From September 11th to October 3rd Cloaked goes into closed testing. But for my audience if you go to cloaked.app/dreamjelly you can bypass the waitlist. And then use my code DREAMJELLY for 20% off your first 3 months.
it was so weird seeing what all these games actually were, because as a kid i saw the real photo of a girl on the cover and immediately lost interest because i refused to play any game that didnt have colorful cartoon characters in it. and then i see this video and see stuff like master chef and ballet star that have really neat art styles and im just like "why didnt they show me this on the cover?"
Absolutely! I couldn't remember the name of Imagine Master Chef for the longest time, and when I tried to look it up I thought that couldn't possibly be it because of the photo of the girl!
these games would've looked 1000x more attractive if they had the actual game graphics on the cover. the real photos of random women on top of the white background with the very straightforward names makes the games themselves look boring and plain for what are fun cartoony kids' games with storylines and characters.
mostly bc the imagine games were rough localizations of pre-existing otome style ds games! like ballet star being a localized english version of it’s original game; Princess Ballerina: Four dreaming prima donnas.
In the wedding planner game, if you choose things the bride doesn't like, there's a few things that happen at the wedding. She turns up in normal clothes, falls over down the aisle and an Elvis impersonator is there 😅
me too! I loved making them cry. sadly my copy started crashing and it only let me do the free play mode for a few months until it started crashing on startup :(
The Imagine Ballet Star is a localization of a Japanese game called Princess Ballerina: Yumemiru 4-Jin No PrimaDonna and Ubisoft published it on the US and Europe under the Imagine series, that's why it's so different, the same thing happens with Imagine Master Chef in Japan it's called Edamoto Naomi no Shiawase Kitchen named after a famous Japanese chef called Edamoto Naomi, who is also the original character for Rachel
that explains why so many of them are randomly slightly higher quality games with an anime art style! i had just assumed they had different teams working on random things and dumped them all into the imagine brand
is the figure skater one a similar deal? i vaguely remember it, and it seems, from my memories, much closer to the quality of ballet star than the quality of, uh. most of the others (though it might have been a different skating themed game- i don't entirely remember it aside from "you figure skate and it has fun characters and you can pick outfits and music for your skating routines") edit: just checked, the one i had was ice champions
You NEED to do the PC ones… the Imagine fashion designer one is actually wild, you get hired to work for a fashion house, and in between clients you follow a storyline where you take down the fashion house for testing on animals. There’s even a bit where you break into the basement and get evidence by taking photos of animals in cages in a lab😭😭
@@mariabedoya4587 Do you mean Ubi World or Imagine Town? I spent more time in Imagine Town (and on the forums). I remember that a couple of my fellow players RP'd as mermaids, and I made a long dress to look like a mermaid tail for my "initiation" into the Crystal Cave Mermaid Club.
Fun fact! 🌈 In Italian, the "Imagine" series is called "Giulia passione", so it's just this girl named Giulia having lots of different passions. The French version also has another name: "Léa Passion"
yes! it was our multitasking barbie xD sometimes she was renamed in game (modern dancer) but when more customization was possible it was kind of lost in translation
The reason why some of these games are vastly higher quality with a "cute japanese aesthetic" is because those titles are just original japanese games with with the imagine localization/branding slapped on top. Imagine Master Chef originally came out in 2006 under the name Emoto Honami no Shiawase Kitchen and Imagine Ballet Star was titled Princess Ballerina: Yumemiru 4-nin no Primadonna. I especially recommend looking up the original ds game cover for that one. its super cute!
Should point out that some of these are localized/reskinned Japanese games. Though no clue how much of them, but it explains the anime aesthetics of some of these.
Same for some of the petz games too! I do know for the Imagine localized/reskinned games they are Imagine Figure Skater, Ice Champions, Ballet Star, Happy Cooking, Master Chef, Imagine Happy Cooking, Imagine Makeup and probably a few more.
@@Sunnylight200Petz goes deep because one of them, Petz Dogz 2, aka Puppy and the Magic Hat, is the spiritual successor to a similar game that we did get under its original title stateside, The DOG Island
@@conarcoin I always thought dog Island was related to the pocket dogs GBA game tbh. I was completely wrong! Thank you so much for this information! For some reason the people that developed this game" Yuke's" aren't listed as the devs for the Petz dogz 2(Wanko to Mahou no Boushi) and is credited to be published by Ubisoft and developed by Ubisoft which makes it hard to connect the games. It's unfortunate that the original devs weren't credited. I don't own the game so there is a possibility they are credited in game but knowing Ubisoft maybe not.
So for imagine fashion designer.... the last challenge was RIDICULOUSLY HARD. If I'm not mistaken, every piece of clothing in your outfit had to be the EXACT SAME SHADE OF BLUE. Which was extremely difficult to achieve using a stylus
The rabbit moon storyline isn't that out of the ordinary, in Japanese and some other cultures there is a very clear rabbit moon cultural touchstone. Thats why sailor moon's name is Usagi (rabbit). I would bet that Ubisoft just bought the rights to that cooking game and translated it roughly.
they did and ubisoft did it for im pretty sure basically all of the imagine games! the original game is by the company MTO and is a part of/kind of soft reset of the doki doki cooking series of games which started out on the game boy! rediscovering imagine cooking and finding out about the original game series is what triggered my special interest in MTO games and similar japanese girl games and media from that era lol. edit for fun fact: the original game was based on a celebrity chef in japan - Edamoto Nahomi! so the mentor character, who turns out to be a rabbit moon goddess, was straight up a celebrity cameo by name in the original game
@@teddyturtle yeah was going to say the same! imagine is just the umbrella that ubisoft used for licensed games, usually from overseas devs or small teams that would never get to put their stuff on a nintendo system otherwise. its why the quality varies so wildly and also why theres so many that are essentially just the same game several times over
Ballet Star and both of the figure skating games were rebrands of japanese games for an English-speaking audience, which explains why they're amazing compared to all the other Imagine games.
My sister and I had Fashion Designer: New York and while I barely remember the gameplay (beyond getting married??) the SOUNDTRACK was genuinely legendary. I dont know how they did it but it had Blondie's Heart of Glass, Suddenly I See, Hillary Duff - it was so beyond!!! I literally would just open the game and use it like an ipod
Tbh the blatantly reskinned Japanese games were the best of the series imo, I remember the HOURS me and my sister spent on Master Chef and Figure Skater trying to unlock all the different dialogues... It truly was Baby's First Visual Novel to us
i swaer there were two imagine fashion designer games, i played one once that was so fun and i asked for it for my birthday only for it to be a totally different game...but both the same franchise and name
The Detective game actually had a really good story. It ended on a cliffhanger and iirc there was originally supposed to be a sequel but then it was cancelled.
As a kid it was literally heartbreaking I loved that game so much and now I’m forever haunted by not knowing what happens next. I need to meet the writer one day and beg them to just tell me and give me closure lol
Personally devastated that Imagine Detective was skipped over, I'm still pissed off about the cliffhanger we were all left on. Ubisoft, please, just one more-
During my twenties, I was a hardcore game player. One summer, a cousin of mine who was ten or so, was gifted 'Imagine: Fashion Designer'. She didn't get the game at all, so she asked me to help her complete the game. It was so bizarre, for me, used to other kind of games, to play such a casual one. I remember that the models walked down the catwalk, and you had to draw different figures in the tactile screen to secure their catwalk. And, you had a 'star-meter' and, if you completed all the figures and the 'star-meter' was full, you were allowed to do some sassy posture at the end, all of which were incredible bizarre and made you think your model was possessed or something. I also remember the game being super-specific to a point it was more difficult than it may seem. As I have read in some other comments, the final task was painfully hard and little clues were given to you. There, you had to create three looks all in blue. Although you had a full pallet of colors, the game only recognized a few blue shades as, in fact, blue. So there you were designing all three looks -which was a tedious task-, only to fail miserably at the catwalk because 'sorry, sweetie, you choose the wrong shade of blue. In this game, we call that cerulean'. Years after, I watched 'The devil wears Prada', with the whole 'cerulean monologue', and suffered a major PTSD episode remembering my failed years as a fashion designer.
I remember these! I had the fashion designer one and TO THIS DAY I am still stuck on one of the challenges!! It's the 70s blouse one, wtf do they want me to do 😭
I remember rage quitting my cousin's copy of the game at the point where you had to make some flared trousers or something. My cousin and me never figured out how to properly make them, I hate that game to these days for this reason lol Edit: just realised that I'm talking about the New York one, idk about the other one
Imagine fashion designer New York was my total favorite and it's completely superior to the regular fashion designer game you could do makeup nails custom clothing designs and even add streaks and to top it all off there was an actual story about living in New York and it was essentially just The devil wears Prada but for tweens and I loved it
i specifically remember the teacher one because of the part where you had to separate the kids who didnt like each other. I also remember the boutique owner one because I liked the sound the character's shoes made on the floor when you moved.
The original Japanese version of Imagine Ballet Star had a fourth ballerina you could play as. In the localization you could only play as three. As a kid it made me so mad because in the game itself it was pretty obvious that there was meant to be a fourth one. It was even in the game description on the box. I guess for whatever reason they decided to remove her storyline at the last minute 😢
Love you doing these videos on 'girl games' . It's hard to find game videos of games that aren't mainstream dude games . So it's nice to get some nostalgia finally. Love lost girl midea.
@@liilysillyyeah don’t use that excuse please 😅 it’s cliche and old, please let this dumb mindset die. It’s very annoying because children deserve good games always
Oh my god I had the Teacher one. The low poly children weren’t very scary thankfully. At least from what I remember. You could grade the students work, assign their seats, and clean the classroom after hours. I accidentally left my copy at Gettysburg when my family vacationed there.
Imagine Makeup Artist was my favourite game as a kid, it had so much to do and and a full story (even had 3 different romance subplots that 10 year old me was LIVING for). If you do a part 2 I’d recommend
I had imagine fashion designer and there was one level where the theme was just “blue”. I could never pass this level and my game is eternally stuck on the blue level. I tried again a couple years ago as a 20 year old girl thinking maybe i just couldn’t do it because i was about 7 at the time but no….I still somehow failed. Anyways, it was my favorite game as a kid
i had a few imagine games, but my favorite BY FAR was imagine: makeup artist. not only did it simulate what i wanted to do with my life at the time (makeup), it also played more like an interactive visual novel like the ballet one did. there was also shades of it being a dating sim bc there were 3 male characters around town that were the mc's age and you could choose to get to know one each playthrough, but it never went as far as to actually have the mc date anyone. i think if it was rated E10+ instead of E or aimed at a slightly older demo it would've gone for the romance/dating sim angle fully. still, i loved (age-appropriate) romance media as a kid, so even the vague hints of potential romance between the mc and [male npc of your choice] was enough to hook me. i played through the game multiple times, i just adored it. the dishwashing minigame was my favorite, aside from actually doing makeup. don't ask me how getting a side gig as a dishwasher fits into the makeup artist dream, but it was fun to scrub plates with my stylus, ok
Dream Jelly!! Fashion Designer New York was literally my game growing up and it was everything!! You must play it! I am confident it would get your approval. The graphics were great, there was a great storyline, and best of all was the runway music. Before I had an iPod I would pull up the game just to listen to the music with headphones - so cool.
I hope you play more because Imagine Fashion Designer New York is literally The Devil Wears Prada the game, you’re basically playing as Andy and the boss woman is absolutely modeled after Meryl Streep’s Miranda Priestly, and one of the songs in the game, Suddenly I See, is also in the movie- they changed the names of course, but how they got away with it is so crazy to me
I had the figure skater one as a kid and it was similar to the ballet one in structure and visuals being actually good. Funny how there's a few hidden gems that actually had good storylines and characters. The fashion was cute and the gameplay was more directly related to the title, there was coordinating a choreography with practiced moves and selecting music that fit well. Definitely was disappointed when venturing to other titles such as teacher :(
I got Imagine Ballet Star as a kid and absolutely LOVED it. One feature it also has is that you can carry your previous playthroughs character into a repeat of their story, while keeping all dance moves, skill points, outfits and money you had already unlocked, which of course led to a very overpowered protagonist, which child me loved. And the books you could collect, telling you the stories of the ballets! I loved reading through them again and again. Caught up on that high I asked for Imagine Detective on my next birthday, got it, and... was disappointed. Not only did it have less things to do, but the story actually ended on a cliff hanger for some reason. And thus, it became my last Imagine game. I do occasionally still replay small parts of Ballet Star though. Great game, honestly.
i was obsessed with imagine masterchef and imagine figure skater as a kid 😭 imagine figure skater was super similar to the ballet game with the plot in visual novel style and many fun minigames, tbh it was the best imagine game i ever played (and i played a lot of them. most of them weren’t good lol) and i still like it a lot ngl 😔
Having read the comments, I feel like I would have LOVED to live in a timeline where more super girly Japanese shoujo ds games were localized over here, because Imagine Ballet was one of my favorite DS games (so was Style Savvy, which I know isn’t an Imagine game, but it fits the category). I know they’re probably out there, but I feel like it wasn’t enough
same! I'm hoping that with the delta emulator's popularity with iOS users and aesthetic tiktokers there will be an increasing interest in fan translating more of the otome and girl oriented games. I've noticed tons of people wishing for the chobits and nana games to be in english.
I absolutely loved the imagine games as a kid. The lore of the imagine teacher game broke my mind as a kid. I genuinely thought its plot was high art that could not be topped. I will probably always feel nostalgic playing these games
I didn't have any consoles as a kid, but I LOVED the Fashion Designer New York flash game! Even though it was more of a dress up game and it would rate your looks, so if you wanted to get the best score you had to compromise your ✨vision✨ for the fashion show.
I remember having the babies one as a kid and young me didn’t understand the rocking mechanic to calm the baby so my first run of the game was a lot of sitting in the corner crying with the baby waiting for the mother to return. I actually found it more entertaining as a teen as often I could get the babies asleep and just roam around the house completing tasks like making their next meal from the allotment.
Legit squealed when you decided to review ballet star. I adore this game. The music is HORRIFIC but everything else is so good. When you finish the game, you can continue it as another character but with all your points, skills, and clothes unlocked and you can create your own routine by replacing moves with other moves. I swear it is what made me the ballet nerd i am today. All three characters have somewhat cliched but dramatic stories, it feels like a good fanfiction! So much fun. Ive finished the game 18 times 😂🤭.
The cooking game is def worth a whole play through bc of the story line. Maybe I´m a bit biased bc I also had a stuffed bunny but the ending broke my little elementary school heart. Left me sobbing and in need to explain to my grandma what was wrong.
i was OBSEEESSED with the makeup one. i think it was ripped off from some japanese game in the same style as that ballet game. i figured out how to beat the super difficult, super weird final challenge
Cosmetic Paradise(JP)! There are 4 games, and 1 was localized in the US under the Imagine name. The first one was localized in EU as Cosmetic paradise and Makeup princess in KO. I have been unable to find the rest of the first games JP name other than the Cosmetic Paradise part.
im so happy you reviewed ballet star 😭 i was genuinely obsessed with that game as a kid, i thought all the others would be that good too. as a 9 yr old i had never played a game with a romance subplot and it felt illegal
@@naki051omg i commented this a couple of months ago, but my favorite was also swan!!! she was the only one i wanted to play as (and still play as) i think it had something to do with me also being blonde with blue eyes!
I also had and loved Imagine Boutique Owner. I completely forgot I had it until I watched your video. The other Imagine game I had and absolutely loved was Imagine Detective. It had a good overarching story, compelling graphics, & fun mini games with enough variety to keep child me interested. The game ends on a cliffhanger that still haunts me to this day.
I’m SO glad you did the Ballet Star one! That one was my absolute favorite! As someone who actually does ballet, that game is truly fantastic. The ballet glossary is accurate and with each level you learn the story of all of the classical ballets and you hear the actual music from Giselle, Don Quixote, Raymonda, etc. Whoever created that game really did their research!
i didn't have a nintendo ds as a kid, but the imagine games were still somehow a part of my childhood - they made promotional flash games based on the ds titles, and i absolutely adored them. the fashion designer, celeb, and vet games were my favorite.
Imagine Makeup Artist had such random lore with Nico, the magical girlesque mascot character who owned like half the town and no one batted an eye at, that it sounds like a fever dream when I explain it to friends.
YOUR COMMENT IN THE OUTRO IS SO RIGHT -- Ballet Star was the only one I ever played, and it was my CHILDHOOD. So many hours in that game. I just thought the whole series was like that 😭
i LOOOOOVED imagine ballet star as a kid. I played it for hours and hours, perfecting so many different things and doing all the characters’ routes several times. If you play more of the imagine games, I definitely suggest imagine figure skater because it’s super similar in quality and style! Those two were my favorite imagine games.
Finally a place I can post this, I can't get over how the Imagine Detective game just ended on a cliff hanger 😭 like as a kid when I saw the ending I replayed it all over beacuse I couldn't believe it just ended!! I'm never going to get over it
I’m really glad that you even mentioned the virtual world in the Imagine series!! Imagine Town was probably the most memorable part of my childhood and led to some friendships that I still have to this day. It shut down pretty suddenly after some questionable business decisions by ubisoft. It was seemingly self sabotaged by the company and is one of the weirdest things I’ve seen such a large company do. I’d love to see you look a bit more at the website in another video. It’s sadly become lost media since ubisoft basically purged any traces of it from the internet and it wasn’t a super popular game, but a decently sized community of us managed to retain images and such. I’ve tried to do research into what really happened to the game but it’s been tough.
I remembered the Imagine Ballet Star one! That one turned out to be a US port of a Japanese ballet game over there. The art in that one is super cute and their ballet tips was really helpful when I did ballet.
Omg I had the ballerina one, the figure skating one, and the teaching one and they were all actually so good !!! The kids in the teaching game aren’t super duper creepy and it’s actually a lot of fun to teach them things and grade their homework’s lol. Loved the nostalgia this video gave 😊
I played a lot of Imagine games as a kid, but the ones I loved the most were Master Chef (in my case it was called Imagine Happy Cooking), Imagine Teacher (which I was a bit bummed out that you didn't get to play bc it had a cute art style and some fun gimmicks) and My Secret World, the latter I wasn't really using as a diary but I enjoyed more playing the quizzes and creating lots of avatars making up stories for them, and there was this incentive to check out the diary every day since you'd get a fortune cookie and unlock new quizzes, clothes or stickers for your diary Edit: I Forgot to mention I also used to play the flash versions of Fashion Designer and the World Tour one, they were just simple dress up games, but you still had to follow a guideline from the judges and see if you got it matched
The best fashion games (and in complete honesty some of my favorite all-time games) are the style savvy series. They are genuinely amazing and I still have fun playing with them even though I'm older. They're very well made for ds games in general!
ice champions (with the manga artstyle) and modern dancer are very good even nowadays, truly if you can get your hands on it, it's worth it! i also have an attachment to the teacher game. the character design being mostly amazing is probably a plus for the nostalgia
1. I also made fake forms as a child and pretended to run businesses (I’d spend so many hours labelling toys with price tags that by the time I was done I didn’t even want to play anymore 😂) 2. I played two Imagine games as a kid, and they were Boutique Owner and Master Chef and I loved those things. I never even knew what Cooking Mama was as a kid, sentient stuffed animals was all I knew. And I remember getting so stressed at catching thieves in Boutique Owner it was unreal
IMAGINE BALLET STAR IS ONE OF MY FAVORITE NDS GAMES EVER. I've played it sooo many times since every story has many different endings according to the decisions you make throughout the story. And the music is amazing since I'm a "classical" music and ballet lover.
I remember being handed down a few of my sisters Imagine games, it's truly wild just how many they managed to release lol! Also,, tysm for featuring me in your new segment at the end, I'm so grateful :D
This video made me realize ballet star was one of my favorite ds games as a kid! I can’t believe I forgot about it. The mini game showcase unlocked forgotten memories for me
Dude I actually loved Imagine Teacher. Child me truly cared about the future of the stereotypical troubled student. Watching this vid lowkey made me wanna dig through my local retro gamestore’s basket of $0.99 DS games to see how many imagine games I can find. I really enjoyed this video and appreciate the nostalgia for the late 2000s. We’re old as fuck now 🙃
OMG I loved or still love the ballet game. I was never able to do ballet in real life so I was just playing this over and over again and got familiar with the music. The stories are great, you can be one of three different characters with three different stories, and each one takes a long time to play! It was the perfect game
Fun fact: There are a select handfull of Imagine games that were just localised versions of Japanese games which is why they have anime graphics and higher quality gameplay. Master Chef and Ballet Star were part of that group. Other localised games include: Figure Skater Ice Champions (a sequel? spin off? of Figure Skater) Makeup Artist (Which was also localised under the name Cosmetic Paradise)
i played ballet star as a kid and was SO excited when you got it on the wheel. genuinely such a cute and fun game, one of the like 2 i had as a kid (the other being the makeup one? which i really wished you picked LOL) but i loved this video, thanks for exploring this series with us and yay homebrew. true on the ballet star changing your impression of the series-i always wanted more after ballet star and it was interesting to see how lucky i got edit because i played the animal doctor one too and it was so much fun. i was happy to see my childhood ones luckily represented lol
The scream I scrumpt when the wheel picked Ballet Star. Im so glad you enjoyed it, it was one of my favorite games growing up despite finding it difficult lol. It was probably the best game of the bunch for the wheel to pick.
I played the shit out of imagine ballet dancer as a child! This game has influenced my adult life more than I want to admit. Besides being quite a decent game, it also is surprisingly educational and accurate when it comes to ballet. The different steps and poses but also all the different classical ballet plays even down to their most iconic parts like the 32 Fouettés in swan lake or Giselles Ballonné. Absolutely recommend! Another game I played way more than I could be proud of is Imagine Modern Dancer or Ener-G: Dance Squad as it is called in the US. I loved the character designs for the rivals and the soundtrack just went so hard! PS: Imagine games are called Sophie’s Freunde in German which means Sophie’s friends. I was always so confused who that Sophie girl was supposed to be.
I always wanted the figure skating one as a kid and last year I found it at GameStop for $1.25. I went to check out but only had my card no cash, and the employee decided to give it to me for free instead. Thanks to that guy for making my childhood dream come true
omg i used to play all the games, i loved the party planner one, it had a whole storyline !!!(i also loved the rock band one i played it over and over to see the different storylines)
i LOVED ballet star as a kid! would honestly recommend playing it through further, if i’m remembering right (which i’m likely not- i was like 10 when i played it), you unlock more features and it becomes more story-based, with romance, interpersonal drama, and even some more serious issues at times. again i may be misrembering but regardless it’s a fun game, i feel like a playthrough if it could be fun on this channel!!
I never owned a single “Imagine” game but “Imagine: My Restaurant” looked incredibly familiar. Turns out that Ubisoft released it twice! I owned a copy called “Gourmet Chef: Cook your way to fame”!
"if Imagine Ballet Star was the only Imagine game you'd played, you'd probably think the whole series was creative and fun" hi yes that was my experience! My parents got that one for me for Christmas presumably just randomly, and boy was I lucky! I was so obsessed with it and wanted to try all the other games... until I borrowed fashion designer from a friend a couple years later. I still have a lot of love for ballet star though and am thinking of replaying it now.
as a kid, i played Imagine Resort Owner, Imagine Gymnast, Imagine Music Fest, Imagine Fashion Designer World Tour, and Imagine Reporter. all of them were pretty good, and i've played all of them except reporter again as an adult and they're still pretty fun. i never played the others but that's probably a good thing with how wonky the quality was between games.
I LOVED the imagine series. In germany it was called "Sophies Freunde.." I got a game whenever I had the chance too. And Sophies Freunde Kochspaß (the cooking game) was my FAVORITE! It was so good?? Also I loved Boutique Owner. It was so great. I loved making my own perfumes lol
I had the zookeeper one and it was actually fairly different from the animal clinic ones; it really was about managing a zoo where you have to go rescue animals (via gaining their trust) and keep up their enclosures and stuff. Though it's more of a refuge/sanctuary than a zoo, iirc. I've heard it's one of the better ones.
I had the Imagine Restaurant and my sister had the Imagine Wedding Designer. You were totally right about the restaurant game being too vague for a kid, I had no idea what I was doing most of the time and gave up on it pretty fast. Much preferred Cooking Mama. My sister and I liked messing with the wedding planner game because the mechanics were insane. For example if you give the bride a room she doesn't like somehow that ruins the wedding and the groom arrives late or the bridesmaids trip on the aisle it was hilarious 😂
i've never seen this channel before but i'm already in love!! not only did you cover a topic i thought was an incredibly niche, possibly canadian, deeply buried childhood memory, but the editing on this is INSANE and so creative and i'm actually in awe. i'm supposed to be doing a lab report for uni right now but i don't want to risk missing another cool editing choice so i'm taking a break just for this lol
My childhood bff had Ice Champions. I borrowed it and loved it and accidentally bought Figure Skater trying to get my own copy. They were practically the same game, very similar to the Ballet Dancer game. I absolutely adored both games.
I've SO BEEN WAITING FOR THIS!! My favourite Imagine game was Imagine Figure Skater, it's pretty much a reskin of the Ballet one you showcased! I'm so nostalgic for it. Thank you for another banger, Dream Jelly!
Ballet Star was the only imagine game I had, and the amount of joy even seeing clips of it that I just experienced is insane: thank you for that, and I’m happy I stumbled into one of the good ones!
I was SO happy you played ballet star!! (i got very sacred you let it up for chance lmao) It was the only Imagine series game i had but it was my absolute favorite ds game growing up. I remember getting it a 7-11 because it was only like 5 bucks and the anime graphics on the back of the case pulled me in. I remember spending HOURS on that game every day, constantly grinding the practices and shows so i can buy all the pretty sets of outfits. And the story was super engaging with how each character you can play has their own unique story that also dabbles with the other characters as well, mind-blowing stuff for a pre-teen i'll tell you that. Seeing you play it here makes me want to replay it myself and relive the craze i had for this game
If I remember correctly a lot of the Imagine games are imported Japanese games from different series thrown together for a western audience. I have to try and remember the RUclipsr who did an in depth dive of all the games origins.
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From September 11th to October 3rd Cloaked goes into closed testing.
But for my audience if you go to cloaked.app/dreamjelly you can bypass
the waitlist. And then use my code DREAMJELLY for 20% off your first 3
months.
You are SUCH a goober!
September 11th 😕😓🥺🧐
🎉
it was so weird seeing what all these games actually were, because as a kid i saw the real photo of a girl on the cover and immediately lost interest because i refused to play any game that didnt have colorful cartoon characters in it. and then i see this video and see stuff like master chef and ballet star that have really neat art styles and im just like "why didnt they show me this on the cover?"
YES when you open up the game and just see pixels when you were expecting realistic graphics.. biggest betrayal 😔🥲
Absolutely! I couldn't remember the name of Imagine Master Chef for the longest time, and when I tried to look it up I thought that couldn't possibly be it because of the photo of the girl!
for real, they would've really benefited from it
I would've totally picked ballet star or the cute cooking one over fashion designer if i knew 😗 where would I be now if I had??
these games would've looked 1000x more attractive if they had the actual game graphics on the cover. the real photos of random women on top of the white background with the very straightforward names makes the games themselves look boring and plain for what are fun cartoony kids' games with storylines and characters.
I had no idea the series's graphics varied wildly like that. Ballet star is actually so ridiculously cute and cohesive
mostly bc the imagine games were rough localizations of pre-existing otome style ds games! like ballet star being a localized english version of it’s original game; Princess Ballerina: Four dreaming prima donnas.
@@MoonixlySunriseVA That's so weird. Did the imagine series just buy the rights to random games?
@@Bicth97 Yes, Ubisoft was done it for tons of their series that they turned into shovelware for DS, Wii and 3DS.
Right? And the cooking game had an entire plot 💕 so cute!!
This game had me in a chokeshold as a kid!! It was so nice!! And I liked the different storylinr and characters
In the wedding planner game, if you choose things the bride doesn't like, there's a few things that happen at the wedding. She turns up in normal clothes, falls over down the aisle and an Elvis impersonator is there 😅
This is...... I think I need to get this just to see what you described🤣😵
I vividly remember playing the wedding one and purposely messing everything up 😭 It always made the bride fall down the stairs 😭😭
SAME I played this game so much more than I should have cuz it was just so funny.
Man It was so funny I loved that game so much but one day I just lost in in a fucken corn field 😭😭 I still miss her….
me too! I loved making them cry. sadly my copy started crashing and it only let me do the free play mode for a few months until it started crashing on startup :(
Oh my god same. I remember the groom being late to the wedding once, I never managed to reproduce that
😂😂😂😂😂
The Imagine Ballet Star is a localization of a Japanese game called Princess Ballerina: Yumemiru 4-Jin No PrimaDonna and Ubisoft published it on the US and Europe under the Imagine series, that's why it's so different, the same thing happens with Imagine Master Chef in Japan it's called Edamoto Naomi no Shiawase Kitchen named after a famous Japanese chef called Edamoto Naomi, who is also the original character for Rachel
that explains why so many of them are randomly slightly higher quality games with an anime art style! i had just assumed they had different teams working on random things and dumped them all into the imagine brand
is the figure skater one a similar deal? i vaguely remember it, and it seems, from my memories, much closer to the quality of ballet star than the quality of, uh. most of the others (though it might have been a different skating themed game- i don't entirely remember it aside from "you figure skate and it has fun characters and you can pick outfits and music for your skating routines")
edit: just checked, the one i had was ice champions
I swear that i played two versions of that game tho 😅
Imagine makeup artist is the sequel to a japanese game called Cosmetic Paradise. It was so goor and nice art
Yes, the figure skating one was a spiritual sequel to a game released as Princess Debut in the US. A favorite of mine.
You NEED to do the PC ones… the Imagine fashion designer one is actually wild, you get hired to work for a fashion house, and in between clients you follow a storyline where you take down the fashion house for testing on animals. There’s even a bit where you break into the basement and get evidence by taking photos of animals in cages in a lab😭😭
Omg do you remember there was a whole Ubisoft online world
@@mariabedoya4587i thought i was the only one who remembered that 😭 I tried searching for it once but I don’t think they have it anymore
Yeees, I loved it so much. I miss games like this.
Hmm, sounds like you played something else that was probably made by PETA. It sounds like something they would make as a PR stunt.
@@mariabedoya4587 Do you mean Ubi World or Imagine Town? I spent more time in Imagine Town (and on the forums). I remember that a couple of my fellow players RP'd as mermaids, and I made a long dress to look like a mermaid tail for my "initiation" into the Crystal Cave Mermaid Club.
Fun fact! 🌈 In Italian, the "Imagine" series is called "Giulia passione", so it's just this girl named Giulia having lots of different passions.
The French version also has another name: "Léa Passion"
The Dutch one was ´Laura´s Passie´
As an Italian I can confirm.
yes! it was our multitasking barbie xD sometimes she was renamed in game (modern dancer) but when more customization was possible it was kind of lost in translation
@@nintenhoe8240 AHAH this is so interesting, thanks for sharing! ✨
Weirdly in german it's called "Sophies Freunde" so I guess it's some girl called Sophie who has a bunch of friends that all do different things?
The reason why some of these games are vastly higher quality with a "cute japanese aesthetic" is because those titles are just original japanese games with with the imagine localization/branding slapped on top. Imagine Master Chef originally came out in 2006 under the name Emoto Honami no Shiawase Kitchen and Imagine Ballet Star was titled Princess Ballerina: Yumemiru 4-nin no Primadonna. I especially recommend looking up the original ds game cover for that one. its super cute!
Anyone here remember imagine my secret diary?
@@gracekim1998 I had that one, I think! But I couldn't access it again because I didn't play it for a while and forgot the password
i was wondering if that was the case... not a bad business model but explains the wildly differing quality
Should point out that some of these are localized/reskinned Japanese games. Though no clue how much of them, but it explains the anime aesthetics of some of these.
ooooh, no wonder! :0
Same for some of the petz games too! I do know for the Imagine localized/reskinned games they are Imagine Figure Skater, Ice Champions, Ballet Star, Happy Cooking, Master Chef, Imagine Happy Cooking, Imagine Makeup and probably a few more.
Yup imagine makeup artist is Cosmetic Paradise
@@Sunnylight200Petz goes deep because one of them, Petz Dogz 2, aka Puppy and the Magic Hat, is the spiritual successor to a similar game that we did get under its original title stateside, The DOG Island
@@conarcoin I always thought dog Island was related to the pocket dogs GBA game tbh. I was completely wrong! Thank you so much for this information! For some reason the people that developed this game" Yuke's" aren't listed as the devs for the Petz dogz 2(Wanko to Mahou no Boushi) and is credited to be published by Ubisoft and developed by Ubisoft which makes it hard to connect the games. It's unfortunate that the original devs weren't credited. I don't own the game so there is a possibility they are credited in game but knowing Ubisoft maybe not.
So for imagine fashion designer.... the last challenge was RIDICULOUSLY HARD. If I'm not mistaken, every piece of clothing in your outfit had to be the EXACT SAME SHADE OF BLUE. Which was extremely difficult to achieve using a stylus
That blue challenge has been haunting my dreams for years and years 😂
That challenge was my first memory of ever rage quitting a game 💀
@@Dtretrbi remember, in German it's translated as Lavender which doesn't make sense. This stupid thing was so difficult
This exact level made me rage quit the game, i would return to it every so often and never figured it out
YES I REMEMBER THIS it was so hard and i didnt like the theme. I mean i like blue but not blue lipstick
I feel like we would have been good friends as kids 😂 I would make forms too and make my family fill them out
Childhood form makers UNITE
I used to make forms too 😅 and spreadsheets......
I made math quizzes for my stuffed animals
I used to make fake news reports and act like I was a news anchor
I made incredibly detailed lists for all my toy horses to track workouts, feed and who would ride them in a lesson
I would HIGHLY appreciate a part 2 playing more Imagine games we missed out on in this video
Yes!! Imagine figure skater is amazing!!
@@RoseArcanum YEEEESSS!!! I remember me and my cousin would trade my Sims 2 for the day so I could play her Imagine Figure Skater 😁
Agreed😊
I have this feeling I had the secret diary game and cooking game with Lisa
I LOVED imagine makeup artist as a kid, I’d love to see it
The rabbit moon storyline isn't that out of the ordinary, in Japanese and some other cultures there is a very clear rabbit moon cultural touchstone. Thats why sailor moon's name is Usagi (rabbit). I would bet that Ubisoft just bought the rights to that cooking game and translated it roughly.
they did and ubisoft did it for im pretty sure basically all of the imagine games! the original game is by the company MTO and is a part of/kind of soft reset of the doki doki cooking series of games which started out on the game boy! rediscovering imagine cooking and finding out about the original game series is what triggered my special interest in MTO games and similar japanese girl games and media from that era lol.
edit for fun fact: the original game was based on a celebrity chef in japan - Edamoto Nahomi! so the mentor character, who turns out to be a rabbit moon goddess, was straight up a celebrity cameo by name in the original game
@@teddyturtle yeah was going to say the same! imagine is just the umbrella that ubisoft used for licensed games, usually from overseas devs or small teams that would never get to put their stuff on a nintendo system otherwise. its why the quality varies so wildly and also why theres so many that are essentially just the same game several times over
its definitely very clear that ao many of these were just licensed games with the imagine logo slapped on top!
and of course goku sending a rabbit to the moon as a kid
It absolutely is. I own this game but under the name 'Happy Cooking'!
Ballet Star and both of the figure skating games were rebrands of japanese games for an English-speaking audience, which explains why they're amazing compared to all the other Imagine games.
And also makeup artist
The figure skater was my favorite one!!
I used to own Happy Cooking/Master Chef or rather, Edamoto Naomi no Shiawase Kitchen...on a flash cart.
My sister and I had Fashion Designer: New York and while I barely remember the gameplay (beyond getting married??) the SOUNDTRACK was genuinely legendary. I dont know how they did it but it had Blondie's Heart of Glass, Suddenly I See, Hillary Duff - it was so beyond!!! I literally would just open the game and use it like an ipod
omg and that one vanessa hudgens song too
yes!!!!!!
For such a long time Suddedly I see to me was just that song from the Runway of that DS Designer Game. So was Pretty Woman.
I think I had that one too! The only reason I remember it is because of the marriage subplot and also the one where the secretary becomes a model?
bye why do i have this exact same memory 😭 had me bopping to the beach boys at age 6
Tbh the blatantly reskinned Japanese games were the best of the series imo, I remember the HOURS me and my sister spent on Master Chef and Figure Skater trying to unlock all the different dialogues... It truly was Baby's First Visual Novel to us
I loved figure skater and I lost it before I could finish it 😭
Imagine fashion designer, ice skater, teacher, interior designer, babysitter...they were ALL SO GOOD!!
Fashion designer!!! 😍
ice skater was my fave !!
i swaer there were two imagine fashion designer games, i played one once that was so fun and i asked for it for my birthday only for it to be a totally different game...but both the same franchise and name
@RainbowCrunchable I think one is called fashion designer new york. If I recall correctly that was the one with the awesome soundtrack 🥰
I WAS PETRIFIED OF THE STORK IN THE BABY SITTING ONE
The Detective game actually had a really good story. It ended on a cliffhanger and iirc there was originally supposed to be a sequel but then it was cancelled.
As a kid it was literally heartbreaking I loved that game so much and now I’m forever haunted by not knowing what happens next. I need to meet the writer one day and beg them to just tell me and give me closure lol
exactly! i had both the ballet star and detective games, and i honestly think of them as absolute masterpieces. they're fantastic!
Personally devastated that Imagine Detective was skipped over, I'm still pissed off about the cliffhanger we were all left on. Ubisoft, please, just one more-
During my twenties, I was a hardcore game player. One summer, a cousin of mine who was ten or so, was gifted 'Imagine: Fashion Designer'. She didn't get the game at all, so she asked me to help her complete the game. It was so bizarre, for me, used to other kind of games, to play such a casual one. I remember that the models walked down the catwalk, and you had to draw different figures in the tactile screen to secure their catwalk. And, you had a 'star-meter' and, if you completed all the figures and the 'star-meter' was full, you were allowed to do some sassy posture at the end, all of which were incredible bizarre and made you think your model was possessed or something.
I also remember the game being super-specific to a point it was more difficult than it may seem. As I have read in some other comments, the final task was painfully hard and little clues were given to you. There, you had to create three looks all in blue. Although you had a full pallet of colors, the game only recognized a few blue shades as, in fact, blue. So there you were designing all three looks -which was a tedious task-, only to fail miserably at the catwalk because 'sorry, sweetie, you choose the wrong shade of blue. In this game, we call that cerulean'.
Years after, I watched 'The devil wears Prada', with the whole 'cerulean monologue', and suffered a major PTSD episode remembering my failed years as a fashion designer.
Omg that blue design challenge was awful. I never made it past that
I remember these! I had the fashion designer one and TO THIS DAY I am still stuck on one of the challenges!! It's the 70s blouse one, wtf do they want me to do 😭
Oh my god, that's the exact one I remember rage quitting on 😭😭
SAME OMG
I remember rage quitting my cousin's copy of the game at the point where you had to make some flared trousers or something. My cousin and me never figured out how to properly make them, I hate that game to these days for this reason lol
Edit: just realised that I'm talking about the New York one, idk about the other one
Imagine fashion designer New York was my total favorite and it's completely superior to the regular fashion designer game you could do makeup nails custom clothing designs and even add streaks and to top it all off there was an actual story about living in New York and it was essentially just The devil wears Prada but for tweens and I loved it
Thats exactly the one I was hoping she would play, it was my favorite and the soundtrack slapped
@@jalonjeter1828 soo true I played wake up, baby come back, and heart of glass on repeat and still slap till this day lmao 🤣
i specifically remember the teacher one because of the part where you had to separate the kids who didnt like each other. I also remember the boutique owner one because I liked the sound the character's shoes made on the floor when you moved.
YES, the shoe clicking in that game is unmatched
I looooved the teacher one!!
The original Japanese version of Imagine Ballet Star had a fourth ballerina you could play as. In the localization you could only play as three. As a kid it made me so mad because in the game itself it was pretty obvious that there was meant to be a fourth one. It was even in the game description on the box.
I guess for whatever reason they decided to remove her storyline at the last minute 😢
They probably didn’t want to translate a fourth storyline
Oh gosh I realized this too as a kid and I was so upset we didn’t get to play as her!!!
The RUclips channel ballet star TV has a playthrough of Naomi's story on their channel! It's definitely worth checking out
Oh my gosh, I wasn't the only one who noticed that! Yes, it made me so mad and sad that I couldn't play as Naomi!
I remember playing through all three storylines hoping I’d get to play as Naomi at the end, which ended in bitter disappointment.
Love you doing these videos on 'girl games' .
It's hard to find game videos of games that aren't mainstream dude games .
So it's nice to get some nostalgia finally. Love lost girl midea.
Except that these are not by any definition a decent game that will have you playing it multiple times.
@@scottdoesntmatter4409 they're for kids tho
True, but even CHILDREN deserve better than shovelware. @@liilysilly
@@liilysillyyeah don’t use that excuse please 😅 it’s cliche and old, please let this dumb mindset die. It’s very annoying because children deserve good games always
@@scottdoesntmatter4409thank you for having a brain🤷♀️
As a girl born in 1997…thanks for the nostalgia rabbit hole! Those games were my life back then. Special shout-out to Imagine Ballet and Teacher
Oh my god I had the Teacher one. The low poly children weren’t very scary thankfully. At least from what I remember. You could grade the students work, assign their seats, and clean the classroom after hours. I accidentally left my copy at Gettysburg when my family vacationed there.
I understand your pain. I lost my Style Savvy game summer 2012 when my family went camping. I got a new one last year but the pain lingers.
Imagine Makeup Artist was my favourite game as a kid, it had so much to do and and a full story (even had 3 different romance subplots that 10 year old me was LIVING for). If you do a part 2 I’d recommend
YESSSSS imagine makeup artist was top tier. i finished it with all the different endings so many times as a kid
omg yessss i was so disappointed when I found out most of the other imagine games are not even half as good as makeup artist was
I had imagine fashion designer and there was one level where the theme was just “blue”. I could never pass this level and my game is eternally stuck on the blue level. I tried again a couple years ago as a 20 year old girl thinking maybe i just couldn’t do it because i was about 7 at the time but no….I still somehow failed. Anyways, it was my favorite game as a kid
i had a few imagine games, but my favorite BY FAR was imagine: makeup artist. not only did it simulate what i wanted to do with my life at the time (makeup), it also played more like an interactive visual novel like the ballet one did. there was also shades of it being a dating sim bc there were 3 male characters around town that were the mc's age and you could choose to get to know one each playthrough, but it never went as far as to actually have the mc date anyone. i think if it was rated E10+ instead of E or aimed at a slightly older demo it would've gone for the romance/dating sim angle fully. still, i loved (age-appropriate) romance media as a kid, so even the vague hints of potential romance between the mc and [male npc of your choice] was enough to hook me. i played through the game multiple times, i just adored it.
the dishwashing minigame was my favorite, aside from actually doing makeup. don't ask me how getting a side gig as a dishwasher fits into the makeup artist dream, but it was fun to scrub plates with my stylus, ok
That dishwashing minigame was so satisfying for some reason!
I freaking LOVED the makeup one too!!! It legit taught me how to do makeup 🤣🤣🤣
It was the best one
Yes!!! I still replay this one every once in a while lol
Dream Jelly!! Fashion Designer New York was literally my game growing up and it was everything!! You must play it! I am confident it would get your approval. The graphics were great, there was a great storyline, and best of all was the runway music. Before I had an iPod I would pull up the game just to listen to the music with headphones - so cool.
I hope you play more because Imagine Fashion Designer New York is literally The Devil Wears Prada the game, you’re basically playing as Andy and the boss woman is absolutely modeled after Meryl Streep’s Miranda Priestly, and one of the songs in the game, Suddenly I See, is also in the movie- they changed the names of course, but how they got away with it is so crazy to me
I had the figure skater one as a kid and it was similar to the ballet one in structure and visuals being actually good. Funny how there's a few hidden gems that actually had good storylines and characters. The fashion was cute and the gameplay was more directly related to the title, there was coordinating a choreography with practiced moves and selecting music that fit well. Definitely was disappointed when venturing to other titles such as teacher :(
I got Imagine Ballet Star as a kid and absolutely LOVED it. One feature it also has is that you can carry your previous playthroughs character into a repeat of their story, while keeping all dance moves, skill points, outfits and money you had already unlocked, which of course led to a very overpowered protagonist, which child me loved. And the books you could collect, telling you the stories of the ballets! I loved reading through them again and again.
Caught up on that high I asked for Imagine Detective on my next birthday, got it, and... was disappointed. Not only did it have less things to do, but the story actually ended on a cliff hanger for some reason. And thus, it became my last Imagine game.
I do occasionally still replay small parts of Ballet Star though. Great game, honestly.
i was obsessed with imagine masterchef and imagine figure skater as a kid 😭 imagine figure skater was super similar to the ballet game with the plot in visual novel style and many fun minigames, tbh it was the best imagine game i ever played (and i played a lot of them. most of them weren’t good lol) and i still like it a lot ngl 😔
Same, I loved figure skater so much I rebought it as an adult when I got another DS 😂
@@princessbowsette not me watching this as im redownloading all the fun imagine games on the 3ds i just bought lmao
Having read the comments, I feel like I would have LOVED to live in a timeline where more super girly Japanese shoujo ds games were localized over here, because Imagine Ballet was one of my favorite DS games (so was Style Savvy, which I know isn’t an Imagine game, but it fits the category). I know they’re probably out there, but I feel like it wasn’t enough
same! I'm hoping that with the delta emulator's popularity with iOS users and aesthetic tiktokers there will be an increasing interest in fan translating more of the otome and girl oriented games. I've noticed tons of people wishing for the chobits and nana games to be in english.
YeSSSS THE ENTIRETY OF MY GIRLHOOD!!!!!! thank so you much dream i admire you 🫶🏻🫶🏻🫶🏻
I absolutely loved the imagine games as a kid. The lore of the imagine teacher game broke my mind as a kid. I genuinely thought its plot was high art that could not be topped. I will probably always feel nostalgic playing these games
I didn't have any consoles as a kid, but I LOVED the Fashion Designer New York flash game! Even though it was more of a dress up game and it would rate your looks, so if you wanted to get the best score you had to compromise your ✨vision✨ for the fashion show.
I remember having the babies one as a kid and young me didn’t understand the rocking mechanic to calm the baby so my first run of the game was a lot of sitting in the corner crying with the baby waiting for the mother to return. I actually found it more entertaining as a teen as often I could get the babies asleep and just roam around the house completing tasks like making their next meal from the allotment.
Legit squealed when you decided to review ballet star. I adore this game. The music is HORRIFIC but everything else is so good. When you finish the game, you can continue it as another character but with all your points, skills, and clothes unlocked and you can create your own routine by replacing moves with other moves. I swear it is what made me the ballet nerd i am today. All three characters have somewhat cliched but dramatic stories, it feels like a good fanfiction! So much fun. Ive finished the game 18 times 😂🤭.
The cooking game is def worth a whole play through bc of the story line. Maybe I´m a bit biased bc I also had a stuffed bunny but the ending broke my little elementary school heart. Left me sobbing and in need to explain to my grandma what was wrong.
I vaguely remember it, what a wild way to take the story
omg me too i vividly remember getting rid of the game after i finished it because i was heartbroken 😭
i was OBSEEESSED with the makeup one. i think it was ripped off from some japanese game in the same style as that ballet game. i figured out how to beat the super difficult, super weird final challenge
Cosmetic Paradise(JP)! There are 4 games, and 1 was localized in the US under the Imagine name. The first one was localized in EU as Cosmetic paradise and Makeup princess in KO. I have been unable to find the rest of the first games JP name other than the Cosmetic Paradise part.
im so happy you reviewed ballet star 😭 i was genuinely obsessed with that game as a kid, i thought all the others would be that good too. as a 9 yr old i had never played a game with a romance subplot and it felt illegal
Who is your favorite ballerina? Mines Swan, I always chose her no matter what haha
swan was my GIRL she was the coolest @@naki051
@@naki051omg i commented this a couple of months ago, but my favorite was also swan!!! she was the only one i wanted to play as (and still play as) i think it had something to do with me also being blonde with blue eyes!
I also had and loved Imagine Boutique Owner. I completely forgot I had it until I watched your video. The other Imagine game I had and absolutely loved was Imagine Detective. It had a good overarching story, compelling graphics, & fun mini games with enough variety to keep child me interested. The game ends on a cliffhanger that still haunts me to this day.
This has officially become one of my comfort videos
I never owned one of these but I was jealous of anyone who had one in my kindergarden back in 2008
Absolute cap you remember that shit
I was 5 - 6.. I was born in 2002 @@HutchIsOnYT
@@HutchIsOnYTit’s not that hard to believe that someone remembers shit from kindergarten lmao I have a ton of memories from then
@TheHutchIsOn do you have brain damage?
I did play these games in preschool years
I was obsessed with Imagine Teacher as a kid. The story for it was... something xD
This is my Roman Empire!!
I’m SO glad you did the Ballet Star one! That one was my absolute favorite! As someone who actually does ballet, that game is truly fantastic. The ballet glossary is accurate and with each level you learn the story of all of the classical ballets and you hear the actual music from Giselle, Don Quixote, Raymonda, etc. Whoever created that game really did their research!
i didn't have a nintendo ds as a kid, but the imagine games were still somehow a part of my childhood - they made promotional flash games based on the ds titles, and i absolutely adored them. the fashion designer, celeb, and vet games were my favorite.
Imagine Makeup Artist had such random lore with Nico, the magical girlesque mascot character who owned like half the town and no one batted an eye at, that it sounds like a fever dream when I explain it to friends.
Imagine ballet was my FAVORITE ds game as a kid!! I loved the romance storylines lol 😭 and the graphics were so stylized and cute
YOUR COMMENT IN THE OUTRO IS SO RIGHT -- Ballet Star was the only one I ever played, and it was my CHILDHOOD. So many hours in that game. I just thought the whole series was like that 😭
i LOOOOOVED imagine ballet star as a kid. I played it for hours and hours, perfecting so many different things and doing all the characters’ routes several times. If you play more of the imagine games, I definitely suggest imagine figure skater because it’s super similar in quality and style! Those two were my favorite imagine games.
Finally a place I can post this, I can't get over how the Imagine Detective game just ended on a cliff hanger 😭 like as a kid when I saw the ending I replayed it all over beacuse I couldn't believe it just ended!! I'm never going to get over it
I’m really glad that you even mentioned the virtual world in the Imagine series!! Imagine Town was probably the most memorable part of my childhood and led to some friendships that I still have to this day. It shut down pretty suddenly after some questionable business decisions by ubisoft. It was seemingly self sabotaged by the company and is one of the weirdest things I’ve seen such a large company do. I’d love to see you look a bit more at the website in another video. It’s sadly become lost media since ubisoft basically purged any traces of it from the internet and it wasn’t a super popular game, but a decently sized community of us managed to retain images and such. I’ve tried to do research into what really happened to the game but it’s been tough.
I remembered the Imagine Ballet Star one! That one turned out to be a US port of a Japanese ballet game over there. The art in that one is super cute and their ballet tips was really helpful when I did ballet.
A girl after my own heart! I was *obsessed* with these growing up!
Omg I had the ballerina one, the figure skating one, and the teaching one and they were all actually so good !!! The kids in the teaching game aren’t super duper creepy and it’s actually a lot of fun to teach them things and grade their homework’s lol. Loved the nostalgia this video gave 😊
I played a lot of Imagine games as a kid, but the ones I loved the most were Master Chef (in my case it was called Imagine Happy Cooking), Imagine Teacher (which I was a bit bummed out that you didn't get to play bc it had a cute art style and some fun gimmicks) and My Secret World, the latter I wasn't really using as a diary but I enjoyed more playing the quizzes and creating lots of avatars making up stories for them, and there was this incentive to check out the diary every day since you'd get a fortune cookie and unlock new quizzes, clothes or stickers for your diary
Edit: I Forgot to mention I also used to play the flash versions of Fashion Designer and the World Tour one, they were just simple dress up games, but you still had to follow a guideline from the judges and see if you got it matched
The best fashion games (and in complete honesty some of my favorite all-time games) are the style savvy series. They are genuinely amazing and I still have fun playing with them even though I'm older. They're very well made for ds games in general!
Seems like the ballet game was really en pointe.
ice champions (with the manga artstyle) and modern dancer are very good even nowadays, truly if you can get your hands on it, it's worth it! i also have an attachment to the teacher game. the character design being mostly amazing is probably a plus for the nostalgia
1. I also made fake forms as a child and pretended to run businesses (I’d spend so many hours labelling toys with price tags that by the time I was done I didn’t even want to play anymore 😂)
2. I played two Imagine games as a kid, and they were Boutique Owner and Master Chef and I loved those things. I never even knew what Cooking Mama was as a kid, sentient stuffed animals was all I knew. And I remember getting so stressed at catching thieves in Boutique Owner it was unreal
IMAGINE BALLET STAR IS ONE OF MY FAVORITE NDS GAMES EVER. I've played it sooo many times since every story has many different endings according to the decisions you make throughout the story. And the music is amazing since I'm a "classical" music and ballet lover.
I remember being handed down a few of my sisters Imagine games, it's truly wild just how many they managed to release lol! Also,, tysm for featuring me in your new segment at the end, I'm so grateful :D
hi i watched some of your vids
The Imagine Babysitters was where I got my start!!
This video made me realize ballet star was one of my favorite ds games as a kid! I can’t believe I forgot about it. The mini game showcase unlocked forgotten memories for me
Dude I actually loved Imagine Teacher. Child me truly cared about the future of the stereotypical troubled student. Watching this vid lowkey made me wanna dig through my local retro gamestore’s basket of $0.99 DS games to see how many imagine games I can find. I really enjoyed this video and appreciate the nostalgia for the late 2000s. We’re old as fuck now 🙃
OMG I loved or still love the ballet game. I was never able to do ballet in real life so I was just playing this over and over again and got familiar with the music. The stories are great, you can be one of three different characters with three different stories, and each one takes a long time to play! It was the perfect game
Fun fact: There are a select handfull of Imagine games that were just localised versions of Japanese games which is why they have anime graphics and higher quality gameplay. Master Chef and Ballet Star were part of that group. Other localised games include:
Figure Skater
Ice Champions (a sequel? spin off? of Figure Skater)
Makeup Artist (Which was also localised under the name Cosmetic Paradise)
i played ballet star as a kid and was SO excited when you got it on the wheel. genuinely such a cute and fun game, one of the like 2 i had as a kid (the other being the makeup one? which i really wished you picked LOL) but i loved this video, thanks for exploring this series with us and yay homebrew. true on the ballet star changing your impression of the series-i always wanted more after ballet star and it was interesting to see how lucky i got
edit because i played the animal doctor one too and it was so much fun. i was happy to see my childhood ones luckily represented lol
I loved imagine ballet star! When I go home and dig through my old ds games, I still enjoy playing that one. It’s so comforting.
Ballet Star was my jam back in the day. I always revisit it every so often for the nostalgia!
The scream I scrumpt when the wheel picked Ballet Star. Im so glad you enjoyed it, it was one of my favorite games growing up despite finding it difficult lol. It was probably the best game of the bunch for the wheel to pick.
I played the shit out of imagine ballet dancer as a child! This game has influenced my adult life more than I want to admit. Besides being quite a decent game, it also is surprisingly educational and accurate when it comes to ballet. The different steps and poses but also all the different classical ballet plays even down to their most iconic parts like the 32 Fouettés in swan lake or Giselles Ballonné. Absolutely recommend!
Another game I played way more than I could be proud of is Imagine Modern Dancer or Ener-G: Dance Squad as it is called in the US. I loved the character designs for the rivals and the soundtrack just went so hard!
PS: Imagine games are called Sophie’s Freunde in German which means Sophie’s friends. I was always so confused who that Sophie girl was supposed to be.
I always wanted the figure skating one as a kid and last year I found it at GameStop for $1.25. I went to check out but only had my card no cash, and the employee decided to give it to me for free instead. Thanks to that guy for making my childhood dream come true
When you upload my day gets better thank you
I was OBSESSED with imagine teachers, family doctor and fashion designer as a 10 year old. IT WAS AMAZING
omg i used to play all the games, i loved the party planner one, it had a whole storyline !!!(i also loved the rock band one i played it over and over to see the different storylines)
i LOVED ballet star as a kid! would honestly recommend playing it through further, if i’m remembering right (which i’m likely not- i was like 10 when i played it), you unlock more features and it becomes more story-based, with romance, interpersonal drama, and even some more serious issues at times. again i may be misrembering but regardless it’s a fun game, i feel like a playthrough if it could be fun on this channel!!
I never owned a single “Imagine” game but “Imagine: My Restaurant” looked incredibly familiar. Turns out that Ubisoft released it twice! I owned a copy called “Gourmet Chef: Cook your way to fame”!
"if Imagine Ballet Star was the only Imagine game you'd played, you'd probably think the whole series was creative and fun" hi yes that was my experience! My parents got that one for me for Christmas presumably just randomly, and boy was I lucky! I was so obsessed with it and wanted to try all the other games... until I borrowed fashion designer from a friend a couple years later. I still have a lot of love for ballet star though and am thinking of replaying it now.
"Don't judge a book by its cover" the game series.
as a kid, i played Imagine Resort Owner, Imagine Gymnast, Imagine Music Fest, Imagine Fashion Designer World Tour, and Imagine Reporter. all of them were pretty good, and i've played all of them except reporter again as an adult and they're still pretty fun. i never played the others but that's probably a good thing with how wonky the quality was between games.
I LOVED the imagine series. In germany it was called "Sophies Freunde.." I got a game whenever I had the chance too. And Sophies Freunde Kochspaß (the cooking game) was my FAVORITE! It was so good?? Also I loved Boutique Owner. It was so great. I loved making my own perfumes lol
I had the zookeeper one and it was actually fairly different from the animal clinic ones; it really was about managing a zoo where you have to go rescue animals (via gaining their trust) and keep up their enclosures and stuff. Though it's more of a refuge/sanctuary than a zoo, iirc. I've heard it's one of the better ones.
I had the Imagine Restaurant and my sister had the Imagine Wedding Designer. You were totally right about the restaurant game being too vague for a kid, I had no idea what I was doing most of the time and gave up on it pretty fast. Much preferred Cooking Mama. My sister and I liked messing with the wedding planner game because the mechanics were insane. For example if you give the bride a room she doesn't like somehow that ruins the wedding and the groom arrives late or the bridesmaids trip on the aisle it was hilarious 😂
Imagine Figure Skater was really fun, and I’d say Detective, Babies, Teacher and Doctor I played the most.
i've never seen this channel before but i'm already in love!! not only did you cover a topic i thought was an incredibly niche, possibly canadian, deeply buried childhood memory, but the editing on this is INSANE and so creative and i'm actually in awe. i'm supposed to be doing a lab report for uni right now but i don't want to risk missing another cool editing choice so i'm taking a break just for this lol
I remember always seeing these games at Game Stop as a kid and the liminal white backgrounds on all their covers scared me so much omg
My childhood bff had Ice Champions. I borrowed it and loved it and accidentally bought Figure Skater trying to get my own copy. They were practically the same game, very similar to the Ballet Dancer game. I absolutely adored both games.
I've SO BEEN WAITING FOR THIS!! My favourite Imagine game was Imagine Figure Skater, it's pretty much a reskin of the Ballet one you showcased! I'm so nostalgic for it. Thank you for another banger, Dream Jelly!
the imagine fashion designer for pc was actually cool like i remember spending hours on the storymode.
Ballet Star was the only imagine game I had, and the amount of joy even seeing clips of it that I just experienced is insane: thank you for that, and I’m happy I stumbled into one of the good ones!
I was SO happy you played ballet star!! (i got very sacred you let it up for chance lmao) It was the only Imagine series game i had but it was my absolute favorite ds game growing up. I remember getting it a 7-11 because it was only like 5 bucks and the anime graphics on the back of the case pulled me in.
I remember spending HOURS on that game every day, constantly grinding the practices and shows so i can buy all the pretty sets of outfits. And the story was super engaging with how each character you can play has their own unique story that also dabbles with the other characters as well, mind-blowing stuff for a pre-teen i'll tell you that. Seeing you play it here makes me want to replay it myself and relive the craze i had for this game
If I remember correctly a lot of the Imagine games are imported Japanese games from different series thrown together for a western audience. I have to try and remember the RUclipsr who did an in depth dive of all the games origins.
your videos are always so well researched and put together and i really appreciate your amazing editing as well! I love the jelly tv addition!