The next Pokémon?
Dave Gerardi -- Playthings, 4/1/2001
Whether or not the retail environment wants, much less needs, another collectible card game, Interactive Imagination will debut the first expansion set for Magi-Nation this month.
Glenn Halseth, vice president of sales and marketing, hopes his company's full-bore, multi-media product assault will turn the CCG, which debuted in October 2000, into a completely developed brand.
The plans are ambitious: four Game Boy Color titles (the first is out now), two novels set to release in the third and fourth quarters of 2001, action figures, comics, a Game Boy Advance title and a possible 2002 animated television series.
"We've got the hard-core gamer; now we're going after mass," said Halseth. Interactive Imagination is positioning Magi-Nation, which involves more than its share of super-powers and magics, between the young players of Pokémon and the more mature Magic: The Gathering audience. The game revolves around good and evil archetypes, simple gameplay and eye-catching artwork, said Halseth, rather than "death and killing."
The original game included five regions of the Magi-Nation lands. Future editions will expand the world.
