FISH

HAVING ESTABLISHED ITSELF WITH FANTASY-BASED ADVENTURES, MAGNETIC SCROLLS DIPPED ITS TOES IN ABSURDIST COMEDY WITH THIS PISCINE TALE OF INTERGALACTIC INTRIGUE. WHO BETTER THAN YOUR SINCLAIR’S CHIEF PUN WRITER PHIL SOUTH TO HELP BRING IT TO LIFE?

WORDS BY GRAEME MASON

IN THE KNOW

» PUBLISHER: RAINBIRD / VIRGIN (MAGNETIC WINDOWS RERELEASE)

» DEVELOPER: MAGNETIC SCROLLS

» PLATFORM: AMIGA, VARIOUS

» RELEASED: 1988

» GENRE: ADVENTURE GAME

To tell the story of Magnetic Scrolls’ Fish, we need to go all the way back to the summer of 1980, and the King’s Arms pub in Hemel Hempstead High Street. Working behind the bar of this fine establishment was Phil South, before the ZX Spectrum, before Your Sinclair, before the Empire, before, just about, everything. “I’d been mates with a guy called Paul Human since we’d been about five,” begins Phil. “That wasn’t a stage name, that was his actual name. To date, he’s the only Human I’ve met.” The pair fostered a love of music as they grew up. When Paul answered an advert in a local newspaper (for a vocalist in a synthesiser group – it was the early Eighties, after all), he subsequently joined a band called Don’t Panic. “Then one day, Paul and the rest of the band came into the pub, and that was when I met Johnnie. He was a member of Don’t Panic.”

» [Amiga] Dodging hippies in the abbey segment

With Phil becoming Don’t Panic’s photographer, he struck up a friendship with John Molloy, helped by his father’s work. “Johnnie’s house was amazing, because his parents were quite well off. His business was renting out coin-op machines – one-arm bandits and such, but also arcade machines. It was part of my charmed life: I made friends with someone who’s got almost every arcade machine in their garage! I wasn’t going to pass that up, and we hung out a lot together.”

Like Phil, John was also interested in computers, eventually persuading his father that one would really help, not with his homework, but with accounts for the business. “He first got a Challenger 1P [a low-cost micro from Ohio Scientific], then an Apple II. We used to play adventure games on those computers, because they were the most interesting games up to that point, as the graphics weren’t up to much.” Having already dabbled with the legendary Advent (or, Colossal Cave Adventure), Phil took to the Apple II in particular, spending hours alongside John, both absorbed with Infocom’s famous Zork series. “We played one called Enchanter, and literally sat up all night playing it, until it was done. That was fairly immersive, you could say!”