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What is your first memory of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles? Chances are, if you were born at a certain time, it was probably through an arcade game. And if you fall into this camp, Magic: The Gathering wants to honor your early brushes with TMNT with their upcoming Magic: The Gathering Universes Beyond set. 

Of course, at this point in time, the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles exist in a plethora of media forms - something that their Magic: The Gathering set is also representing. But it's in the set's commander deck that the iconic comic book heroes' video game history will take center stage. 

"Our inspiration for the commander deck was leaning hard into the TMNT video games that are such a big part of Generation X, millennials, just anybody who grew up in the '80s, '90s, early aughts," said narrative designer Crystal Frasier at a press event. 

"We know so many people came to TMNT through arcade games, and we only touched it just a tiny bit in the main set. So we wanted to have a deck dedicated to that," said game designer Eric Engelhard. "There's a lot of TMNT video game-specific stuff as well as just general video game tropes that we brainstormed and wrote on a big whiteboard. And we decided which ones we can make the coolest cards for." The video game-inspired cards in the commander deck include ones like Level Up, Arcade Cabinet, and High Score. 

But the video game references in the TMNT commander deck go further than just familiar gaming jargon.

"Commander decks don't really have narratives on their own, but at least within the narrative team, the idea we were thinking as we worked on this whole thing is, the Turtles go off to have a nice, fun night at the local arcade after-hours. And a light next door brings Tempestra to life, who is a minor villain from the 1980s, who I personally adore," Frasier said, referring to the character from an episode of the 1987 Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles animated series, who is a video game villain within the world of the show. 

"Tempestra is a video game character who brings other video games to life, so the idea is she has created video game dopplegangers of a bunch of the Turtles' allies and opponents, and this is the Turtles trying to contain that threat," Frasier said. 

If you, like Frasier, have been a fan of Tempestra all of these years, then I hope you'll make it down to Commander Night at your local game shop when Magic: The Gathering x Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles hits stores on March 6. 

Whether you are a Commander player, a regular at your local game shop's FNM event, or simply love collecting Magic: The Gathering cards, you've landed in the right place. From Universes Beyond to the furthest reaches of the Magic Multiverse, we've got you covered here at Popverse. 

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