Magic: The Gathering

Magic: The Gathering (1997)

by MicroProse Software, Inc.
Genres:Strategy, Turn-based strategy (TBS), Tactical, Card & Board Game
Themes:Fantasy
Game modes:Single player
Story:Magic: The Gathering is a computer game published by MicroProse in April 1997 based on the collectible card game Magic: The Gathering. The game takes place in the plane of Shandalar, where the player must travel the land and fight random enemies to gain cards, and defeat five wizards representing the five colors. The player must prevent one color from gaining too much power, and defeat the planeswalker Arzakon, who has a deck of all five colors. Adventure game and role-playing game elements are present, including inventory, gold, towns, dungeons, random battles, and character progression in the form of new abilities and a higher life point total. An oversized version of Aswan Jaguar was included in the game box.Show more
user avatarAdded by @snap-d
Vote to bring this game to GOG and help preserve it.
4 537
Trailers and screenshots
Screenshot
Screenshot
Screenshot
Screenshot
Stories about this game (20)
What’s your memory of Magic: The Gathering?Share your favorite moments and see what others remember about this game.
user avatar@placeholder

Make sure to follow our Guidelines when adding new Stories.

If not sure what to write:
  • What made this game unforgettable?
  • Who did you play this game with?
  • What made it fun or challenging?
  • Why do you want this game on GOG?
user avatar@rapscallionuser avatar@rapscallion
January 29, 2025
Easily the best rendition of a collectible card game brought to PC, the player was free to build decks from Magic's library (even updated through 2 expansions) with cards earned through gameplay. The player then implements those decks against the game's opponents in an effort to protect the game world from the NPC card players. If the NPCs win, they permanently impact the map, eventually making victory impossible for the player, forcing you to start the game anew. Other games have tried to recreate CCG adaptations or even similar campaign sandboxes, and always pale in comparison to Shandalar, this game's campaign mode. Don't trust my words? Take a look at this game's wikipedia page and scroll down to "Reception." It's a faithful, innovative, and revolutionary adaptation for an entirely new genre of gaming for its time. It's a crime this game isn't already in GOG's forever library and maintained for future generations.
user avatar@unmelonuser avatar@unmelon
January 29, 2025
This games was, and still is, the best card collection game, with map exploration, progression. I realy have the words to descrive the moments playing this game. Back then this was also a great way to test decks before building them to play with your friends. Nowdays you have a brand new MTG game, with better graphics and cards, but, nowere near the experience of the campaing of this game.
Those of us that got into M:TG after 1995 never got to experience the sensation of getting a Black Lotus in a pack. This game is the next closest thing. Defeating a dungeon which had a Lotus or Mox or Time Walk almost felt like opening a pack.
The rogue like mechanics surrounding Shandalar are incredible. I would love to see semi-official support for the fan-made expansion packs that have been implemented as well…
Used to play this game a lot, it was...iconic. Very low requirements, low size, excellent quality. A few updates might allow for later sets to played as well, along w/ specialized formats. Would love to see LAN support (that we can hook into other programs to have true multiplayer) to allow for tournies, along with Commander and the like.
user avatar@iofhuauser avatar@iofhua
January 30, 2025
I voted for this almost 10 years ago. Now I'm voting for it again. This is one of the best DOS games ever made and I would love to see it preserved on GOG. I liked the ability to build your own deck with any card from 4th edition, and IMO 4th and 5th were the best editions of Magic.
user avatar@Prim4xuser avatar@Prim4x
January 30, 2025
This game introduced me into theis cardgame. Really good for old games and the first digital Cardgame at all. I think. Now i want the old game back and build my deck.
user avatar@rooriiuser avatar@roorii
January 30, 2025
Honestly, if people want to play Magic, this is my go-to suggestion. It stands with the Pokémon Gameboy TCG as the best card game simulator ever released. All you need for a great TCG sim is a robust single player, yet it's so rare to find. Anyway, best era of Magic, great gimmick decks to fight, and a final boss that really challenges your ability to play optimally, just an overall great package.
user avatar@heissmanuser avatar@heissman
February 13, 2025
This game was such a big part of my childhood. I remember getting into Magic the Gathering card game but not having anyone to play with. My parents got me this and I played it so much. I spent so much time creating new deck. The rendition of this game since have just been about the card game aspect. This was one of the first RPG like games that I played where could walk around the open world and my battles would have impact on my deck and world. I was a little too young to fully appreciate the game and have wanted so much to come back as an adult to try it again. Unfortunately because it was written for Win97 is has been really hard playing it since.
user avatar@devonm90user avatar@devonm90
January 30, 2025
It's been a struggle to get this game running on modern systems. I played it so much when I was a kid and was foundational to but love of MTG entirely. The game's possibilities are endless with the procedural overworld and random encounters, it feels like and RPG with cards. I would love to see it preserved.
Those games also need your vote!
Black & White
Black & WhitePlay the role of a deity in a land where the surroundings are yours to shape and its people are yours to lord over. Be an evil, malevolent god and the natives will worship you with fear in their eyes. Play as a kind, benevolent god and they will worship you with love in their hearts. Your actions decide whether you create a heaven or hell for your worshipers. Then select a creature from the land to act as your representative in the world. Raise it to gigantic proportions and teach it to do your bidding--whether the animal grows into an evil colossus of mass destruction or a kind and gentle giant is up to you. Progress through the game's rich storyline performing powerful miracles to battle other deities and become the world's supreme god.
Top
Open world
Sandbox
Top
Open world
Sandbox
88 351
186
The Lord of the Rings: The Battle for Middle-earth II
The Lord of the Rings: The Battle for Middle-earth IIWage war in the North and assume command of the most storied civilizations in all of Middle-earth history - the Elven and Dwarven armies - or fight on the side of Evil with heroes and creatures that have never been seen in The Lord of the Rings films. Defend or overtake never before seen lands such as Dol Guldur, The Misty Mountains, and Mirkwood as you unleash powerful new weapons and abilities, such as summoning dragons.
Fantasy
Warfare
Fantasy
Warfare
28 899
67
The Lord of the Rings: The Battle for Middle-earth
The Lord of the Rings: The Battle for Middle-earthThe players control the heroes or villians from the famous Lord of The Rings movies. With a hero characters similar to the Warcraft series you control both the armies and all the unique heroes. The game follows the movies very closely and even got scenes from the films appear in game. Not only does the game contain a giant campaign where you play through the journey of the ring as the good side, the game also features an evil campaign where as the players play as the evil forces of Middle Earth. With multiple diffrent races from all over Middle Earth, a giant spell tree to customize your game and a unique basebuilding layout the game was great for its time.
Top
Fantasy
Warfare
Top
Fantasy
Warfare
48 906
113
Breath of Fire II
Breath of Fire IIThe incredible sequel to the best-selling RPG hit Breath of Fire is here! You are the last member of the Dragon clan, fighting to rid the world of a growing evil. A cast of unusual and exciting companions joins you in your adventures across a wondrous land full of magic and mystery. You'll find strange mystic items, memorable monsters and exotic locations in your quest to conquer evil. There's strategy and spellcasting galore in the hours of compelling action and adventure that awaits you. Breath of Fire II is the ultimate in RPG excitement!
Action
Fantasy
Action
Fantasy
3 291
16
Black & White 2
Black & White 2In the game, the player takes the role of a god called from the void (nothingness) to help those who invoked them. However, the player is not an omnipotent style god, but rather a god who rises and falls with his believers and the player must help develop their nature according to their good or evil desires. The player also has a creature, their physical representation in the world, which takes the form of an anthropomorphic ape, lion, wolf, turtle, cow, or tiger. Its physical manifestation can grow to an immense size, and adopt a good or evil persona separate of the player's. They develop their character as the player rewards or punishes their actions. In addition to the god simulation and city-building elements introduced in the original Black & White, Black & White 2 also features elements of real-time strategy gameplay, with the addition of controllable warfare and fighting units.
Top
Action
Fantasy
Comedy
Sandbox
Top
Action
Fantasy
Comedy
Sandbox
73 810
52
Tanktics
TankticsTanktics was a game developed by DMA Design in 1999 for the PC. It was published by Interplay. The objective of the game is to progress through four time periods, building and controlling tanks from that period to fight the "evil black tanks" from a more advanced period. Notably, tanks are constructed by hand out of parts, which are randomly constructed by a factory (the "Part-o-Matic") in the player's base when it is provided with resources. Different parts may offer the ability to cross different terrain, offensive capabilities more suitable to current tactics, and so forth. The player's primary control is "the crane", a flying magnet (held by, for example, a pterodactyl in the first, ancient time period) which can pick up and drop single parts. A suitable pile of parts becomes a tank, which can be selected and ordered to move by the magnet. The game also has a strong puzzle bias. The magnet can also pick up boulders (e.g. for blocking off enemy routes) and sheep (which can be used to increase the factory's production rate, amongst other things), and there are various terrain types with lasting effects. For example, driving a tank through mud will make it dirty, causing them to move more slowly until you wash them. Some maps have buttons on them which can only be activated by tanks with sufficient combat experience, and it can take considerable foresight to ensure that a tank will be able to survive to that level and be able to reach the button. Dissassembling a tank will make it lose all experience. The game is very micromanagement heavy, requiring the player to spread one's attention thinly over maintaining the continually tiring sheep at the factory, tank battles, negotiation of terrain hazards such as quicksand, and tank construction. The metaphor of the 'cursor' being a flying magnet with a physical presence in the world can make moving the viewpoint between all these tasks troublesome. GAMEPLAY: -Basics There are four worlds in campaign mode: Stone Age, Medieval, Modern, and Futuristic, each containing six levels. The enemy will always be one world in technology above you, the final one being the "Evil Black Tanks" themselves. There are also a challenge and training mode, the challenge consisting of levels in which you need to do a certain task (From killing certain tanks with boulders to crushing black sheep to defending your base with tanks needing to be reassembled) in a fixed time limit. The Part-O-Matic is the only structure in the game controlled by you. It produces a set of parts, determined by the level, one by one. The speed is determined by the number of sheep on its wheel. Sheep are found randomly grazing and can be picked up by your crane and dropped on your Part-O-Matic's wheel. After an allotted amount of time, sheep will grow tired and need to be restored in the sheep dip found throughout the level, there is commonly one beside your main HQ. Once they have rested, they may be put back on the wheel. Black sheep are your sheep's enemy, as they will spread their disease to other sheep, rendering them useless. Once a sheep has been infected, you may put it in the green goo where it heals. However, once it turns completely black, there is no way to restore it to its previous state. In order to stop the sheep from getting infected at all is to kill the black sheep via boulder to the head. Sheep are fragile, and can be killed by your enemies or by accident. Sacrificing parts to your Part-O-Matic, such as enemy tank pieces, sheep, boulders, or crates, allows the Part-O-Matic to constantly reproduce from the pre-determined queue randomly set up in-game. Crates, as the main resource for you, are found all over the place and can be carried by your tanks and returned to your Part-O-Matic. One tank can hold 4 crates and sometimes crates can be difficult to get a hold of, so the default template is a lot of powerful weapons on a 4-exhaust engine placed on water-tracks. There are four main parts to make tanks in the game. The track determines what areas of terrain the tank can cross. These included wheels, tracks which can only cross basic terrain, such as stone, half-tracks, tracks which can cross desert, snow-mobiles, tracks which can cross over snow, boats, which can cross over water, and hover-crafts, tracks which can cross over anything without suffering the effects of the ground. Making tanks without tracks renders them immobile, similar to turrets. The engine determined not only how fast the tank can go, but how many weapons an individual tank can possess. Weapons weighed down a tank and made it slower, in effect a tank with a total of five engine power and three weapons would travel the same speed as a tank with a total engine power of two and no weapons. The weapons automatically shoots at enemies within its range. You can place as many weapons in a tank as it had engine power, and can not exceed a fixed height limit. You can also order tanks to attack a specific tank or area of terrain. There are over sixty weapons in-game throughout the five time periods. Finally, the radar only comes in one variety, and is needed to make the tank function. In the game, there are power-ups, collected both by being made by the Part-O-Matic and unlocked by buttons requiring a certain experience level of the tank that touches it. These buttons may also unlock certain areas or parts necessary to winning the game. Furthermore, there are boulders, movable by crane, which can be )1 Used as Part-O-Matic resource, )2 Used to attack enemies, )3 Used as walls from enemy tanks, or )4 Used to crush black sheep. Terrain There are four main types of terrain: Ground, which can be crossed by any track and can be composed of stone, grass, dirt, etc., and Snow, Desert, and Water, only crossable by their counterpart tracks. In addition, there are quicksand, which sinks tanks' tracks and any dropped objects, mud puddles, which cause tank tracks to get muddy and slow down until cleaned, lava, which burns anything that touches it until put out by water or waiting, acid, which hurts anything that touches it until taken off, and green-goo, which rests sheep and cleans off parts. Combat In combat, each part has its own health. If the health reaches zero, the part will fly off the tank, destroyed. If the tracks are destroyed, all but one engine will fall off and the tank will become immobile. If an engine is destroyed, and the remaining engines can't support the number of weapons being used, weapons will fall off until the number of weapons matches the total engine power. If the radar is destroyed or the final engine is lost, the tank will cease to function, and lose all of its experience. The tank, unless ordered otherwise, will attack the closest enemy in range of its farthest weapon. If the tank is ordered to attack a specific enemy that is out of range of some weapons, the others will attack the closest enemy within range. Enemies will obey the same rules, except when attacking the Part-O-Matic. The destination of all enemies spawned after the start of the game is your Part-O-Matic. When attacking the Part-O-Matic, enemies will ignore their surroundings. Enemies spawn at receiver points and move to your Part-O-Matic. Objectives Your main objective in campaign mode is to eliminate all enemy spawn points by first unlocking them by pressing buttons with certain level requirements, and then attacking the now exposed vulnerable center. Once all spawn points have been destroyed, all remaining tanks including those guarding points of interest will move in to attack. Once all enemy tanks have been destroyed, you will win and complete the level. If your Part-O-Matic is destroyed, you have lost. However, in the last level of each of the four worlds, your objective is to capture a transmitter from the enemy "Evil Black Tanks" that guard them, and return it to your base. In these levels, there are no enemy spawn points to destroy.
Action
Fantasy
Historical
Warfare
Science fiction
Action
Fantasy
Historical
Warfare
Science fiction
45
2
Dwarf Fortress Classic
Dwarf Fortress ClassicDwarf Fortress is a single-player fantasy game. You can control a dwarven outpost or an adventurer in a randomly generated, persistent world.
Open world
Fantasy
4X (explore, expand, exploit, and exterminate)
Stealth
Sandbox
Survival
Open world
Fantasy
4X (explore, expand, exploit, and exterminate)
Stealth
Sandbox
Survival
37
Dune 2000
Dune 2000Real-time strategy taking place in Frank Herbert's "Dune" universe. The game is a remake of a classic RTS game "Dune 2". Player can play as a commander of one of three different factions: Harkonnen, Atreides or Ordos. Do you like the feeling you get when you have won over someone? If it was something that we had really worked hard, then the fell of victory is something precious and incalculable. The game Dune 2000 could help in giving your competitive spirit a new edge. It is an updated version of the Dune II. In this game the player would have to fight for an interesting thing; the control of the spices in the galaxy. The spices control could make you the most powerful there. The player has to choose to be one of the three houses first: Atreides, Harkonnen, or Ordos. Each house has its own vice and virtue and the right selection could give the player right start to the game but he could learn as well as, later in the game with time. Once you choose a side, you to win the King’s challenge of producing the most amount of spice. It won’t be as easy as it sounds. For getting the control of the spices, the player has to fight over the other two houses by all means. Dune 2000 is done with enough of stunt and live-in scenes to pep up the theme and there is a soothing sound score to add to the overall theme. It’s a game based on the Dune series book of Frank Herbert and gives the player a real pleasure of both combat and competition.
Action
Science fiction
Action
Science fiction
33 489
26
Dwarf Fortress
Dwarf FortressIn this complex construction/management/roguelike simulation, every generated world brings a unique challenge, whether it’s dwarves with their own simulated personalities or aquifers. Observe what makes your civilization fall into eventual decline, and learn for next time… until something else inevitably goes wrong. The combat model includes skills, body parts, material properties, aimed attacks, wrestling, pain, nausea, various poison effects, and much more. It’s difficult to convey the depth of the generation. Hundreds of animals and monsters, many of which are randomly created for each world, as well as generated poetry, musical forms, instruments, and dances for your dwarves to practice and perform. A dynamic weather model tracks wind, humidity, and air masses to create fronts, clouds, storms, and blizzards. Over two hundred rock and mineral types can appear, in their proper geological environments.
Open world
Fantasy
4X (explore, expand, exploit, and exterminate)
Sandbox
Survival
Open world
Fantasy
4X (explore, expand, exploit, and exterminate)
Sandbox
Survival
5 950
5
Metal Gear Solid HD Collection
Metal Gear Solid HD CollectionFrom the critically acclaimed director, Hideo Kojima, Metal Gear Solid HD Collection offers a handful of the most popular Metal Gear Solid titles from the past in true HD for the first time ever. Featuring three complete games, Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty, Metal Gear Solid: Snake Eater and Metal Gear Solid: Peace Walker, the HD Collection offers old and new fans a chance to experience the epic game play, design and storytelling of the MGS franchise. The "Metal Gear Solid (MGS)" series is the seminal work of Hideo Kojima, Japan's master game creator, and the progenitor of the stealth action game genre. The series has become a global phenomenon, with over 27 million copies sold worldwide. The player controls a secret agent from an elite special forces unit who is sent on solo sneaking missions through enemy installations, vast jungles, and sometimes even the thick of battle. Alone and surrounded by the enemy, even a special forces agent will find it tough to come out alive. But that is the secret behind the series' popularity-the cerebral challenge of figuring out how to avoid combat, and the thrill of sneaking through enemy territory undetected.The MGS series is also known for its storyline, which blends seamlessly with the gameplay. The scenarios are based on extensive research and incorporate the drama of actual developments in society. These elements have made MGS what it is today: a mature work of entertainment that transcends national borders and the confines of video games, and one of the leading products of the Japanese content business.
Action
Stealth
Action
Stealth
23 306
5