Magic: The Gathering – Arena has taken PC gaming by storm and there is a lot of buzz about the upcoming Magic: Legends action RPG for PC, Xbox One, and PlayStation 4. But, putting the tabletop collectible card game of Magic into digital form is anything but new.

In this video, we’ll be taking a brief look into the history of Magic: The Gathering in computer and video game form.

Magic: The Gathering PC CD-ROM Microprose, 1997, 1-2 players, ages 6 and up. This game is really a blast, and a Magic junkie's dream. If you're jonesing to play some Magic and there aren't any warm bodies around, playing against this game's AI isn't half bad. Yes, it does some dumb things and there are a few bugs in the game, but overall the AI.
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American video game publisher and developer founded by Bill Stealey and Sid Meier in 1982. It developed and published numerous games, many of which are regarded as groundbreaking, classics and cult titles, including starting the Falcon, F15 Strike Eagle, Silent Service, Civilization and X-COM series and many more. Most of the internally developed titles were vehicle-based. Gameplay for Magic: the Gathering, PC game produced by Microprose in 1997 - to play a duel. Download the best games on Windows & Mac. A vast selection of titles, DRM-free, with free goodies, and lots of pure customer love. Magic: The Gathering.

Video transcript:

In April of 1997, the very first-ever Magic: The Gathering video game ever published came out for Windows 95 PCs.

Developed and published by the now-defunct MicroProse, the Magic: The Gathering computer game (contemporarily referred to as “Shandalar”) would be the final game with the company that the famed game designer and programmer, Sid Meier, would ever help to create.

The game featured a surprisingly good deck builder along with two game modes: a duel mode and a single-player campaign mode.

Duel mode plays out very much like a traditional game of magic with a coin flip determining who goes first. After that, it’s pretty much as “old school” MTG as you can get along with additional cards from the Astral set, which is a Magic expansion exclusive to the computer game. The layout is surprisingly clean with all of the pertinent information, including life total, creature stats, and so on, clearly presented on-screen. It’s done so well, in fact, that players often pointed to Shandalar as the ideal standard for how a digital traditional game of Magic should look on screen. While games were often played single-player against an AI controlled opponent, player-versus-player was available over the modem through an add-on appropriately named 'ManaLink.'

The game’s single-player campaign introduced players to the rogue plane of Shandalar via an overhead map of the plane’s supercontinent across which the player must travel from village to village and castle to castle, discovering hidden surprises and fighting (or fleeing from) adversarial wizards and beasts along the way. In dungeons and castles, adversaries remain still rather than roaming.

Either way, encountering an enemy will typically enter combat via a modified version of the Duel mode with the player’s life tied to the number of “mana links” they’ve established throughout the game. More mana links equals more starting life. Likewise, the player’s deck is only as good as cards they’ve found in the wild, purchased from in-game vendors, or won from opponents.

Yup, you heard that right. In Shandalar, ante is the way of the game. Defeating a foe will win you some cards from their deck, though losing means they’ll take one of yours. It actually turns out to be a good system to keep players in check against bigger, badder foes and serves as a deterrent from biting off more than one can chew.

Story wise, the plane is ruled by five tyrannical mages who are each vying to be the first to cast the Spell of Dominion, which they think will allow them to rule all of Shandalar for themselves (not knowing that the spell actually breaks the plane’s protective barrier keeping extraplanar beings such as planeswalkers from entering). Should one succeed, you lose the game. But if you’re able to defeat all five mono-colored wizards, the evil planeswalker Arzakon attacks you for foiling his invasion plans. The end boss has grossly more life than you and, due to that, is considered unkillable. Rather, upon defeat he’s banished from Shandalar for an indefinite amount of time with the player’s performance in the battle becoming their final score for the campaign.

MicroProse’s Magic: The Gathering spurred two expansions: Spells of the Ancients in September of 1997 which included cards from Arabian Nights and Antiquities along with AI improvements, and Duels of the Planeswalkers in June of 1998, which was an upgraded version of the original game and included 80 new cards from the sets Legends and The Dark.

The game was considered a relative success, selling more than 400,000 units by early 1999 and received generally positive reviews by outlets such as GameSpot and PC Gamer UK.

Shandalar is considered among many long-time Magic players as the gold standard for digital magic – even in spite of Magic Online and Arena grabbing all of the headlines. Maybe it’s the nostalgia. Perhaps it’s the exploration. And maybe it’s because Sid Meier simply knew what he was doing by creating a well-made, true-to-the-source-material faithful representation of Magic: The Gathering in digital form.

Good game, Sid. Good game.

What do you think of the original Magic: The Gathering computer game? Let us know your thoughts in the comment section below.

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Magic: The Gathering

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Description of Magic: The Gathering

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One of the best computer translation of a non-computer games ever made, MicroProse's Magic: The Gathering not only deserves a Hall of Fame status for its faithful rendition of Wizard of the Coast's blockbuster trading card game of the same name, but also for the numerous innovations that are only possible as a computer game.

For the uninitiated (and have never played Master of Magic before), Magic: The Gathering the card game pits two players, as powerful wizards, against each other in a magical duel, where each wizard can cast spells, summon monsters, and invoke various enchantments or curses. The game is turn-based, with each turn comprising several phases. The rules are too intricate to go into detail here - suffice it to say that there are 5 colors, i.e. disciplines of magic, each with its own characteristic appropriate to that element. Blue, for example, is water, which prefers illusions and guile. Therefore, there are many blue illusion spells, and 99% of all blue monsters you can summon can swim. Green, on the other hand, represents Earth. You will therefore find many regeneration cards and forest creatures in this discipline. There are many types of cards: enchantment (which typically lasts infinitely, as long as it's maintained and not destroyed), creatures (which you summon), instant (spells that can be cast only once; the card must be discarded after use), land (gives our mana), artifacts, and more.

This computer game version, in contrast to the horrendous BattleMage game from Acclaim which is based on the same license, truly brings all the fun and subtleties of the card game to life via an elegant point-and-click interface and excellent graphics that does justice to the cards' original intricate artwork.

Magic The Gathering Microprose Download Machine

Not content with giving the players just a card game rendition, MicroProse wraps the entire card-game mechanics around an epic fantasy storyline, set in the world of Shandalar. As a novice but noble wizard, your goal is to defeat the powerful evil wizards who are wrecking havoc on the land. After creating your character, you start with a random deck, which include very standard (i.