Magnum Software was a small California-based company started by the people that ran the ad agency McTyre/Charles advertising, who specialized in the computer game market. Scott McTyre explains: "We watched how all the game companies (some our clients) were not handling things the way we would. We started up Magnum Software and resigned all of our computer accounts. We hired programmers to bring to life our visions - Ronald Nepsund was our first programmer. He wrote Randamn to our specifications." Six people were involved in the company, which started out doing Apple II work but switched to the Macintosh upon its release.
Magnum released two titles: Randamn and Super Speed Reading. A third was in the works, a game called Murphy, which was only weeks away from being ready when the Mac came out. Scott McTyre: "It was a game and the idea was that your character was inside your computer and his name was Murphy. Bugs showed up and messed up your computer. Murphy's job was to shoot them when they showed up. If a bug got a chip, something random would happen - for example, your keys to shoot would be reversed, slow motion, or your bullets would wake random turns. Bullets could also destroy your computer chips, so you dindn't want to shoot them either. The effect on your bullets could be that you might shoot just flowers.. or Murphy might be shrunk to 1/10th his size. You could collect REPAIR kits to fix chips and get rid of the bad effects of the bugs eating the chips or YOU shooting your own chips."
Magnum later invented a voice mail technology called TFLX but went bankrupt after larger companies saturated the market. However, former Magnum employees still publish software under the name MCFIII.com.
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