For years, Magnum Force remained hidden in plain sight, quietly tucked away on an old Codemasters compilation CD. While many lost games fade into obscurity, seemingly gone forever, this one was simply waiting for someone to take notice.
Created by Gavin Raeburn—best known for his work on various budget-friendly titles—Magnum Force takes inspiration from Scramble but dials up the action. It introduces end-of-level bosses, power-ups, and a high-energy soundtrack composed by Raeburn himself. Despite its solid gameplay, the game never received a standalone release under the Codemasters label. Instead, it was buried within a 30-game compilation CD, a release so low-profile that most players never even realized it existed.
The rediscovery came about thanks to Richard Bayliss (The New Dimension), who stumbled upon a forum thread discussing an obscure CD pack. Someone had reviewed the collection and mentioned a game that no one seemed to recognize. That sparked a chain reaction—Encore64 uploaded the CD’s contents to archive.org, and Tom-Cat from the Nostalgia group managed to extract Magnum Force from the digital dust. From there, Fungus/Nostalgia stepped in to iron out bugs and fine-tune it into a polished, standalone release.
But why was it never properly released? One theory suggests that Codemasters originally planned to port another game from the ZX Spectrum or Amstrad to the Commodore 64, but for some reason, the project was scrapped. Rather than leaving an empty slot in the compilation, they may have slotted in Magnum Force as a last-minute addition. Oddly enough, the game wasn’t even listed in the manual, making its presence even more mysterious.
Now that it has finally resurfaced, players have had a chance to experience Magnum Force for themselves—and it’s proving to be quite the challenge. With relentless enemy waves, tricky terrain, and a punishing difficulty curve, survival requires precision and patience. Players get only five lives, and while smart bombs—earned at the end of each level—can stack up to nine, they’re hardly a safety net. And for those who persevere to the very end… well, let’s just say the grand finale might not be as rewarding as one would hope.
Even so, Magnum Force has carved out its place in gaming history—not as a legendary lost gem, but as a hidden treasure that was there all along, just waiting to be found.
