We’re currently experiencing a huge renaissance of Magic: The Gathering popularity. The 33-year-old card game designed by Richard Garfield introduced the world to the concept of the trading card game itself: a game where players would collect individual game pieces and craft a deck that represented spells they would cast and creatures they would summon. It was a wild new form of player expression that greatly impacted the world of tabletop gaming for all time. Magic: The Gathering also told players a story–a narrative of powerful wizards known as Planeswalkers that would traverse multiple universes and duel with other powerful wizards in search of power and glory.
So it would make sense that one day, Magic: The Gathering would come to video games. While the game’s digital client Magic: The Gathering – Arena is the premier way to electronically play the game nowadays, there’s a title from Magic’s early years that’s influence is being felt to this very day.
Released in 1997 for personal computers and developed by Microprose, the eponymously named Magic: The Gathering sought to capture the excitement of the tabletop game to players all across the digital realm. Coming off the heels of an unprofitable era for the company, the developers sought the challenge of adapting the increasingly complex game into a single-player role-playing game.
You read that right. Magic: The Gathering’s first video game was a single-player RPG. Magic: The Gathering followed the story of the Planeswalker (the player-character) travelling to the plane of Shandalar to save it from a great and powerful evil. The plane is invaded by five mage lords who are using their combined power to cast the “Spell of Dominion” that will allow them to summon the demon lord Arzakon, who is a Planeswalker himself.
