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LoveBerry Card Game Hot Among Japanese Girls Date: 10/12/2005 |
| Over the summer of 2005, Sega's OshareMajo Love & Berry arcade / collectible card game has quickly become the latest popular trend among elementary school girls in Japan. The premise involves becoming one of the witches, Love or Berry, and accessorizing, dressing up one's character and dancing. In the persuit of this the player collects and trades various cards, enhancing their characters fashion sense and dancing prowess. The goal is to acquire as many cards as possible (164 different ones are available). On the arcade machine there are buttons for each character and a slot to scan collected cards. Play is 100 Yen and upon winning, one gets a new card. Players scan their colected cards in the machine in advance of a game, setting up the characters outfit etc.. School girls can routinely be seen lined up at machines across Japan, some with thick binders containing hundreds of the cards. Indeed, collections have sold for 10,000 Yen or more on internet auction services. The game is a female follow up to the "Mushiking" game which was a hit among boys. The phenomena is interesting becuase such a card related game marketed to girls has never seen such success in Japan. Sega reports the number of cards shipped from the game's launched in October of last year is around 43 million. By comparison, Mushiking had sold about 280 million cards over the two years it's been in release. The Pokemon game was sold in 40 countries worldwide with card shipment totals approaching about 14 billion cards. |
| Source: Anime News Service |
