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The Games
- The Pawn
- The Guild Of Thieves
- Jinxter
- Corruption
- Fish!
- Myth
- Wonderland
- The Magnetic Scrolls
Collection Vol. One
- The Legacy - Realm
Of Terror
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Magnetic Interpreter
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This
is the "Files" section of "Jinxter". Here you
will find all the hard facts about the game, like general information,
a plot synopsis and trivia - in other words, these are "Jinxter
Files".
Trivia
Michael
Bywater (photo used with kind permission)
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"Jinxter"
was originally written by Anita Sinclair's sister Georgina,
who had previously written the novella "A Tale Of Kerovnia"
for the Magnetic Scrolls game "The Pawn". After a
falling out between Georgina and Anita the whole text had to
be reworked by Michael Bywater, assistant editor of "Punch"
magazine (a British weekly magazine of humour and satire) and
friend of famous writer Douglas Adams (The Hitchiker's Guide
To The Galaxy). Michael had previously written the "What
Burglar" magazine for "The Guild Of Thieves"
and also went on to co-write the goodies for "Corruption",
Magnetic Scrolls' next release.
Anita Sinclair
recalls: "Magnetic Scrolls had worked successfully with
Michael on "Jinxter" - a game that we had needed to
rewrite in about 3 weeks, and we would have had no chance of
doing so without his help."
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Michael
Bywater's script-doctoring job on Jinxter was 'the script-doctoring
job of all script-doctoring jobs'. The data structures and the
logic behind the puzzles were already in place, but there were
problems with the script. Working
on a Toshiba 'portable' computer in Magnetic Scrolls' office
located off Borough High Street in South London, Michael spent
many long hours working on getting the text right and occasionally
altering plot elements to fit. To
be able to implement the new text into the game, Michael also
had to learn the intricacies of Magnetic Scrolls' data-driven
adventure system. It wasn't easy (especially for a non-programmer)
but he soon got to grips with it.*
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Although
"Jinxter" (which was, according to Robert Steggles
supposed to be the answer to Infocom's game "Enchanter")
was an excellent game both story- and puzzlewise, with sales
figures on the same level as the highly profitable "Corruption",
it didn't garner as much profit for Magnetic Scrolls as the
aforementioned title.
This
was largely due to the fact that "Jinxter" had, for
its time, a very large development team behind it, which ultimately
meant that the development costs for "Jinxter" were
much higher than for "Corruption", which had a much
smaller team working on the game. (info taken from the "Magnetic
Scrolls Memories" article written by Robert Steggles)
The
german version of "Jinxter" came with a fully (and
excellently) translated issue of the "Independent Guardian".
While it's standard procedure nowadays to publish foreign, fully
translated versions of computer- and videogames, it was quite
a novelty back in the days of Magnetic Scrolls. The game text,
however remained english, because porting the game and the game/parser-mechanics
etc. to a completely different language with different grammar,
structures, etc. would probably have been absolutely impossible.
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An
excellent game - "Jinxter" (Commodore 64/128)
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The "Old
Moose Bolter" beermat that came with the game exists with
at least three different motives:
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*
taken from The Bird Sanctuary
and used with kind permission
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