Magic: The Gathering PC

Every so often (almost yearly now), I feel a great urge to revisit games that I had spent countless hours playing in the past. Many times they are games on ancient or defunct computer systems (Atari or Commodore), 20-year old arcade games, or DOS-based classics. Microsoft's move to Windows XP left a lot of MS-DOS and even Windows 95 era games in the dust. Even with the XP's compatibility mode (which thankfully has worked for a good deal of favorites), many games won't run or worse yet, won't even install.

Magic: The Gathering is one of the most successful collectible card games and has seen its fair share of electronic versions. One of the most popular was Microprose's PC version released in 1997 for Windows 95. It used cards from the fourth edition of the game (with many deadly cards like Black Lotus and Serra Angel) and the two add-on games (Spells of the Ancients and Duels of the Planeswalkers) added cards from a couple of expansion sets each. With all versions installed, and the ManaLink patch for multiplayer, it was a steal for the price. It was also graphically adequate for its time. The single player campaign mode was actually a lot of fun. You could also build custom decks and download those built by other players. All of this was before the official online version, MTG Online a few years later.

Recently, a friend enlightened about Shandalar.com's instructions on how to get the Microprose version up and running under Windows XP! Now, there are other options for running these old games (using Virtual PC, which I may cover in a future article) but this procedure will allow you to play without too much hassle. The whole thing takes about 10-15 minutes. I would recommend getting the fix file and loading into the compatibility tool instead of going through all of the settings for each .EXE file in the game.

Even if you've never played Magic before, this is worth checking out. The game can seem complex at first, so do yourself a favor and spend a little time reading the basic rules and learning the flow of the game. There is also a built-in tutorial to teach you the basic phases.

I've tried it out and am happy to report that it works very nicely! I am happily plundering cards and riches in the land of Shandalar once again!

Update: Shortly after I started playing this version, I discovered that a player-made patch - Manalink 2.0 - existed. You have to register and go to the "shop" to download the patch (or search on a BitTorrent site). It includes a ton of missing cards from the sets included in the game (gold-bordered legend creatures, etc) that you can use for dueling. Very very cool!