Corruption (1988, Magnetic Scrolls / Rainbird)

Author(s): Rob Steggles (story / design), with Hugh Steers (programming and story); pack-in cassette scripted by Michael Bywater and produced by John Molloy. Steggles had earlier written Magnetic Scrolls’ The Pawn (1985) and The Guild of Thieves (1987). Sources: Corruption, 1988 video game (Wikipedia), Corrupted Fish (The Digital Antiquarian), Corruption (The Magnetic Scrolls Memorial), Corruption walkthrough (Lemon Amiga), Corruption manual, MOCAGH scan (Internet Archive) Category: inspiration, Batch 10 (gameplay-mechanics mining). Present as a corporate-crime whodunit built on evidence collection under a real-time clock, pairing with the existing Entrepreneur Jungle corruption entry. Serves: Black Ledger, TRADECON (assigned by Josh; see cart map)

What it is

You are Derek Rogers, a young stockbroker who arrives at the office on the morning of your promotion to partner. Over a single working day you discover the promotion is bait: senior partners David and Hughes, aided by your wife (who is having an affair with the firm’s head), are constructing an insider-dealing frame that will land on you. Attempts are made on your life, and if you do nothing the police arrest you around midday on manufactured evidence. Rob Steggles researched the setting closely (he studied the Insider Trading Act and toured City buildings and trading floors), so the fiction has a lived-in feel. The game is illustrated text: verb commands drive it, with a static picture per location on most platforms.

Mechanics

• A real-time clock where one move equals one minute. The Lemon Amiga solution states it directly: “one minute equals one move.” The Magnetic Scrolls Memorial frames player actions as “virtual minutes.” The day starts at 9:00 a.m. and runs forward continuously, so every command spends time you cannot get back.
• NPCs move on a fixed timetable; the world runs whether you watch or not. Events fire at set clock times, and being in the right place at the right moment is the core skill. From the walkthrough’s schedule: 9:07 David and Hughes hold an overhearable conversation; 10:00 Theresa leaves for a break; 11:24 a critical phone call; a narrow 11:32–11:37 window; 12:11 your BMW is rigged to explode if started; 2:00 a lunch meeting with Jenny; 2:26 you are shoved into traffic. Solving is largely mapping these movements and slotting yourself into the gaps, learned through trial and error.
• Framed-by-deadline structure. If you take no counter-action, you are arrested for insider dealing around 12:20, the evidence being a share certificate, a cassette, and an affidavit. The clock is the antagonist: you are racing to gather exculpatory proof and neutralize the planted evidence before the frame closes. (Sources also report a late-day fail-safe where the day ends fatally if the case is never resolved; see verification.)
• Evidence-object collection is the win condition. You assemble a case file from scattered objects: the share certificate (office cabinet), the cassette (David’s office), the affidavit (in the Volvo’s folder), ledgers and receipts (a safe behind the TV), a cocaine bag (bathroom cistern). The same categories of object that would convict you become, once you hold and understand them, the material that clears you.
• The cassette as a replayable evidence device, doubled as a physical feelie. In-game you obtain a tape and play it on a stereo (the walkthrough’s PUT TAPE IN STEREO in the BMW), which surfaces a doctored recording of your promotion conversation and exposes the David/Hughes scheme. The retail box shipped a real audio cassette labeled “Derek Rogers, March 25th,” professionally produced, so the player physically plays the tape to hear the conversation the game references. Recorded evidence is both a puzzle object and a packaged artifact.
• Character-interaction focus with ASK/TELL dialogue. The game leans on talking to people over manipulating objects. The endgame interrogation with Inspector Goddard requires disclosing evidence in a precise sequence (TELL GODDARD ABOUT DAVID, then present affidavit, cassette, certificate, accounts, receipts, envelope, and Charpontier in order) to convict the real conspirators and clear yourself.
• Save-scumming assumed. Because the clock is unforgiving and several traps are lethal (the rigged car, the traffic shove), the intended rhythm is frequent saving and reloading to probe the timetable, an inheritance from Infocom’s Deadline-style timed mysteries that Steggles cited as inspiration.

Mineable patterns

• A real-time day as the pressure system. One move equals one minute, events fire on a clock, and the world advances independently of the player. Turns become a spendable budget, and “where am I when X happens” becomes the central decision. Portable to any time-pressured mission cart.
• Scheduled NPCs you must intercept. Characters follow fixed timetables; success is positioning yourself for overhears, thefts, and confrontations in narrow windows. A reusable model for stealth, surveillance, and heist-style loops.
• Evidence collection as the objective, with the same objects cutting both ways. The items that frame you also exonerate you. Building a dossier of physical proofs (certificate, tape, ledger, affidavit) is a concrete, legible win condition and a natural fit for forensic gameplay.
• Recorded audio as a replayable clue. A tape you can play back to extract information, optionally mirrored by a real pack-in artifact. The general pattern is a re-examinable evidence object that yields more on repeat inspection.
• Sequenced disclosure endgame. Winning means presenting the assembled evidence to an authority in the correct order. The proof phase is its own puzzle, distinct from the gathering phase.
• Frame-reversal premise. You begin as the designated fall guy and must invert the frame before a deadline. A strong dramatic engine for a corporate-crime mission.

KN-86 resonance

• The corruption pairing. Corruption sits beside Entrepreneur Jungle as the whodunit-under-pressure companion to that game’s build-a-corrupt-empire economy. Together they bracket the deck’s forensic-accounting and corporate-crime themes (Black Ledger, the recon carts) from both the perpetrator and the framed-investigator angles.
• A real-time clock maps to the World Clock. Moves-as-minutes with scheduled events echoes the deck’s World Clock / World Engine tick model, where a mission can run on wall-clock or move-driven time and NPCs act on their own schedule.
• Evidence-object assembly fits a “build the case file” mission. Gathering certificate, tape, ledger, and affidavit into a defensible dossier is a concrete objective that aligns with the deck’s forensic and record-manipulation surface.
• Replayable recorded evidence rhymes with the deck’s record/replay features. A tape you play back to surface a clue sits close in spirit to the recorder features already in the runtime (the NEMACS-PERSIST recorder beat), where captured material is replayed for effect.

Sources & verification

• Confirmed: Magnetic Scrolls / Rainbird 1988 release; Rob Steggles and Hugh Steers credits; the Derek Rogers stockbroker-framed-for-insider-dealing plot with David, Hughes, and the wife (Jenny) as conspirators; the real-time “one move = one minute” clock; the scheduled timed events and lethal traps (rigged BMW at 12:11, traffic shove at 2:26); the evidence set (share certificate, cassette, affidavit, ledgers/receipts); the in-game tape played on a stereo; the pack-in “Derek Rogers, March 25th” audio cassette scripted by Michael Bywater and produced by John Molloy; the Inspector Goddard sequenced-disclosure endgame; and the Golden Joystick award. Cross-checked across Wikipedia, The Digital Antiquarian, the Magnetic Scrolls Memorial, and the Lemon Amiga walkthrough; consistent.
• IA identifiers: vgmuseum_rainbird_corruption-manual (MOCAGH manual scan), corruption-solution-book (official solution book), audio_corruption (the cassette audio), wozaday_Corruption (playable Apple II). The manual’s own OCR text was not deep-mined for this entry; mechanics rest on the walkthrough and history sources, which agree.
• Arrest time: sources give the “do nothing” arrest as roughly 12:20 (one source says 12:24). Treated as “around midday.”
• Late-day fail-safe: a reader comment on The Digital Antiquarian reports the game kills the player with a heart attack at 6:00 p.m. if the case is never resolved. Plausible and in keeping with the timed design, but single-sourced and secondary, so flagged as lower confidence.
• Playback-device wording: the device is sometimes described as a Dictaphone. In the sources examined the in-game playback device is a stereo/tape player and the object is a cassette, with a matching audio cassette as the physical feelie. Described here as a cassette-and-stereo evidence mechanic to fit those sources; they do not use the “Dictaphone” label.
• Overall confidence: high on plot, credits, the clock, the evidence loop, and the tape; medium on exact arrest minute and the 6 p.m. fail-safe.