Magician (video game)

Magician
Developer(s)	Eurocom
Publisher(s)	Taxan
Designer(s)	Chris Shrigley
Programmer(s)	Tim Rogers
Artist(s)	Mat Sneap, Hugh Binns
Composer(s)	Neil Baldwin
Platform(s)	Nintendo Entertainment System
Release	NA: March 1991
Genre(s)	Action role-playing game
Mode(s)	Single-player

Magician is a side-scrolling action role-playing game released for the Nintendo Entertainment System. It was designed by Eurocom Entertainment Software and published by Taxan. There's a discrepancy of when the game was actually released. Eurocom's own website lists the release date as March 1990, but popular magazines of the era such as Nintendo Power, EGM and GamePro lists the game as being released around February-March 1991.

According to the game's manual, an evil magician named Abadon was able to use his power to summon groups of evil beasts, and then built a castle for himself. He then sent out his followers to rid the peace-loving land of Merlwood of its most powerful wizards, a task that was accomplished with ease. While this was going on, a young man named Paul, an apprentice magician who lives in the land of Serenna, is preparing to go on a quest to travel across the land to learn all of the secrets from the ancient masters. However, he hears of the purging of wizards by Abadon, and instead sets out as the last wizard alive to defeat Abadon.

The player must navigate Paul through puzzles and mazes in order to acquire more items, which allow him to learn more spells, and weapons, which allow him to cast certain spells or shield himself. More importantly, Paul is supposed to interact with people who can help him along his quest.

Apart from Paul's health, the player also manage his food and water levels, which decrease over time and are refilled by using food and water. Paul sets out with some food, water, and money. The game uses a unique system for learning and using magic spells: the player transcribes spells by piecing together sets of phonemes to form magic words, and each spell has a corresponding word that must be written to learn it. Players can simply write the spell words for every single spell at the start of the game (although writing a spell costs 50 mana each).

By helping other characters and completing various tasks, Paul grows more experienced, increasing his maximum mana and his rank as a magician.

The game uses a battery-backed save system, which allows the player to save their progress at any time. However, it only allows the player to save a maximum of 15 times, with four different save slots to use.

In December 2012 programmer Chris Shrigley released the source code for educational purposes to the public.^[1]

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• MobyGames is a commercial database website that catalogs information on video games and the people and companies behind them via crowdsourcing. This includes over 300,000 games for hundreds of platforms.^[1] Founded in 1999, ownership of the site has changed hands several times. It has been owned by Atari SA since 2022.

Edits and submissions to the site (including screenshots, box art, developer information, game summaries, and more) go through a verification process of fact-checking by volunteer "approvers".^[2] This lengthy approval process after submission can range from minutes to days or months.^[3] The most commonly used sources are the video game's website, packaging, and credit screens. There is a published standard for game information and copy-editing.^[4] A ranking system allows users to earn points for contributing accurate information.^[5]

Registered users can rate and review games. Users can create private or public "have" and "want" lists, which can generate a list of games available for trade with other registered users. The site contains an integrated forum. Each listed game can have its own sub-forum.

MobyGames was founded on March 1, 1999, by Jim Leonard and Brian Hirt, and joined by David Berk 18 months later, the three of which had been friends since high school.^[6][7] Leonard had the idea of sharing information about computer games with a larger audience. The database began with information about games for IBM PC compatibles, relying on the founders' personal collections. Eventually, the site was opened up to allow general users to contribute information.^[5] In a 2003 interview, Berk emphasized MobyGames' dedication to taking video games more seriously than broader society and to preserving games for their important cultural influence.^[5]

In mid-2010, MobyGames was purchased by GameFly for an undisclosed amount.^[8] This was announced to the community post factum , and the site's interface was given an unpopular redesign.^[7] A few major contributors left, refusing to do volunteer work for a commercial website.{{Citation needed|date=June 2025} On December 18, 2013, MobyGames was acquired by Jeremiah Freyholtz, owner of Blue Flame Labs (a San Francisco-based game and web development company) and VGBoxArt (a site for fan-made video game box art).^[9] Blue Flame Labs reverted MobyGames' interface to its pre-overhaul look and feel,^[10] and for the next eight years, the site was run by Freyholtz and Independent Games Festival organizer Simon Carless.^[7]

On November 24, 2021, Atari SA announced a potential deal with Blue Flame Labs to purchase MobyGames for $1.5 million.^[11] The purchase was completed on 8 March 2022, with Freyholtz remaining as general manager.^[12][13][14] Over the next year, the financial boost given by Atari led to a rework of the site being built from scratch with a new backend codebase, as well as updates improving the mobile and desktop user interface.^[1] This was accomplished by investing in full-time development of the site instead of its previously part-time development.^[15]

In 2024, MobyGames began offering a paid "Pro" membership option for the site to generate additional revenue.^[16] Previously, the site had generated income exclusively through banner ads and (from March 2014 onward) a small number of patrons via the Patreon website.^[17]

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