Imagine DS Games and Other Girly Shovelware

With the release of the Nintendo DS came a tidal wave of low-quality shovelware games. Many of these were games aimed at girls, like Ubisoft's Imagine series. Today, we're going to take a look at some of these games and examine why girls have historically gotten the short end of the stick when it comes to games made for them.

Intro: 00:00-00:35
History of Games for Girls: 00:36-03:23
Enter the Nintendo DS: 03:34-06:11
Ubisoft and the Imagine Series: 06:12-14:01
Other Girly Shovelware: 14:02-19:20
Conclusion & Outro: 19:21-23:16

Songs used:
2PM - Animal Crossing (GameCube)
5PM - Animal Crossing New Leaf
Map (Night) - Tomodachi Life
Shopping - Nintendogs
Streetpass Mii Plaza Theme
Bob's Pizza - Shenmue
Bath Time - Nintendogs
Main Theme - Neko Atsume
Walking the Dog - Nintendogs
Title Theme - The Legend of Zelda Ocarina of Time

[randymoon]

Hey guys! Thanks for clicking on my video. I just wanted to say that I am aware that Dream Jelly recently uploaded a video on a similar topic. I don't want anyone to think I copied them, so I just wanted to make it clear that I've been planning to make this video for months and was already nearly done making it when Dream Jelly uploaded their video. I haven't watched their video yet because I didn't want it to unintentionally influence me, but I'm sure we each have our own unique takes on this topic, so if it's a topic that interests you, I strongly encourage you to watch both our videos! Okay thanks, bye!

[aidanfleming]

Many people don’t know that Imagine Dragons started as a Ubisoft shovelware game.

[halfmoonjoker]

My favorite era of gaming is easily the “accidental female audience” era! Pokémon, Ace Attorney, Animal Crossing….and then they’re surprised when girls show up? 😂

[skrrskrr]

Not liking games with female protagonist is just a skill issue in and of itself. Growing up, all I wanted was a full Assassin's Creed game with a female protagonist. And even when we did start to get that, it was coupled with an additional male protagonist.

[lyricperson]

i remember playing imagine fashion designer as a kid but i very quickly got stuck when one of the missions asked me to design “lingerie”, a term i’d never heard before. i tried a bunch of different things at first, but i failed the mission every time. finally i went to my mom to ask her what this elusive “lingerie” was, and obviously she didn’t want to have THAT talk at my age, so she told me it was another word for nightgown. of course, i had no reason to think she was lying, so i took her at her word and kept trying to design a nightgown, but it still failed every single time. eventually i gave up on it, figuring the game was broken.

in hindsight. it’s more than a little weird that a game aimed primarily at children asked you to design lingerie and just assumed you would know what that is. honestly even just calling it underwear would’ve been a lot less weird

[witchandrabbit]

The only shovelware game I played was an awful wizards of waverly place game for the DS and it glitched to a point where i couldn't move my character so I just gave up lol

[fathomtuns]

It sucks that after the industry received (valid) criticism about how they gendered games, it seems that they decided to just not make 'girl' content professionally anymore. The strongest modern entries to the genre are farming sims (a trend started by an indie dev), mobile games (the 'casual' scene), or entries to previously popular franchises (like AC:NH or the recent Cooking Mama). Weirdly, today it feels more okay to be a 'girl gamer', but not to make 'girl games'.

[Scoottheboot]

When i was little i really wanted imagine fashion designer but my parents never let me get it because i was a "boy". Even as someone who grew up as a boy "girly" games were always something o really wanted. Harvest moon and rune factory were huge parts of my childhood and i only recently found out that apparently a lot of people considered those games to be for girls back then which was pretty surprising. I remember i used to always try and "borrow" my sister's games because she would never let me play them, sometimes o would try and check out games like that from the library (my local library when i was a kid had a TON of games available) i of course played tons pf other kinds of games but i was always drawn to the girly stuff which looking back makes a lot of sense. Great video randymoon! I love your channel so far.

[valennina]

21:50 sorry for the "um, actually" thing im gonna say, but the first pokemon games were gonna have the option to choose between a male and a female protag, but since they run out of space, that had to be postponed until pkmn crystal's release. said games (the ones that didnt have space) had TONS of bugs so i guess they didnt optimize them well until the end of the 90s

[EeveeFromAlmia]

Ms Pac-Man was a rom hack that later got licences, that’s why it’s copyright has always been weird. She’s an oc :) and has also been written out of history in recent years in some sort of weird pac divorce

[Sunnylight]

Hello! I love that so many are getting interested in the Imagine series and loved this video! Just gonna leave a few cool facts about Imagine! I hope you don't mind.

I have been researching and playing Imagine and petz games for a few years and there is a lot to say about both franchises. The main thing is some of the imagine games are multiple Japanese game series that ended up being reskinned and localized as an imagine game. (same for petz games)

Imagine Master Chef (Imagine Happy Cooking in EU and AU) is from a series originally released in Japan called Oishii Cake Okusan for the Game Boy Color in 2000. It was made by MTO (most petz games are MTO games)
Only two of the 10 games released outside of Japan: Touch Pen de Tanoshiku o Ryouri (Happy Cooking-US and My Happy Kitchen-EU) and Edamoto Naomi no Shiawase Kitchen: Kakushi Aji wa Anata ga Kimete ne (Imagine Master Chef-US and Imagine Happy Cooking - EU and AU)

Another interesting thing is that some of the Imagine games that only released In EU actually got localized in the US outside of the Imagine series. Imagine My Restaurant was released in the US as Gourmet Chef: Cook Your Way to Fame.
Imagine Champion Rider 3D was released in US as Horses 3D and EU as Alexandra Ledermann 3D. (which is also the name of many of the petz horse games in EU)

I have more facts but I'll leave them out because they are related to other imagine games not included in this video!

I also wanted to say Lets Ride FF is my absolute favorite! I basically maxed out everything in that game and the song that plays is actually one of my favorites 😅🤣

[giangeegibb]

Lovely video! My sisters and I had a handful of the Petz DS games when we were growing up, and I even remember being confused then by how vastly different the gameplay and art styles were within the games we had lol!

[Dayy]

The pinnacle of girly gaming to me will always be style savy, it's just so perfect. It has adorable stories, fun gameplay, & always looked so good for its time <3

[Habijob]

Fun fact: The Imagine series was renamed to "Sophie's friends" in germany,
and when I was talking with a friend about DS games, I didn't recognize the game until I looked at my own collection here at home and was like "oooh"

[girzarro]

if you're looking for suggestions, tinkerbell for the ds is unironically one of my favorite ds games ever. not just because i played it as a kid either

[Christian-wrge]

''Like groomers to a SSB Tournament'' killed me 🤣

[alexaschendel]

Man these look a lot better than I thought! The covers of all these, with their realistic look, look so low quality and unappealing. They should have just had the anime art style on the box!

[Mischa]

I went to Penny Arcade Expo in 2009, and Ubisoft held a demo for a new Splinter Cell game, somewhere in there the presenter said something like "Ubisoft is known for our quality AAA games!" And someone in the crowd yelled "YEAH IMAGINE BABIES!!"

[robothingy]

6:18 "yes, i'm saying /ju-bi-sɑft/, because /uː-bi-sɑft/ sounds silly" finally, someone's with me on this. great video!

[bsmith]

I feel like games such as Diner Dash and Wedding Dash were like the idea of some of those imagine games executed better. They're not accurate depictions of restaurants but the gameplay is actually good! I used to love those games and other restaurant strategy flash games and I'm sure a lot of other women used to play them too