I dont know how they did it! Cute game with creative use of card scanner to outfit your dancing fashion witch

User Rating: 9 | Oshare Majo Love and Berry: DS Collection DS
This game is geared to young, Japanese girls. But can be appealing for the crazed, western otaku.

Background: cards (of hairstyles, outfits, & shoes) are scanned into an arcade game machine. Players try to best outfit their character to a street, beach, disco, idol or ball stage. Then a competition begins - tap the tambourine to the beat.
Developed by Sega (before the times of 'Project Diva') this arcade/card concept was magically made compatible on the DS lite & makes use of cards won from the arcade. This game was incredibly popular and on its DS release sold around a millon copies, after playing it I can see why - it is pure fun!

DS Gameplay: At 1st, I found the menu confusing. But after exploring, it is easy to navigate (I posted a menu guide on this site's forum for anyone who is interested).

Arcade Mode - It includes levels: super easy, recommended easy & hard. For the most part tapping the tambourine has proven relatively easy - but I have yet to master hard mode. You can also play with a friend if they own the game. Which adds to the game's replayability.

Story Mode: Difficult if you can't read Japanese. I played not knowing what I was doing - but went through with completing the story mode anyway. Each stage has its own story, dance competition & love interest. Your rival is chick dressed in a witch costume who laughs evilly. It seems as though, at the end of the story you have a final dance with the boy you impressed the most. Anyhow after completing it once through a new section in the menu is revealed that stores the games unlockables XD

Card Creation: Many people who have bought this game overseas comment on lack of cards; 5 cards come in this DS game package. But beware: to play this game you will at least need a small collection cards. They can be a bit hard to find, I got most of mine on ebay. However, If you choose, there is a section that allows you to create & save cards to the game.

To sum up: incredibly enjoyable - how fun it is to swipe cards!