ogre battle; tarot cards in a video game

Thread originally posted on the Aeclectic Tarot Forum on 15 Nov 2004, and now archived in the Forum Library.

krazymayj	15 Nov 2004
anyone here ever played ogre battle for the super nintendo or another system? for those of you that didnt, yet are still interested in this thread,it was a map based strategy game, that incorporated the major arcana as a powerfull magic tool for winning hard battles. every time you liberated a town, you got a random major arcana. also, in the beginning character creation menu, were you created your hero, random cards were pulled from the pack, and question were asked of you based on the card to determine your actions in a given set of circumstances. the nature of the questions asked, plus the answers you gave, plus the kind of cards that were pulled, determined what kind of strenghths and weaknesses your character had, as well as their beginning stats, and the kind of army they started with. the majors were a one use perishable, but renewable magic source. the kinds of effects were varied depending on the card. i may be able to recall most of the effects, so heres the ones i can remember; the fool; made all the enemies for one battle flee in terror. the magician; a powerfull magic ball that hit all enemies preistess;full life restore for your unit empress; half life restore for your unit emporer; in the battles, each character in a unit had a set amount of times they could attack before the battle ended. this card gave your characters an extra attack. heirophant; put your enemies to sleep lovers;charmed your opponents, making them attack one another justice;cold based attack for all enemies strength;increased attack power hermit;lightning based attack for all enemies wheel;increased luck(made finding items and critical hits more likely) death; instant death to enemies that were vulnerable to dark attacks devil; dark attack for all enemies chariot; powerfull physical attack for all enemies sun; powerfull light/fire attack attacking all characters including yours depending on vulnerability moon; agility up star; defense up judgment; powerfull light attack for all enemies world; invulnerability these are the ones i can remember i think i only missed temperance. they made no sense to me at the time as i hadent yet gotten into reading cards. the questions for the random cards pulled were of interest too.. the star for example was "you are looking at a star lit sky before a battle, what are you hoping for?" then there were three possible answers; luck for your army, victory for your army, bravery for your army. the hermit was particularly interesting"your king commands you to make a magical potion, what do you create"a wealth potion, an immortality potion, poison. trippy, huh?

Scion	15 Nov 2004
Excellent! I love games that use real traditions to beef up the created worlds. Pity that more designers don't follow suit...

krazymayj	16 Nov 2004
absolutely, the game was made by a company called Atlas. id recommend it to anyone. it was really ahead of its time. there was a reputation meter in it. whenever you did something to please the people, it grew, and you became good. it had negatives too, whenever you did something that displeased the people, it fell and you became hated and evil. the game ending you got was determined by how much or little reputation you had. evil or good, you even had the option of returning the land to the original heir to the throne; a good prince. if you entered FIRESEAL as your name, you got an extra stage with a different hero who was a legend. you could even pick to use a male or female as your main character. ogre battle was made by atlas for the 16 bit super nintendo, as well as the thirtytwo bit sony playstation. any one who is interested could probably find it in a game catalogue if they want. if your curious, the character creation screen with the majors were randomly generated majors, six cards, plus one more that you chose from all the cards in the pack when you were done. i dont, however know if the cards after the first were chosen according to how you answered.

Pook	16 Nov 2004
My SO has been playing the online game Final Fantasy XI and I soon discovered that there are collectible cards called tarut cards that control these magic-feuled creations called cardians. Among them are The Hermit, Death (of course) and most of the others (I think....I haven't seen them all) with the suits being spades, hearts, clubs and diamonds. It's kindof an interesting concept, though I am not sure I like the control issue. I was just delighted to see that there was exposure to tarot for some who would otherwise not have had any. Anybody else see tarot in video games?

JemCheeta	21 Feb 2005
Actually, the reason that I came onto this board is to do research for a tarot based video game that I want to create... I want it to be an rpg, that follows the main character through the path of the fool, with various situations representative of the minor arcana and major arcana, characters corresponding to the court cards. Talk about a grand ambition, right? Either way, I'll learn how to program better, and also become more and more familiar with my cards along the way :)

The ogre battle; tarot cards in a video game thread was originally posted on 15 Nov 2004 in the Tarot Games & Fun board, and is now archived in the Forum Library. Read the active threads in Tarot Games & Fun, or read more archived threads.