Magic: The Gathering (1997)
Few games have captured the attention of the mainstream more than the Magic: The Gathering collectible card game. Magic is to the '90s what Dungeons & Dragons was to the '70s and Trivial Pursuit was to the '80s. In short, Magic seemed an obvious choice for a computer conversion, and MicroProse snared the coveted contract.
Design: Sid Meier
Publisher: MicroProse
Genre: Classics/Puzzles
Difficulty: Easy
|
Unlike the early D&D computer games, however, the development of Magic for the PC was so troubled that it would make for lively daytime drama. More than a year into the game's development, no one could agree on the high concept. Arnold Hendrick, who had codesigned some of Sid's finest games (Pirates! among them), wanted to emphasize multiplayer play - which, if you've ever been at GenCon and seen as many as 400 games of Magic going simultaneously in the open gaming area, seems in retrospect to be the right approach.
Sid was worried that an emphasis on multiplay would result in a poor AI. While this was a reasonable position to take, it might have had more to do with the fact that at this time Sid still wasn't sold on multiplayer games (he hadn't yet fallen in love with Warcraft II).
So, Magic took a different path from Arnold's original concept, because whatever Sid wanted at this point in his MicroProse career, he basically got. The computer game added an adventure game shell - which got MicroProse into trouble with Acclaim, who had the adventure game rights to Magic - but this was less than enticing to veteran Magic players. Worse, the game's AI suffered curious lapses, and thus, like most MicroProse products lately, it required a patch.
The final indignity is that there was no multiplayer option in Magic - the quintessential multiplayer collectible card game - until Manalink came out a year after the game's initial release. To this day, Gilman Louie (head of MicroProse) insists that Sid Meier saved this product - and it is a decent game, although it is a bit strange that Sid's career at MicroProse would end with such a dull thud rather than going out with, say, Civilization II.
You have to believe that if Sid got a second crack at Magic, he would design it as multiplayer from the ground up (for proof, look at the elegant multiplay in 1997's Gettysburg) and would also add the AI for which Sid's games are rightly famous.
Next: Sid Meier's Gettysburg 
