> The red (Lightning Bolt), green (Giant Growth) and black (Dark Ritual) are very solid cards and were seen in most decks of their respective colors in the early days of Magic, would be a bit too powerful today.

I don't think those three are super comparable; Dark Ritual is much stronger than Lighting Bolt, which is much stronger than Giant Growth. Dark Ritual has purposely not been printed in a "standard legal" set since 1999; it's not legal in the Modern format (cards printed in standard sets since 2003), only in formats that allow cards from any time period. Lighting Bolt is legal in Modern, with its last standard printing being in 2010, although the head designer has indicated that they wouldn't print it in a standard set now. Giant Growth was printed in a standard legal set just last year, meaning it's still currently legal to play in the Standard format (roughly speaking, cards printed in standard sets in the past two calendar years).

Dark Ritual was banned for as long as I remember (I played extended during 2003-2006). It's pretty much the definition of an OP card: if you were to draw 2 copies and a strong creature it'd be almost imposible to lose that game.

Dark Ritual was OP because of the abundance of BBB or 2B threats that it could plomp on the table on turn 1, most famous of them being Necropotence, of course, followed closely by Phyrexian Negator or Bad moon and a swarm of black weenies and with honourable mentions to Stupor or Duress + Ravenous Rats (Stupor and Duress not being threats, but still it sucks to lose two cards on turn 1 before you can do anything about it).

It's interesting to note that when the ability to produce a lot of quick mana with a sorcery was shifted to Red, two of them (Seething Song and Rite of Flame) also got banned (in Modern).

yes, the ability is so strong that even significantly weaker variants got banned.

Interestingly even the third most powerful boon is powerful enough to be a multi-format all star.

The last two of course... are not.

Growth still gets printed pretty frequently. Pretty sure it's legal in standard right now.

But don't forget all of the other broken stuff blue had from the start: timewalk and timetwister, to name two.

We old people used to joke that the most powerful card printed of all item was "island".

I think it hasn't been playable outside of limited for a very long time though.

Ixalan standard had a powerful monoblue Tempo deck that used Curious Obsession and cheap scry cards to draw a ton while attacking with cheap fliers. I think it was tier 1 actually.

Interesting! I don't really follow standard much to be honest, I was aware of the curious obsession deck but I didn't know that it played giant growth.

Huh. No, sorry, that's a misunderstanding. The monoblue tempo deck didn't play giant growth. I thought you were talking about playing Islands :)

No blue also got the best cards afterwards. Jace the Mind Sculptor, True Name Nemesis, Delver of Secrets, Snapcaster Mage, Narset Parting Veil, Ponder, Urza, Oko, Uro, etc.

Blue's color identity is just 'being really good at Magic' it seems

Blue is the color of intellectualism and prioritizing logic. By its nature, blue is prone to being good at strategy. Magic is a strategy game, so it makes sense blue is inherently good at it.

And that's a bit tongue in cheek, but in all seriousness blue is the color of mind tricks and the hacker mentality, so it makes sense blue prefers manipulating game state in ways other colors just won't think of doing, and unfortunately the game's designers grossly underestimated just how powerful "manipulating game state" is.

No I mean blue also got the best aggressive creatures and planeswalkers and value creatures at aggressive rates. It has little to do with 'logic' they just plain gave blue a 3/2 flier for one mana.

Jace was banned for a long time for a good reason