Feel the Magic XY/XX was a game that came out of nowhere for me. Nintendo promised all these new ways to play with their new DS handheld featuring two screens with one of them having touch inputs. Unfortunately they largely failed to take advantage of this at launch. Instead, they left it up to third parties who mostly fell flat on their face. This is where Feel the Magic comes in. It’s a mini-game collection following a bizarre overarching narrative which screams of classic Sega. This game in particular stands out because of it’s heavy use of the Nintendo DS unique inputs and features. At launch I loved it. With the advent of mobile games I was concerned the experience wouldn’t hold up. After all touch screens are far from being a novelty now. So is Feel the Magic still worth playing? Let’s check it out!
So how unique is this game? Well let’s start with the story. You play as a nameless young man who falls in love at first sight with a girl after a chance encounter. Her feelings aren’t reciprocated, and so he’s going to need to do something big to win her over. Enter the Rub Rabbits. This is a group of enthusiastic fellows dedicated to the power of love, and helping out guy out. So what’s his plan to win the girl? Simple. He’s going to help everyone that needs help, and this brings him into some truly bizarre situations. It begins with a guy swallowing a bunch of goldfish and it’s up to you to swipe them up to his esophagus at which point he vomits them up. This is just the start of Feel the Magic XY/XX. Strap yourself in because this is one wild ride.
What’s nice is the fact that Feel the Magic XY/XX tells it’s story through comic book like slides. There’s almost no dialogue so a lot of it is left to your imagination. These add a ton of personality to the experience. It’s clear that it’s not a hardware shortcoming and instead a stylistic choice. You also have animated sequences that do a great job of setting up the scenario. What’s really unique about the game is the art style it employs. While I’ll go into the graphics in more detail later it’s worth highlighting now that the characters are featureless. They are filled in with just black. No one has any facial features whatsoever. This is yet another area in which the game took a stylized approach. Despite not being able to see their face characters are surprisingly expressive. I really dig the style.
If you haven’t been able to guess exactly what kind of game this is yet I’ll spell it out for you. Feel the Magic XY/XX is a mini-game collection full of over-the-top bizarre tasks. It kind of reminds me of a more fleshed out Wario Ware title, but more fleshed out and highly stylized. You will need to complete each task from three to five different times with each subsequent attempt becoming more difficult. These are all timed and while you do have several seconds to complete each task they never overstay their welcome. If you fail you lose a life, but can continue from the level you’re on. When you lose you have to start the mini-game over from the beginning round. It’s pretty basic and the lives system does add some difficulty to the experience.
Now we get to the mini-games themselves. As I mentioned already the initial one has you trying to make a young man vomit up live goldfish. Next you’ll have to save people jumping from a helicopter by activating their parachutes. How is this done you may ask? By inputting numeric combinations on a dial pad on the touch screen of course. Then there’s a mini-game where you’re tasked with blowing out candles using the DS microphone, clear a path for a shopping cart rolling down a hill, save humans from bulls, and more. Some of the mini-games are bit more risque such as the one where you’re cleaning dirt off the girl of the main character’s dreams, remove scorpions from her back, and more. In this sense it feels like a precursor to those strange visual novels we got in the West for the PlayStation Vita but less creepy.
These mini-games are fast, frantic, and some are really well designed. Even the weaker ones are still fairly fun and go a long way to establishing the crazy atmosphere Feel the Magic pushes out into the universe. None of these are particularly challenging, but Sega realized some gamers are masochists and included a variety of difficulty modes for veteran players. This increases Feel the Magic XY/XX’s staying power which is good because this is a very short title. I was able to complete it in about an hour at the default difficulty setting. I lost quite a few times but never was particularly frustrated because the game isn’t unfair. It also helps that these mini-games are fun and fairly replayable thanks to how different they are functionally.
The lack of content in the story mode isn’t actually as big a deal as you may suspect. After you’ve finished any of the mini-games you can return to them in another mode called Memories. What’s interesting about this is the fact that when you play here you’ll be treated to additional levels in each stage. These become downright difficult and I can see why they were left out of the main storyline. There’s also a mode where you can put a variety of clothing on the girl and check her out in it. That’s not really something I look for in a video game, but I’m sure the target audience might appreciate it more. What’s cool is you get new clothing from finding hidden rabbits in the story mode. This gives completionists something to strive for. Honestly the short length here isn’t that bad in this case.
As I’ve already mentioned the graphics are a case of style over substance. The comic strip-like scenes are nicely drawn and add a ton of character to the experience. Mini-games don’t always have a lot of 3D elements but these are the highlights in terms of presentation. Sega realized the limitations of the hardware and didn’t try to push it in any meaningful way. What they did however was polish the engine it was running on. This means everything is smoothly rendered, and despite the heavy stylization you can tell what everything is supposed to be. The unique art style does Feel the Magic a lot of favors and makes this one look amazing. I really love the graphics here and the style is classic Sega through and through. The soundtrack also fares very well with crazy and very unique compositions that suit the experience exceptionally well.
