The Most Technical Roblox Fighting Game | Rise and Fall of Black Magic

Black magic was the first game that ever introduced me to active input, input delay, ping and such and I was like 13/14 sweating my butt off tryna use the intricate characters having a fight of my life with the sweats as they proceed invert my Roblox character (skill issued)

only thing i remember about black magic is hopping on it for 2 seconds as a kid, getting cooked, and then proceeding to leave to never look back again

Black Magic must stay dead. It is a corpse. It is a rotting, sickly corpse that has had about thirteen different revival spells cast upon it. But its concept for sure isn't dead, its influence still appears in so many different games either semi-related or even completely unrelated newgen experiences- and I don't think it'll disappear anytime soon for what it's worth. rest in piss black magic, you were strong.

i remember getting checked so god damn hard dark magic players are like "Next step, discombobulate." "neck broken, discombobulate." "colon fractured discombobulate." "target winded discombobulate." "discombobulated, discombobulate."

i miss when blox fruits didnt eat all of the playerbase in the platform

No shot, you just unlocked half my childhood memory, and I'm horrified that I recognize half the players in your footage.

BM1 is a huge part of the reason I'm part of the competitive FGC as an adult. The nostalgia I have for playing this cannot be understated–although I stuck to the tamer side of keystrokes for most of my playtime in AoS and Kunomai, this game stuck with me in a way I can't describe. Being one of the first people to find new things like the AoS+wings healthbug and being able to watch the game's rare updates to movesets and characters is a treasure, and I'm glad I got to witness a good portion of its heyday. BM1 may not be a perfect game or the best game, but it's full of fond memories and a community I feel I'll never quite leave. Rest in peace.

Very surprised you didn't mention Shards of Genesis. While not directly tied with BM, it takes heavy inspiration (as in some of the same devs, same classes, same mechanics, same maps, same factions, literally Senshi and Enigma), and basically just polishes it to a decent degree. I would say it's the closest thing to a direct sequel. Anyways, great video. I used to play BM a lot when it was first released, but ended up losing my account, and all of my memories with it. It basically became a sleeper agent. Glad to see people still talk about it, despite the fact finding any info on it is straight up harder than solving Cicada 3301.

As someone who's at least been around to see Black Magic in its final 2 to 3-ish years and mainly being a somewhat known BM2 player with basically no experience with keystroke classes, thanks for documenting all of this. Of all the Script Fighters Roblox had to offer, this is probably by far the most iconic one. Who knows, maybe someone will bring this game, this world, to its unrealized potential. Maybe I can gain the motivation to go back to the game and find a Keystroke class that works for me. (Can't say I'm too confident though, lol)

I've been playing roblox since 2016, and games like Script Skirmish, Black Magic and STRIFE! were pretty much my childhood this video was extremely nostalgic and means a lot to me

I remember the introduction of the emma series weapons. There were NO combo videos or guides around and it was all hearsay for how to use them. You basically had to find a master and beg to learn how to use keystroke weapons lmao. The most common was the big sword you heald backwards, but there still were plenty of niche moves no one even knew about. I remember kids begging me to teach them and got high off of that pretty much. I used to think I was so cool bc I knew how to use secret cutscene moves and grab moves built into the emma2 ravenger (the black magic logo weapon). No one used that weapon bc it was clunky and stupidly hard to use, but I kicked ass with it because it made 12 yr old me feel unique. Also cried when the ASAD counter spell that nuked ur opponent got removed from the sword. Yes, about a decade later I still remember keystrokes, I had issues.

Someone actually did a video on Black Magic (1). That's crazy! And I'm in two spots... As someone who was around for ~80% of it's history as a moderator, admin, and even just a normal player at the start, this video does tickle my heart. This video is probably one of the best ways to explain the evolution and downfall of BM1, which I do agree! The player base has always fluctuated, but the concept was always there, with all the little things bringing people back, be the keystrokes or even just hanging out with their friends. But even though its been years, the concept is still loved and the game has influenced many. When BM flourished during its time, the community as a whole was a blazing wildfire. Many groups were made just for the appreciation of certain classes, and there were community-led leaderboards for who were at the top of their league for the favorites they loved to play. During it's peak, there were many tournaments hosted, with a variety of prizes to be taken. All the factions were mostly community-led, but were definitely community-powered. Many ideas were thrown around, and community-made maps and classes also existed, but many sadly never saw the light. And as a small fun fact, a lot of this existed before Discord was even a thing. Lots of communications outside of ROBLOX were through Skype or the group wall. What a time. I remember the times when I was mod/admin during the OG Black Magic days. Besides banning those who'd break the rules and other management, I'd make things fun as much as I could for the servers I hung around in. Soup store on the side of Silent Town, building random buildings out of bridges, having parties in Condemned Town, cleaning the floor with definitely no other intent, drawing people I saw around the place... I loved the community that would like the sprinkles of fun I provided when I could, and I continue to cherish the time I had with them. I hope that the experiences people had with me and everyone else, from the team and the rest of the community from back then, became a memory that people remembered. Despite all this, all good things must come to an end. Shoutout to those who tried to spark the flame once again with BM1, but everyone else had moved on to other things in their lives, and newer players would always feel the outdatedness of BM1. Even though BM1 has basically come to an end, I still talk to the friends and acquaintances I've made along the way. I hope others who were active in the community back in the day managed to get some friendships out of it, or at least have inspired those in some way. I'm unsure if there will ever be a game with such a similar concept in the near future, but the drive is there. Have a great day, whoever you are! 💜

Forgot to shout out Vertoxico for providing clips, huge thanks to him and just being a cool guy, you can see him as the lil purple avatar in the video 👍

7:31 "Discrepancies everywhere just end my suffering" i can't bro.. you just got a new subscriber 😭

As someone who has been playing Black Magic since 2010, it was really sad to see it fall from popularity. It singlehanded inspired me to get into Roblox game development and I still follow the devs to this day on their new projects. Black Magic will always hold a place in my heart as that one game I got infinite comboed to death by 50 people using oversized pickaxes.. Edit: To add on to this, me and my best irl friend love Black Magic and bonded immensely over trying to find out the funniest combo with berzerker or using obscure classes against each other. The community around the game was pretty rough, but when you find that one server full of people who just want to mess around, it was like a whole different game filled with amazing and fun people. While I’m still really sad it has fallen out of its old glory, it will always have a place in my heart for the amazing lore, the fundamental aspect of combining multiple creators in one big game and the friendships I made through it. It really was. A Black Magic

The BEST aspect of this game is the hidden moves some classes had. Like on Paladin you had a muffin to heal yourself and a 'secret' 2-button move that made you into a self exploding nuke. These were never in the control settings for any of those classes, but any player was friendly enough to teach these to you. I remember being like 12/13 and spending my allowance on all the Black Magic game-passes I could get ahold of (this happened multiple times) I also remember getting recruited in a BM "clan" and they had me make a Skype and everything, we would join servers and just 1v1'd everyone until we wiped the server. There was such a nice friendly aspect to the game that I feel like should've attracted way more sweats/salty players than it actually did. And now I'm playing games that have this similar feel of gameplay. Good times.

LETS GOOO IT DROPPED Edit: just finished the video, honestly one of the best documentaries/video essays I've seen. It did an amazing job at explaining bm1, the editing is outstanding, and the video was very interesting and entertaining. Thank you and everyone else who contributed to this video for making it.

So I've been in and out of the community for a good while, one of the things Nylium has expressed before, is that maintenance of the game is abhorrent. Alot of the classes in BMU require a Filter Enabled Conversion script to be functional, which spawned alot of these "Techs". Additionally because of this, there was always something new to fix when the game updated, and I think that gets exhausting. With how ruthless the community is regarding changes and balancing it's a wonder Nazo lasted as long as he did.

Yoo you mentioned "Strife!"? I had played that game back then (didn't know of Black Magic though unfortunately) and remembered the exploiters there too as you spoke about them. From what I'm seeing, it was similar to BM so I'm just kinda happy to see others know about the game too. Though I didn't know of the original Black Magic back then, I was there in BM2 for the open test phase where the only class was Assailant...

As someone who joined the Black Magic community very later on when I discovered Black Magic II in early 2022, the whole state and history of BM1 has always felt mysterious to me. Almost everyone who plays BM2 and is active on the Discord server are people who all know each other and were players of BM1 for a long time, contributing to many of the events of BM1's history that are discussed in this video. However, as an outlier, I didnt't exactly feel a connection to this community, yet I still held curiosity for its past. The history of this game and its playerbase eluded me for a while, but recently, and especially thanks to this video, I can finally begin to see the bigger picture of this fun little game I thought looked cool back in 2022. It feels like uncovering an ancient civilization that lived beneath me all along. Nice video, well done.