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How do you go about taking a massive, beloved video game series like Final Fantasy and placing it within the rules and constraints of a trading card game like Magic: The Gathering? For developers at Wizards of the Coast, hundreds and hundreds of pages full of artwork from the Final Fantasy games came to the rescue. 

In an article posted on Magic: The Gathering's website, Dillon Deveney wrote about how the MTG team benefited from a sense of synergy with folks from Square Enix. As it turned out, there were tons of Square Enix employees who also played Magic: The Gathering, and were thus familiar with the type of art style and design common amongst Magic cards. For Deveney and the other developers designing the cards in the Final Fantasy set, it was important to both honor the unique artistic legacy and identity of the Final Fantasy games while still creating cards that looked "like Magic cards." Square Enix employees' pre-existing appreciation for Magic: The Gathering made the process even easier. 

"I would tour around the office and pepper Final Fantasy fans with random questions like, 'What's a boss fight you struggled with in your favorite Final Fantasy game that you'll never forget?' and 'If I told you we were making a red burn spell from Final Fantasy VI or earlier, what's the first thing you think of?'" Deveney wrote. "I would also ask our Square Enix partners similar questions about their own titles. Whenever Square Enix and Wizards gave me the same answer, I knew we were on the right track!"

Deveney explained that for newer titles within the Final Fantasy series, Square Enix sent over "generous amounts of high-quality screenshots across gameplay and cutscenes along with internal concept art" that was then compiled into a "development guide—a massive visual guide that's a one-stop shop for all the information needed to work on a project, like a world guide for a Magic Multiverse set." At first, the document ended up being over 1,000 pages long, before it was cut down to 695 pages. Deveney writes, "For context, a typical development guide that we would make for a Universes Beyond set is probably closer to 120 pages." 

The comprehensiveness of the Final Fantasy development guide goes to show just how much dedication went into honoring each entry in the original video game series. Wizards of the Coast's efforts have paid off, because there are cards representing every mainline Final Fantasy game within the crossover set. Every Final Fantasy fan has their favorite Final Fantasy game, and developers from Magic: The Gathering were prudent to leave something for everyone within the crossover set. 

You don't need to beat the game to prepare for the next one—here are all the major new and upcoming games coming our way.