Fish! is the fifth and final Magnetic Scrolls text adventure, of their successful Rainbird period at least.

Please note: I do know that they did make a sixth, called Myth, although this was not made available commercially and was distributed only to fan club members on personalised floppy disks. It was also a ‘mini’ adventure, rather than a full game.

Fish! is… to put it mildly: more insane, surreal and involving than any of the previous Magnetic Scrolls adventures, and arguably the best and most interesting of them all.

I still don’t quite get it, but you play a fish which can warp through portals and ride trains and solve puzzles. It’s kind of like a surreal anthology, with short episodes joined together by a main story.

As in all the other Magnetic Scrolls games, certain things happen in real time. Like certain characters having a schedule and mind of their own. Doing certain things will activate a time limit on solutions to particular problems. In Fish! you’re constantly having to enter ‘warps’ to different scenarios, and if you fail one of these time-limited ‘tests’ you get thrown out and have to try again. At times this can be very frustrating. Emulator quick saves do help. I play these games now and think: “what kind of masochist used to buy them back in the day?!” 🙂

More: Fish! on Wikipedia