Angela Kirkwood illustrates a reissue of Magical Athlete – the zany Japanese board game that’s absurd and fun in equal measure

After being out of print for over a decade, the cult-classic racing game Magical Athlete is being relaunched by CMYK, the party games developer behind beloved games like Wavelength, Spots and Monikers, as well as reimagined classics like Quacks. Better yet, the reimagined edition features new product design and vibrant artwork from Angela Kirkwood, with gameplay refined and updated by Magic: The Gathering designer Richard Garfield.

Magical Athlete is as absurd as it sounds – players draft a team of strange characters, like Sisyphus, Banana and Huge Baby, all of which have different abilities and effects on the board. Originally created by Takashi Ishida and released in Japan, the re-issue carries over a wealth of the unique humour and absurdity of it’s creator.

Angela feels that if there was ever a project made for her, this would be it. Like the board game, her work is character driven and eccentric, but after drawing 36 characters, she did begin to wonder how many more ways she could draw a nose. CMYK pushed Angela to lean on her skills as an animator as much as she is a skilled illustrator. The updated visual identity is bold and kinetic, superpowering the already over-the-top characters. Taking inspiration from the Hanna-Barbera cartoons like Wacky Races, and drawing on her background as an animator, Angela tried to inject dynamism by posing characters so they would feel in motion, adding speed lines and animation smears to create that exaggerated sense of energy and action.

With the simplicity and tone of the colours, the cartoon-logic of the game and archetypal characters that feel simultaneously original and a tribute to zany children’s drawings of the past, Magical Athlete’s entire identity – spearheaded by graphic designer Elizabeth Goodspeed, who also designed the board, card shapes and rulebook – has a wonderful childhood quality to it.

The game focuses on creating chaos and the aesthetic follows suit – blue cats and purple elephants race on a retro-disco board – it’s all so whimsical. “I think in the context of boardgames today, they tend to lean more into fantasy or semi-photorealistic in their renderings of worlds, so maybe it feels original in that not many new boardgames look like this at the moment!” says Angela. “But CMYK has been putting a real focus on aesthetics and graphic design in all their games, so it feels like they’re bucking this trend.”

Magical Athlete has been reimagined with the studio’s commitment to elegant production and quality components – meaning there’s no plastic gameplay or storage components. Every game piece is carved and illustrated with care, nailing that crucial tactile element to party games that makes friends and family come back time and time again. “Magical Athlete is a game I’ve adored for nearly 15 years—and has been out of print the entire time,” said CMYK’s chief operating officer, James Nathan Spencer. “Making the game available again has been a passion project of mine, and I’m thrilled that we’re finally able to make it happen.”