"Charming and fun."

Back when Nintendo first announced the DS, with its two screens and innovative methods of control, they were met with a bit of skepticism. Is a touch screen really necessary? Can the microphone or the second screen be used as anything more than a gimmick? What can be done with these features that can't be done on any other system? But what gamers didn't immediately know is that the folks behind Space Channel 5 and Rez, now part of Sega's Sonic Team, were brainstorming plenty of fun things to do with Nintendo's new baby, and put them all together as Project Rub, known in the US as Feel the Magic.

Feel the Magic is a collection of 26 minigames, all strung together to tell a story about a boy trying to win the heart of a girl. These games have amazing variety, requiring you to bowl over pedestrians across a busy highway, blow a yacht past sharks, dance to the beat of the music, and all sorts of other fun things. The story may give you a bit of a smile the first time through, but the games will keep you coming back. Every game is played with the microphone and touch screen - you'll never once hit a button. At certain points in the story, you'll run across boss games, which last longer than normal games, have a higher level of difficulty, and just feel great to beat.

The game has a very interesting graphical style: everyone is just a black silhouette with hair and clothing. Although you may find yourself amused and even a little touched by the story, there are no faces on these characters and very little text. The graphics switch between 3D and 2D on the fly, but it's never jarring; the 2D and 3D versions of the characters look very similar and are animated quite well. Music isn't bad at all, and the sound effects range from effective to hilarious.

People will often knock this game for its length, and that's a valid complaint, although it's not as bad as you might think. Every non-boss game has ten difficulty levels, but in playing through Normal mode, you'll only play the first five levels of each game. Finishing Normal opens Hard mode, in which you play levels six through ten, and then finishing that gives you Hell mode, where you've only got one life to finish the latter five levels. Quite hard indeed. But even when you're done with THAT, there's Memories mode. There, you can freely pick any game you've completed and attempt to finish all ten of its levels in a single life. Losing on the eighth or ninth level may be frustrating... but it just fills you with a desire to come back again and succeed where you failed.

In playing the game, you can unlock new outfits for the girl in Maniac mode, which may be appealing to you. If not, I totally get that. You're free to ignore it. Owning GBA games from Sonic Team unlocks some outfits (have them in the GBA slot when powering on Feel the Magic), but these all unlock by beating Hell mode.

Your first time through the game won't take too long, but since it's so much fun, you're likely to come back again and again to clear out Hard, Hell, and Memories. Not only that, but this is the perfect game to whip out when you want to show your friends how cool your new DS can be. This may not go down in history as the deepest game ever, but you'll definitely enjoy your time with it. It's recommended to anyone who enjoys games that are, you know... fun.

Reviewer's Score: 9/10, Originally Posted: 03/15/05