The original versions?
Just out of curiosity, are there any plans to make the original [*] versions of the games available? I realize the remastered versions will be more user friendly and all that, but sometimes I just get nostalgic for the old user interface. Those animated menus in Corruption just looked so cool back then.
[*] Of course, different people would have different ideas what constitutes the "original" versions.
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Hi Erik,
All of the remasters can be switched into "classic" mode in the settings. What this does is switch off (nearly) all the changes we've made to the game.
The changes we're making for the remasters are to make the game more playable and less cruel. However, this can be disabled if people want. I says "almost" above, because we don't revert bug fixes! We've found several actual bugs in the originals which have been fixed.
Regarding the original user interfaces, it would be quite cool to have those unrolling scrolls below the pictures like in the original. You're right that Corruption actually had little documents that unfolded rather than scrolls.
Right now there are no plans to put this in the UI, but it could be done.
We have however, tried to find the original fonts. The Guild has some PC fonts and since then we've added Atari ST fonts. If you know of any others you'd like, we'd be happy to add them (so long as it doesn't infringe copyright).
There are also some cool shader effects that simulate old CRTs. Some of these are quite impressive. Someone suggested putting one of these in. I think that would really give a retro experience!
Suggestions welcome.
I didn't mean emulating the original UI in the remastered versions, I meant that it might be fun if there was a legal way to obtain the DOS (or C64, or Amiga, or Spectrum, or ...) so that anyone who wanted to could try and get them to run in an emulator.
You can get all the original images from Stefan's memorial site;
https://msmemorial.if-legends.org/magnetic.php
Thanks. Isn't that just the data files needed to run the games in the Magnetic interpreter, though? What I meant was that if the DOS versions were legitimately available for sale somewhere, so I could run them in DOSbox, I'd be tempted to buy them just for the nostalgia.
The first Magnetic Scrolls game I played was on my brother's Atari ST, but the DOS version should look close enough to scratch that itch, I guess. (The second was on a Macintosh, but even back then I thought the black and white graphics were a step down from the colour screenshots I had seen in magazines so I'm not quite as nostalgic about that.)
It's possible the binary masters might be on the backup tapes. I hope to recover the rest of the tapes one day.
I did manage to recover a bunch of PC 5.25" floppy disks, most were dud, but one disk pair had the binary master of Jinxter v1.02 from 23/11/1987.
I have not tested the files, if you'd like to try i could upload the disk images somewhere?
Let us play!
Ok, uploaded here.
http://strandgames.com/files/ibmjinxter_v102.zip
Don't forget to checkout our progress with Jinxer Revived here
We have sound effects and new theme music too!
Thanks!