Animation Magic

Animation Magic (Russian: «Магия анимации», romanized: Magiya Animatsii) was a Russian-American animation studio founded in Gaithersburg, Maryland in 1991, with offices later added in Cambridge, Massachusetts and a 100%-owned subsidiary in Saint Petersburg, Russia. The company developed animations for CD-based software. It was acquired in December 1994 by Capitol Multimedia. The assets and rights that Capitol owned would be sold to Davidson & Associates in April 1997.

Animation Magic Inc.

Founded	1991 (Massachusetts branch) 1992 (Saint Petersburg branch)[1]
Founders	Igor Razboff and Dale DeSharone
Defunct	2001 (2001)[2]
Fate	Dissolved by Vivendi Universal
Headquarters	Gaithersburg, Maryland, U.S.
Number of locations	3
Products	Video games and animation
Number of employees	~150
Parent	Capitol Multimedia (1994–1997) Davidson & Associates (1997–1998) Vivendi Universal Games (1998–2001)
Subsidiaries	ООО "АМИ"

By 1994 Animation Magic had 90 employees, including 12 software engineers and approximately 60 animators, computer graphic, background and sprite artists. Its products included Hotel Mario, Link: The Faces of Evil,^[3] Zelda: The Wand of Gamelon,^[4] Mutant Rampage: Bodyslam, Pyramid Adventures,^[5] I.M. Meen,^[6] King's Quest VII: The Princeless Bride, Darby the Dragon, and the cancelled Warcraft Adventures: Lord of the Clans.^[7][8]

Legacy

Circa 2006, games by Animation Magic were major source materials for YouTube poops, specifically Hotel Mario, Link: The Faces of Evil, Zelda: The Wand of Gamelon, and I. M. Meen.^[9]

On September 6, 2020, over 200 animators collaborated to reanimate 21 minutes of cutscenes of Link: The Faces of Evil and Zelda: The Wand of Gamelon (both 1993).^{[10][11][12][13]} Nintendo Wire reported, "The ever-shifting mediums and the contrasting animation styles, ranging from professional and sophisticated to intentionally goofy and exaggerated, lend themselves incredibly well to cutscenes that were already chaotic and bizarre to begin with."^[11][12]