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 . . .
 

 

 
   News
   News Archive
   Downloads
   Articles
   Links
   --------------------------
   The Games
    - The Pawn
    - The Guild Of Thieves
    - Jinxter
    - Corruption
    - Fish!
    - Myth
    - Wonderland
    - The Magnetic Scrolls
       Collection Vol. One
    - The Legacy - Realm
       Of Terror
   --------------------------
   Magnetic Interpreter
   --------------------------
   The Message Board
   Guestbook
   --------------------------
   About The Website
   Contact

This is the "Files" section of "The Guild Of Thieves". Here you will find all the hard facts about the game, like general information, a plot synopsis and trivia - in other words, these are "The Guild Of Thieves Files".

Trivia

"The Guild of Thieves" title screen (Commodore Amiga) 
based on artwork by Duncan McLean

The "The Guild of Thieves" was written by Robert Steggles, who also wrote the critically acclaimed and commercially successful first Magnetic Scrolls game, "The Pawn".

After "The Pawn" Ken Gordon and Anita Sinclair wanted a straight fantasy adventure with lots of puzzles, less people than in "The Pawn (too complicated) and absolutely no room descriptions that started with 'You find yourself in...' or 'You are in...'.

Despite being a little fed-up with fantasy stories, Robert wrote the whole scenario, including all of the puzzles, in one afternoon on four pages of A4 paper. The game was released without almost any changes at all and went on to become one of Magnetic Scrolls' most successful games and went on to win the prestigious "British Micro Computing Game of the Year Award" in 1987.

Usually the Commodore Amiga versions of the Magnetic Scrolls games featured a piece of music written by musician John Molloy (who later co-wrote the game "Fish!" for the company). Not so "The Guild of Thieves".

Instead of music, the Amiga loading screen displayed the message "Music stolen from John Cage". This was meant to be a joke, which unfortunately no-one got. It's a reference to experimental musician John Milton Cage Jr. (1912 - 1992) and his most famous and most controversial work.

In 1952 he wrote 4' 33" (Four minutes, thirty-three seconds), a composition written for any instrument or combination of instruments, with the score instructing the performer *not* to play the instrument during the entire duration of the piece.

While commonly perceived as "four minutes thirty-three seconds of silence", the piece actually consists of the sounds of the environment that the listeners hear while it is performed.

Commodore Amiga Loading Screen with the John Cage message

Second issue of the "What Burglar" magazine

The magazine that came with the game, "What Burglar", was written by Michael Bywater, who was at the time going out with Anita Sinclair. Michael was a long-time friend and collaborator of author Douglas Adams (The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy).

He went on to write Magnetic Scrolls' next game called "Jinxter" and also wrote the goodies for their next big hit, "Corruption".

A second issue of the "What Burglar" magazine could actually be ordered directly from Magnetic Scrolls.

 

Tristan Humphries (1962 - 2000)

Unlike "The Pawn", which featured pictures solely by Geoff Quilley, "The Guild of Thieves" had two artists contributing pictures to the game. In addition to the pictures by Geoffrey Quilley, "The Guild of Thieves" also featured art by the australian artist Tristan Humphries, who from then on became a regular graphic artist for Magnetic Scrolls and their games. Unfortunately Tristan died a tragic and untimely death in August 2000. He was only 38 years old.

 

If you look closely at the box art of "The Guild Of Thieves" you can spot a flying Pteradoctyl in the top right corner of the picture. This was an element that was actually in the game, but got removed at some point during the development stage. Unfortunately the box art was already finalised at the time, therefore it was already too late to revise the artwork.

Hence there's a flying Pteradoctyl on the box of "The Guild Of Thieves", but the creature is nowhere to be found in the game. You can stop looking for it. Honestly.

 

The flying Pteradoctyl from the "Guild of Thieves" box art