN, ransack an entire island in THE GUILD OF THIEVES, restore luck itself to a whole country in JINXTER, uncover a conspiracy in CORRUPTION, become an inter-dimensional secret agent in FISH!, an ancient god in MYTH, walk in the footsteps of Alice in WONDERLAND and inherit a haunted mansion in THE LEGACY. Become a part of the fantasy of Magnetic Scrolls - you certainly won't regret it . . .
 

 

 
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This is the "Text" section of "Corruption". Here you will find articles, previews and reviews of "Corruption" I gathered over time.

Review (Commodore Amiga) from "Your Amiga" magazine December 1988/January 1989

 

C o r r u p t i o n

Derek Rogers was top yuppie on a hotly contested ladder. Then, bang, straight in the nick for insider dealing. Did he fall or was he Porsched?

One of our writers recently reported that Magnetic Scrolls has just been awarded a British Micro Award for Corruption. I feel that, lest that worthy firm should reach out for its lawyers, I should report that it was actually awarded for Corruption and rightly too.

Corruption is a departure from the usual Magnetic Scrolls' subject matter, which in The Pawn and Guild of Thieves was fantastic, albeit with a wry touch. In this latest game, however, the accent is on present-day realism - well assuming that you think the City is a real place.

You play Derek Rogers, a full-time winner, who has just made it to a partnership in a rising electronic firm, due to his winning ways with a portfolio. On Derek's first day he scratches the paintwork on his BMW, finds that he has been given the grottiest office in the building, without even a phone, is equipped with a highly unsympathetic secretary, and his wife is having an affair with the boss. Believe me, that's just the start.

(continued below ...)

Gameplay is definitely not for hack-and-slayers. The accent in Corruption is on eliciting information. In other words, this is an adventure where it pays to be polite. The telephone plays a major part too, although you may have some initial difficulty getting to one without being blocked by your loathsome secretary, who deserves to be hacked and slain. You can tell people things to observe their reaction (Your boss is a cool one - faced with the evidence of his affair with Jenny, your wife, he makes a brilliant recovery) and you can also ask them about objects and people. The result of the accent on human beings is that, although you may not visit a lot of locations to start with, there's an awful lot to do in them.

My only problem with the game, and it must be a personal one, is that I found the general atmosphere of the game so cloying and claustrophobic (Derek Rogers after all, is but a rat in a large and complicated trap) that I had to pack it in before I decided to take a trip up to Suicide Bridge. This is not a criticism - indeed it's a tribute to the game's success. I'll probably return to Corruption some time soon. In the mean time, I've had to resort to large doses of Ultima IV meditation as therapy. OK, yah? .

For the Old Bill are taking a keen interest in our Derek. Rummaging around, he finds a doctored version of a discussion with his new boss about the job. The new version makes out that he has been up to some very dirty insider dealings on the Exchange. So what's the real story? Who's fitting him up and why? Most importantly, how can he escape the rap?

Corruption displays Magnetic Scrolls' usual meticulous care with presentation. Besides the free £ 500 poker chip, the supplied manual is set on personal organizer pages (for effect, not utility). In it, there are a host of clues, some of which, of course, may be red herrings, together with the usual Hint sequences to type in and some nice humour in the form of some spoof Time Out dining out pages. The box also contains an audio cassette which carries an undoctored version of Derek's interview on one side, with the new incriminating version on the other. More clues, doubtless.