THE LEGACY REALM OF TERROR

SIMULATOR EXPERTS MICROPROSE AND TEXT ADVENTURE MASTERS MAGNETIC SCROLLS JOINED FORCES ON A TERROR-INSPIRED GRAPHIC ROLE-PLAYING PC GAME PUBLISHED IN THE EARLY NINETIES. WITH RENDERED MONSTERS, RPG TROPES GALORE AND A STRONG LOVECRAFTIAN VIBE, PREPARE TO EXPERIENCE THE HORRORS WITHIN THE LEGACY...

- Richard C Hewison

The commercial viability of text adventures, with or without location graphics was at a low point in the early Nineties. Magnetic Scrolls owned a huge slice of that increasingly niche pie, but its last text adventure releases with publisher Virgin Games in 1992 only reinforced the need for change. It needed to branch out and expand its expertise, as programmer and cofounder of Magnetic Scrolls Ken Gordon remembers. “Servan Keondjian and I think Richard Huddy had written some interesting 3D demos, and we had kicked about some code that threw textured triangles really fast, and that was the beginning of the idea of doing a first-person perspective style game.”

Magnetic Scrolls touted the technology to various publishers, including some familiar faces who had been at its first publisher, Rainbird Software, and who were now at the UK branch of North American publisher MicroProse. Initially a military simulation and strategy publisher, MicroProse had begun to diversify its product range into arcade, adventure, and RPG titles. A successful and sizeable internal development team was being formed in the countryside surroundings of Tetbury in Gloucestershire, and the Magnetic Windows system that had worked so well in Virgin Games’ Wonderland and The Magnetic Scrolls Collection, Volume 1 integrated with the new 3D code presented the publisher with an engine in need of a game design.

Thanks to the rapid increase in internal development, MicroProse UK also had a pressing need for more project managers, as Jon Oldham recalls. “I had been a builder and had my own construction project management company and was looking for a new challenge. I saw an advert from MicroProse back in 1991, applied and bizarrely got the job. For some reason, Tim Roberts didn’t want anybody who had any previous experience in the games industry, which was lucky for me.”