Magical Vacation

Magical Vacation (マジカルバケーション, Majikaru Bakēshon) is a 2001 role playing video game developed by Brownie Brown and published by Nintendo for the Game Boy Advance only in Japan on December 7, 2001, and was later re released in the same region in 2006. Japanese singer, model, and actress Mika Nakashima was featured in the television commercials for Magical Vacation. The game received an unfinished English language fan translation in 2016. A sequel was produced for the Nintendo DS in 2006, titled Magical Vacation: Itsutsu no Hoshi ga Narabu Toki. It was released in North America and Europe as Magical Starsign.

The game is a standard RPG adventure game, where the player interacts with the overworld to progress the story while battling against enemies in a turn based battle system. There are 16 different elements in the game, each of which is stronger than another specific element, and weaker against another. Exceptions to this rule are: the love element (not stronger or weaker than any of the other elements), the dark element (stronger than all other elements except for love and light), and the light element (no weakness).

The player can increase the power of attacks by borrowing power from elemental spirits in a process called Seirei Combo (精霊コンボ). To use a spirit combo, the player must summon an elemental spirit, and use magic of the same element in the following turns to release vast amounts of damage. Attack power is doubled per spirit present, meaning 2 spirits would create 4 times as much damage, and 3 spirits would create 8 times as much. The maximum combo (7 spirits) yields 128 times as much damage. The power of basic magic can surpass that of advanced magic if the player uses this combo. However, certain special rules apply to its use. For instance, the enemy can summon spirits of a stronger element to eliminate the combo's effectiveness (having one fire elemental spirit will eliminate the effect of one wind elemental spirit), and spirits can be extracted from the field using certain spells. The combo also applies for bombs which contain the magic power of an element. The maximum number of spirits that can be summoned is 7 (regardless of how many spirits were present at the start of the battle), and spirits must be re summoned per combo use.

This system allows the player to interact with the Game Boy Advance's multiplayer link. The first option, Let's Amigo (レッツアミーゴ), allows players to exchange main characters to acquire new spells. For instance, exchanging between a wind elemental main character and a sound elemental one will allow the wind elemental character to learn a sound elemental spell, and vice versa. Magic learned in this way can be strengthened with experience like all other spells from the beginning of the game. Each player can also receive "special" spell data, which can be equipped to allied characters, but equipped spells will not strengthen with experience. Exchanging a certain number of times will give the main character a new spell or change their element. Love magic is acquired if the player exchanges with 5 players of the same element. Exchanging 100 times will change the main character's element to the dark element and change their appearance to the dark costume. Learning all of the spells in the game and fulfilling the two prior requirements will give the main character light magic, change their element to the light element, and change them into the light costume. The second option, Let's Onsen (レッツおんせん) becomes available if the player has gone to the hot spring in the Plane of Light at least once during the game. Using the other player's hot spring will increase the main character's powers (different types of hot springs improve different status points; using the same hot spring repeatedly decreases the probability of powering up). After a certain number of uses, the player may be offered a choice to upgrade their hot spring. The level of upgrade is dependent on the player's rank, which is influenced by their in game actions and win/loss ratio in battles. The third option, Let's Taisen (レッツたいせん), is the multiplayer battle mode. A multiplayer battle is conducted in the same way as regular battles in the story mode, but winning a certain number of battles or maintaining a certain winning percentage awards the main character a special title that boosts their abilities. 3 elemental spirits (chosen randomly) also appear at the beginning of every multiplayer turn. Nintendo organized two events in 2002 to gather Magical Vacation players together to make the Amigo system more accessible. The first event was held on January 26 in Osaka, and the second event was held the following day in Tokyo. These events allowed players who only had access to one game cartridge to quickly gain power ups for their characters.

Once upon a time, war erupted for three days in the magic kingdom Kovomaka. This war was kept a secret from ordinary citizens, but one man began to travel all around the country in preparation for the next battle, and several years later, the game's main character entered the magic school Will o' Wisp at the invitation of the school's principal. The main character possessed the ability to see and interact with spirits since youth, and was ostracized because of this ability. The students of Will o' Wisp Academy are sent away to a summer school called Valencia Beach, despite warnings that several students from the school had gone missing on the beach in the past. At nighttime, strange monsters called the enigma appear on the beach, abducting the students and sending them to another world. The hero must find the missing students, while also uncovering the mysteries of the enigma and the war that occurred in the kingdom.

The game map is divided into four planes of existence, which can be traversed using a magic bus. The first plane, the Plane of Material, is the player's original world, which houses Will o' Wisp Academy and Valencia Beach. The second is the Plane of Light, where puppets, love ambassadors, and dwarves live. The Palace of Light and other ruins are located at the center area, along with a hot springs. The third is the Plane of Darkness, where all sorts of habitats, including a forest, iceberg, desert, and volcano, are located in close proximity. The wolks and nyamnelt species make their homes in this plane, and many enigma monsters live in Enigma Forest. The entrance to the secret dungeon, Garam Masala, is also located within this plane. The final plane is the Plane of Death, which provides a stark contrast to the other environments with its darkened sky and charred ground. Dying in this plane means perfect disappearance of the physical and spiritual self. Even so, several species live in this plane, and the deepest area contains the cave of resurrection. Other worlds are mentioned, such as the planes of Water, Fire, and Wind, but do not appear in the game itself.

On release, Famitsu magazine scored the game a 35 out of 40.