Upon Westminster Bridge

1988 Magnetic Scrolls

Upon Westminster Bridge is a mysterious unreleased adventure game that was once in development at Magnetic Scrolls, seemingly as a personal project of company founder Anita Sinclair. Very little is currently known about the title, and for many years it seems to have been confused with Corruption, Magnetic Scrolls’ 1988 financial thriller. Various references have suggested that Upon Westminster Bridge was an early working title for that game, but this doesn’t appear to have been the case.

The distinction was highlighted by Jimmy Maher in an excellent Digital Antiquarian article covering Corruption and Fish!, with further clarification in the discussion underneath. Jimmy pointed towards an older interview conducted by Peter Verdi with Corruption author Rob Steggles for the Magnetic Scrolls Chronicles website.

Rob was asked about any Magnetic Scrolls projects which had never seen the light of day and recalled Upon Westminster Bridge as something Anita Sinclair had been working on. More importantly, when asked what the game was actually about, he felt that was something only Anita herself should answer.

Considering Rob was responsible for Corruption, this seems to provide strong evidence that Upon Westminster Bridge was a completely separate project rather than an early name for his game. The Digital Antiquarian research also suggests that the project was something of a personal project for Anita and was apparently intended to be text-only. That would have made it quite unusual for Magnetic Scrolls, whose adventures had become particularly well known for their graphical presentation.

Unfortunately, we didn’t know much more than that. There were no confirmed details about the storyline, target platforms or exactly how far development progressed. Even the title gave little away. It was also unknown whether any code, notes, design material or other remains of the project still survived today.

Thanks to Stone Oakvalley, several fragments were mentioned in Computer and Video Games in various issues (added to scans):

Computer and Video Games Issue 065 mar 87, page 61:

“Guild Of Thieves, the next adventure scheduled by Rainbird from Magnetic Scrolls, is due out any time now. It will be less difficult than The Pawn, but with “superb graphics”, claims Anita Sinclair. Magnetic Scrolls has a hectic schedule ahead of it. A third adventure is planned for release in March. Upon Westminster Bridge — a title openly stolen from Wordsworth. it will be a mystery of sorts, but with a very novel approach. “I’m very excited about it. but some people might not even like it .” Anita told me. If you find you don’t you won’t have to wait long for their next offering — planned for release in July.”

Computer and Video Games Issue_067 may 87, page 64:

“When Guild comes out, it will do so for all machines in quick succession, since the donkey work of writing the systems has been completed. And then Anita and her crew will be able to concentrate on the next title. It could be Upon Westminster Bridge, which will be a completely different type of adventure. Or it might even be one presently code-named GM another saga of Kerovnia. But Rainbird Software. the publishers, will not let me reveal the proper title. Which it is, you won’t have so long to wait this time. It’s due to hit the streets within the next two or three months.”

Computer and Video Games Issue 072 oct 87 page 81:

“Looking ahead, Scrolls are rushing to complete another adventure by the end of the year. Anita has also found some time to get back to her current pet project entitled Upon Westminster Bridge. “Westminster will be the first Scrolls title written by one of us, consequently I think it’ll be our best! no seriously it’s a departure from games like The Pawn and Guild, for a start there’s no graphics. It won’t be ready for another year though!” “As to the future, well we’d like to get to the stage where we had a “black box” parser which other companies could use in their games — not adventures you understand, but things like a flight simulator you could talk to!”

Australian Commodore Review Volume 4 Issue_5 1987, page 42:

“On its way to Australia is the follow up to The Pawn, The Guild of Thieves is rumoured to be easier than The Pawn, with greater graphics, Currently in its production stages is Upon Westminster Bridge, a thrilling mystery – probably another winner for Magnetic Scrolls/Rainbird”

“It was my game. I just didn’t have the time to finish it. I was running around doing everything else. Every time I sat down to write it there was another crisis to solve. Programming is a very solitary activity. To program you need to have nothing else on your mind, and at that time I was just running around fighting fires and I couldn’t write. It’s a real shame, because It was going to be an Anita game, which was different to other games. I don’t really remember much about it to be honest. In those days I never made notes. It had a murder mystery element, and had a mechanism of playing by many people’s perspectives simultaneously, so was quite interesting. […] I wrote this code around non-playing characters that was super intelligent and in fact an entire language to program them in. I can remember pieces of the coding, but not the story. As I say, I just had no time to do it.”

So, confirmation that it was a different game. Sadly it seems that it could be lost to time, unless Anita comes across any disks with remaining work on to potentially salvage. It sounds like because Anita cannot recall much about it, the game may not have progressed very far at all – so there could be very little to save.

With thanks to Bugjam for highlighting the title, Jimmy Maher and The Digital Antiquarian for helping clarify its history, Strident for highlighting Anita’s interview and Mark Hardisty for Anita’s interview in Classic Adventurer, Stephen Stuttard for scans, Stone Oakvalley for the snippets highlights and Peter Verdi and Rob Steggles for the original Magnetic Scrolls Chronicles interview.

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