Tarot in videogames

I'm a huge survival horror video game fan. I love games like Resident Evil and Silent Hill.

The game I started on, The House of the Dead (An arcade shooter) used the Tarot as a quick cutscene between parts. They showed the Tree of Life spread and you'd see how you progressed from one area of the spread to the next.

Tonight a friend and I were talking about Silent Hill. He showed me a website that goes over the first three games. The website goes into how the creator links characters to the major arcana cards. It was really interesting.

As well in Silent Hill there's parts where you find Tarot cards.

Anyone know of any videogames that have the tarot in it?

Age of oracles: Taras journey. Although i suspect a lot of people wouldnt realise what its about, but tara=tarot, and it goes through the major arcana, its a hidden object game, its cute and i love it, in between scenes, the mini games are played with the minor arcana
And it actually had some really good insight into the cards too, would be great for someone learning tarot, it brings the meaning to life, so to speak. But its not a dark game, its fun. Well, i think so.

I don't know about recent games, but I played The Fool's Errand on my DOS emulator and after many a frustrating puzzle I fell in love with the majors only deck in the game, turns out there is another game with decks I had seen elsewhere!! Who is Brad Parker, his 8-bit art is awesome!!
http://thefoolserrand.com/01-the-fools-errand/tarot-story.htm

Did a google search for tarot in video games and found a random Japanese photo album with tarot cards from games...maybe? Guess they have a lot of game based decks in Japan.
http://www.giantbomb.com/profile/sm.../60896d3adaf2d6dc7894a807568d2e39/51-1067338/

There are some old threads here at the forum, try a search. I think the Persona games have turned up the most discussion.

The Persona series (a spinoff of the Shin Megami Tensei series) is saturated with tarot imagery, especially in the later games (Persona 3 and Persona 4). All of the enemies are linked to a major arcana. The idea behind the series is that certain individuals possess the power of "Persona"--the power to summon the other "selves" within them. In Persona 3 and 4, Personae are strengthened by interacting with other characters, who each represent one of the major arcana.

All of the Persona games are RPGs, not survival horror, but I've played all of them and they're all awesome. Persona 3 has just been re-released on PSP, and Persona 4 (for the PS2) should still be available. The very first Persona game was also updated and released on PSP, but it's more "old school" and has less of an emphasis on the tarot.

Here's the Amazon link for Persona 3 Portable:
http://www.amazon.com/Shin-Megami-T...r_1_1?s=gateway&ie=UTF8&qid=1285342031&sr=8-1

Persona 4:
http://www.amazon.com/Shin-Megami-T...r_1_1?s=gateway&ie=UTF8&qid=1285342103&sr=8-1

If you don't have a PSP, here is the link to Persona 3: FES, which is the original PS2 version of Persona 3 with additions like new costumes, events, and a new "Chapter" called "The Answer" which tries to tie up the plot of the main game:

http://www.amazon.com/Shin-Megami-T...r_1_2?s=gateway&ie=UTF8&qid=1285342031&sr=8-2

I would definitely recommend buying Persona 3 Portable if you can afford it. Persona 4 is also amazing, but there's less of an emphasis on tarot motifs and more of an emphasis on psychological concepts like "the shadow", as you may have guessed, the series is also heavily influenced by Jungian psychology.

I love this series, in case you can't tell!

ETA: The tarot cards in the second link Sagefire provides are the ones used in Persona 3 and 4. I believe they were either a pre-order bonus or released in a special edition in Japan.

I love it when tarot pops up in a video game

Quest for Glory IV: Shadows of Darkness
The game's hero receives several (very well designed and in-depth) readings from Magda, the leader of a local gypsy tribe. It's one of the only video game appearances of tarot that uses the minor arcana extensively. The game uses the Russian Tarot of St Petersburg.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quest_for_Glory:_Shadows_of_Darkness

The Beast Within: A Gabriel Knight Mystery
Gabriel's companion Grace receives a reading from a tourist couple visiting Germany (I forget which deck was used)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Beast_Within:_A_Gabriel_Knight_Mystery

Street Fighter
Rose, a fortune teller and the mystical descendant of a gypsy tribe is one of the fighters you can choose to play in the popular Street Fighter series. She hails from Genoa, Italy and uses magical attacks in her quest to defeat the series' main antagonist M. Bison whose power is a dark mirror version of her own. In the latest installment she reads with the Radiant Rider Waite
http://streetfighter.wikia.com/wiki/Rose

Ogre Battle
In this popular RPG tactical strategy game you could use tarot cards to influence the outcome of various battles. Each major arcana card has a different power (The Magician blasts opponents with fire, the Lovers makes enemies fight on your side, etc).

House of the Dead Series
An on-rails horror shooter in which the major bosses are based on tarot cards - though I don't think this was ever really explained.

HighPriestess said:

ETA: The tarot cards in the second link Sagefire provides are the ones used in Persona 3 and 4. I believe they were either a pre-order bonus or released in a special edition in Japan.

Click to expand...

If I remember correctly...

They were released the the Japanese-only preorder bundle for the original P3. They're very hard to find, because they are a Japanese-exclusive and many of the people who have them in Japan are video game collectors and are not willing to break up their set to sell just the cards.

There is a second set though. I believe they released a series of collectible cards and the major arcana (+ the four kings if I remember correctly) were part of it. Of course, getting a complete arcana means getting really lucky when buying the booster packs, or buying it from someone else who was.

Baroque, on the Wii, references a lot of non-player characters to the Majors.

Of course, I learned very quickly that there's a reason it sells for $8 used and didn't get much fanfare. What an annoying game.

MrAndrewJ said:

Baroque, on the Wii, references a lot of non-player characters to the Majors.

Click to expand...

I'm not sure if each NPC is linked to the arcana, but each enemy definitely is (one of them being a tarot card itself, with the Sephirot on its back), and there was a majors-only deck made that features the characters from that game.

It was also originally going to be a Saga Saturn game, got released for the PS1(?), and later remade for the PS2 and the Wii. I believe they made a sequel, but I'm not sure.

I personally found the game to be intriguing because it's so surreal, but I am terrible at it and didn't get very far. :/

Although the game itself isn't tarot related at all, there's an excellent mod (user-created modification) for Sid Meier's Civilization IV that uses (with permission, I'm sure) most of Stephanie Piu-Mun Law's cards for the Shadowscapes Tarot in a 'side' game (which is rather fun) meant to take up some wait time in a multi-player game, but which can also be accessed and played (against the computer) in single-player mode. The mod, which has been carefully designed as a 'fantasy' alternative to the standard Civ game, is called Fall from Heaven, and is available free (installed though only if you have Civ IV and its expansion, Beyond the Sword) from the huge Civilization Fanatics web site (google Civilization Fanatics). It's also included in an even more detailed mod-of-a-mod called Fall Further. The latter has such depth and is so much fun that for the past year and a half it's the only way I've played Civilization. And the side game is beautifully integrated into the main Civ mod so that the results of the game have an impact (not huge, but noticeable) on the main game. I'm not much of a gamer, but if you haven't discovered Meier's Civilization in one of its incarnations, I highly recommend it! Subtle, truly strategic (no 'real-time' strategy here), enormously deep, and hugely entertaining.