QL Pawn

QL Pawn is probably the most famous adventure written for the machine. It was first talked about in QLUB News (published by Sinclair Research Ltd in September 1985, said to be coming soon.

QL Pawn is a highly interactive game (one of the first instances of true interactive fiction), where you are placed as the star of a narrative story, in which the characters all have independent ideas about how to behave. The precept of the text adventure is fairly simple - you wake up on a strange island wearing a silver wristband. As you explore the island, you meet a variety of characters, the majority of whom ask you to complete a small task for them.

The Pawn is unfortunately the only Magnetic Scrolls adventure which was published for the Sinclair QL - it was supplied originally on two microdrive cartridges, and included a new operating system, which enabled the feature packed interpreter to allow you to really interact with characters.

The QL version is v1.0 of the game and only runs on systems which emulate the complete hardware of QL.

Later versions were released for the Atari ST, Commodore Amiga and C64, Apple 2, Archimedes and Sinclair ZX Spectrum (amongst others). Magnetic Scrolls used to use a self written cut-down 68k OS emulator to run their games on non-68k hardware. More information about those later versions is available from the IF-Legends website. If you want to play these classic adventures on modern systems, you can also purchase re-mastered editions from Strand Games.

You can play the original QL game here

The Prawn spoof of this adventure was created by Martin Hopkins

Title: QL Pawn
Language: 68000 Machine Code
Author: Magnetic Scrolls - Story by Rob Steggles
Publisher: Sinclair Research Ltd
Year of Publication: 1985
Platforms Suitable for: All Sinclair QLs and some emulators (not QPC2)
Commercial Status: Freeware
Price as at December 1985: £19.95
Reviews: QL World (December 1985)
Sources Available from: n/a
Latest Version available from: Sinclair QL Homepage