Feel the Magic XY/XX Game by Sega (Sonic Team) Reviewed by Philip "Pocket Squirrel" Wesley Size: 128 megabits Save: batteries (1 slot) Released: 2004 Works with: Nintendo DS. Rated: T (Suggestive Themes, Crude Humor, Mild Violence) Quick Opinion: OWN **************************************************************************** Opening Snide Remarks: The game formerly known as "Project Rub" actually made it to the US of A as a LAUNCH TITLE. Now, there is something that everyone should know about this title. Feel the Magic XY/XX is NOT a dating sim or a pornographic game. There is one more thing people should know about this Feel the Magic XY/XX. Is this game any good? That is what this review will tell you! **************************************************************************** Gameplay Descripion: The premise is simple, guy meets girl, falls in love and wants to earn her affections. So, he joins up a traveling performance group named the Rub Rabbits and sets out to win her heart. With me so far? Good. Once you touch the screen for the first time there are a few options for you to peruse: STORY, MEMORIES, OPTIONS, and MANIAC. STORY is our first step in this wild, wild game. It follows out hero in his quest to get into the heroines... heart. So, the first order of business is to present her with a gift. The hero's Rub Rabbit pals suggest Goldfish. Suddenly someone bumps into our hero and the goldfish go flying into the air and then down some passerbys throat! WHAT WILL WE DO? The entirety of this game uses the touch screen to do everything. In the case of saving the goldfish, rub the water in a cut-away view of the passerbys stomache in an attempt to get him to release the fish from his stomache in a truly Ashley Olsen way. You have a certain amount of lives to do this in and you lose a life if one of the fish goes the Elvis Presley route. After this level, you are treated to three choices of gameplay. The options are PARACHUTE, CANDLE, and CART. I think I will walk you completely through a few of the games play options in a spoiler free way. PARACHUTE: NOthing impresses girls like throwing yourself out of a plane to plummet to your death! Quickly tap out the numbers to activate your parachute or this will become TAPPING OF THE DEAD! CANDLE: A giant candle has appeared! Quickly BLOW IT OR DIE! I can not wait to read the Kenneth Starr report on this one. You can tap on the people to make them blow air toward the candle OR you can blow on the microphone in an attempt to prevent firey doom. CART: This would be one of the reasons the game has a "Do not attempt to recreate the stunts in this game" warning at the front. Quickly remove the obstacles to let the shopping cart racers through. How you do remove the obstacles? Just touch them and brush them out of the way. When you beat any of these games, you start to fill the magic in a giant heart meter. Once it reaches 100%, you move onto the next level. Which just so happens to be a BOSS stage. BULL: Oddly enough, this is not as random as it first appears, but I will not tell you why. A lot of RAMPAGING BULLS are headed your way and you must tap them to knock off the controlling devices that cause them to rage. You must tap out the bulls and leave the skiers alone. Some bulls require you to tap them in a repetitive manner. Once those are out of the way..... We move onto one of the four LOVE SCENES. No, not those kind of love scenes. Our heroine has somehow become dirty and she needs you to faloofa away the dirt with what appears to be small animals. Gently rub her arms and face to remove that pesky dirt. She'll love you forever. Oh, don't rub too hard or you will make her mad. There's more levels after this, including a few boss fights and some unique games including a Space Channel 5-ish Dancing game, a game where you blow on the screen to move a boat, and some stranger things like spray painting, fighting giant snakes, shooting scorpions, and helping the heroine get out of some wet clothing. Oddly enough, the story -while a bit suggestive- is really innocent. Anyone who has ever seen ANY kind of romantic anime will be able to call what happens in parts of this game before they happen. There is also a subtle storyline that ties all of the craziness together. MEMORIES is where the games you complete end up so you can play them again to earn stars to unlock items for MANIAC. In this mode, you go through all the levels in each game sequences with only one life. Most of the levels have ten different difficulty stages. When you beat a stage, you earn a star. OPTIONS is where you change the language from English to Japanese and vice versa. The Japanese title screen is different and I won't spoil why. MANIAC is where you alter the way the Heroine's avatar looks in the game. It does not have any effect on the cutscenes, but it does effect her menu persona. You can give her bunny ears, a nurses outfit, or a bunch of other hats, hairstyles, clothes, and shoes. The whole school girl outfit is for the R.Kelly in all of us. Or not. Please no. You unlock clothes in this mode by beating the game, inserting various other Sonic Team made GBA games, collecting stars in MEMORIES mode, or tapping on various parts of the cut-scenes to earn "Rabbits." In effect, this mode has some great costume options from Ulala to a Santa Suit. Of course, you have to unlock all the neat clothing items. Beating it in Hell mode unlocks what I refer to as the "James Bond Girl" suit. She wears whatever you have created in Maniac in the dancing level as an added bonus. Liked: This game really makes use of the Nintendo DS features. It gets really fun as you yell at the system (The manual suggests you yell SEGA!), tap out evil plants, fight a huge robot battle, or generate static electricity to stop your rival. The game is just insane in terms of gameplay and it also has a decent story in which you really start to enjoy the company of the young couple in love. Woo! And once you beat it the first time there is a HARD mode and a HELL mode to unlock and play through. This game is beatable in about a few hours, but you will want to play it again. The replay value is a bit higher than you would think in this title. Hated: Only 18 chapters apparently and no multi-player options. It just needs MORE LEVELS. Oh, I want to have a storyline for the girl too. **************************************************************************** Graphics Description: This is either a cell-phone commercial or a Weezer video gone horribly wrong. The graphics are unique as all the people are just black sillohuettes with different hair styles. Our hero is a guy with a helmet, knee pads, and a black shirt with a goldfish on it. OBEY THE GOLDFISH. The graphics work well and are a bit comic bookish in nature. Oh, the FIRST big drama moments in a Nintendo DS game have arrived. You know those sequences that the Game Boy Family of systems has that make you go "Whoa" when you see them? You know what I'm talking about. Like the sillohuette of Snake holding a gun execution style to Sophia's head, or the close up of S.A.X. in Metroid Fusion. There are just some sequences in here that are just cool and highly memorable. Although most of the time, you will just laugh at how insane some of the scenarios are. (Although, pay attention. It all makes sense. The devices on the cows, the scorpion truck, the giant snake, the giant plants. Your rival is evil and rich indeed.) The game presents a large amount of storyline through the graphics and the little details inside of it. Needless to say, the graphics are perfect for this game. Oh, a few of the costumes are references to other Sega Sonic Team games like Sonic, Puyo Puyo, Space Channel 5, and NIGHTS. There are also other mentions of the illustrious Sega heritage in this game. From the Sonic Adventure bumpers in "CHASER" to some details in the background or shapes in PAINT. Some areas in this game are just fantastic, like the giant robot battle, and the "NIGHTMARE" area. A lot of care went into this game. The game just looks great, even though it is not using much of the Nintendo DS graphics power. This is NOT a showcase title for the systems graphics, instead this is a game to show off how interactive DS games can be. Liked: You just HAVE to love tapping polygonal purple bulls, the graphics tell a good although simple story that you can not help but enjoy. The little breaktime sequences that give you a "coffee break" style intermission in some of the levels are funny. The game has some serious class and definately legitimizes cell-shading as an art form. Hated: Well, if someone is looking over your shoulder while you help the heroine out of her soaked dress in one of the scenarios.. they'll think something is wrong with you and then you'll have to kill them. Oh, well. Just bury them in the backyard like I do. **************************************************************************** Sound/Music Description: Oddly enough, most of the music in this game is acapella stuff with humming, "do-wahs", and such. The music is pretty happy and very endearing. The sound effects and voice clips are somewhat suggestive and range from odd little moans from the heroine to the mooing of angry cows. Oh, the COWS. Warning! Playing without headphones may disturb the other people on the bus. Liked: The music is pretty addictive. Hated: Some of those sound effects demand you use headphones. **************************************************************************** Play Control/Game Design: The entire game uses the touch screen, and the microphone even better than many of the other games at launch. This is Sega taking one of Nintendo's console ideas and running with it. No wonder they were so excited about the DS. I definately look forward to seeing what they do in the future. If you ever need to defend the odd features of the Nintendo DS to those who would question the point of two screens, a touch screen, and a microphone: Show them this game. A few minutes of playing this and people will get the point. Sadly, this game feels more like a demo for the Nintendo DS abilities than it should. The game design is fun, fairly solid, and definately worth the money to own. However, the game feels like foreplay for better games. This game will definately soothe the savage Wario Ware fan for quite some time, but it will not replace Wario Ware in the eyes of the fans. Maybe it is just me, but I want to see a game where ALL of the options available for the Nintendo DS are implemented. Here is a list of the various options and specialized game card designs that Nintendo and developers can implement into their DS games. 1. Motion Sensing 2. Touch Screen 3. Dual Screens 4. Microphone 5. Temperature and Light Sensing (With Option Pak) 6. Time of Day 7. Date, Season and Year 8. Rumble Feedback (With Option Pak) 9. Wireless and WiFi options 10. Fantastic audio and video compression 11. Additional Memory/Hard Drive (With Option Pak) 12. Using GBA titles to unlock features Feel the magic barely uses options 10, and 7 on that list. It completely ignores options 1, 5, 6, 8, and 9 on the list. There is so much MORE that can be added to this game and it will be most fortunate to see if Sega uses those other options in a sequel. I do think that it was nice of Sega to have the game tell people Merry Christmas, and Happy Birthday. Nice touch. While the scenarios are unnatural, the gameplay control feels completely natural to the point where you game on instinct in some scenarios. This game feels like a very successful experiment and I can not wait for Sega to show off what this experiment was for. Liked: This is a great showcase of what type of control and game play can be done on the Nintendo DS. Hated: Out of the list of 12 options that can be implemented into NDS games, Sega is only using about half. This game is not for everyone and is definately a title that defines quirky. I liked it, but it may be a little too weird or too cut and dry for some people. If I order Delicious Steak, and Sega gives me Dancing Shrimp.. I can only state that the shrimp are fun, but not exactly what I really wanted. **************************************************************************** Improve: I got the girl, now what? I want to court her more, I want the rival to return, I want to propose to her, and I want to see a sequel where this couple gets married. Needless to say, I just want more of this game. There seem to be about three empty spaces in the Memories menu. I hope we get unlockables later on to fill those spaces. RIYL: Games like Space Channel 5, and Rez. **************************************************************************** Final Words: Is it okay to feel the magic in this title? Yes! I would definately recommend the purchase -or at least the rental- of this title. Everyone needs to play it at least once. **************************************************************************** Score Gameplay: ***** Graphics: **** Sound/Music: *** Play Control/Game Design: ***** Personal Opinion: **** Total: 22 out of 25 Final Score: 88% **************************************************************************** Currently Known Codes: It lists in the manual what GBA games unlock MANIAC items in this game. However, just beat Hell Mode and you do not need to use GBA games to unlock anything.