The Imagine Games Empire 

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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?"

I had no idea the series's graphics varied wildly like that. Ballet star is actually so ridiculously cute and cohesive

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 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

I vividly remember playing the wedding one and purposely messing everything up 😭 It always made the bride fall down the stairs 😭😭

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 😅

I would HIGHLY appreciate a part 2 playing more Imagine games we missed out on in this video

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.

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.

I feel like we would have been good friends as kids 😂 I would make forms too and make my family fill them out

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!

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

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

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😭😭

Imagine fashion designer, ice skater, teacher, interior designer, babysitter...they were ALL SO GOOD!!

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.

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.

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 😭

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

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-

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 😢

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

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.

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.

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 😔

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.

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

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 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

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

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.

Imagine: my shock (The game)

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

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 never owned one of these but I was jealous of anyone who had one in my kindergarden back in 2008

YeSSSS THE ENTIRETY OF MY GIRLHOOD!!!!!! thank so you much dream i admire you 🫶🏻🫶🏻🫶🏻

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

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

This is my Roman Empire!!

"Don't judge a book by its cover" the game series.

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.

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.

Seems like the ballet game was really en pointe.

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 was obsessed with Imagine Teacher as a kid. The story for it was... something xD

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

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 😂🤭.

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 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

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.

Imagine ballet was my FAVORITE ds game as a kid!! I loved the romance storylines lol 😭 and the graphics were so stylized and cute

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

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!

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.

A girl after my own heart! I was *obsessed* with these growing up!

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.

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 🙃

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

When you upload my day gets better thank you

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”!

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.

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

imagine my restaurant was my favourite cooking game because it felt a lot more realistic. i actually had no idea it was an imagine game until you spoke about it because of how difficult it was as a kid.

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

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)

Its crazyyy how games these days take years to complete but these types of games used to be so common, just a studio who wanted to release 15 games in 1 year

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 😭

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 😊

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 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.

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.

OMG I MISS THESE GAMES

The more I see the variety of Imagine series, the more I’m sure Ubisoft found random Japanese games that had “girly career” themes, localized them and slapped the Imagine branding on them. All of the games have so few similarities. Also Fashion Designer World Tour is the best fashion design imagine game and I stand by that.

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

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 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.

"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.

Awesome video! The Ener-G series as well as Imagine were a big part of my childhood. Specifically Ener-G Dance Squad and Imagine Ballet! 😭💕 (P.S. Even though Imagine Fashion Designer New York was FABULOUS, I’m still upset that they said I was wrong for putting a blonde model in a black dress rather than a yellow dress! Yellow?! What happened to contrasting the colors Imagine?!)

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

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 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!

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

Ahhh I always love the little details you add in your editing. It's so much work and it's great

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.

If you liked the ballet one I feel like you would like the figure skating one, it's pretty similar for the most part and I think it has a sequel. It was one of my favorite with the first vet, cooking and fashion designer ones.

the imagine fashion designer for pc was actually cool like i remember spending hours on the storymode.

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 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!!

This has officially become one of my comfort videos

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

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!

Been so excited for this video

this is my first video ive watched of yours and im already a big fan you make me feel comfy and safe

funfact: in germany these games weren’t called „imagine“, they were announced as the „sophies freunde/sophies friends“ line

I was OBSESSED with imagine teachers, family doctor and fashion designer as a 10 year old. IT WAS AMAZING

i'd honestly really love a part 2 where you play more of these, it was very entertaining to watch!!