Game of the Week: November 2nd 2025

Magical Starsign (NDS, 2006)

Developer: Brownie Brown Publisher: Nintendo

In a galaxy quite close actually.

Magical Starsign is the sequel to a Japan-only GBA title called Magical Vacation, which was released 5 year prior.

In a setting where space travel and wizardly spells coexist, you play as a student working with your fellow classmates to find your homeroom teacher, who hasn't been heard from in 3 months after being sent on a mission to stop one of her former students, who has broke bad.

About the controls

One of the things that stood out to me about MS was how the game is almost entirely controlled via the touch pad and stylus. The ABXY buttons and the D-pad don't get a lot of action in this game. You can't even click through dialog or run with the ABXY buttons, you have to use the touchscreen.

Getting used to stylus controls came with some growing pains. I struggled with precise movement, and there were times the character kept walking even when I lifted the stylus.

I would complain. But it was 2006, the DS was still sort of new and I'm guessing they wanted to make as much use of the touchscreen as possible.

About the combat

MS features something called the Astrolog, a screen showing 5 elemental planets orbiting a sun. The screen is divided into 5 different fields corresponding to one of the planets. When a planet falls into its corresponding field, any characters and enemies with that element get powered up. Your main character doesn't have a corresponding planet, they instead get powered up during the day (if you chose light magic) or at night (if you chose dark magic).

There's also Spellstrikes and Reflex Guards. A Spell Strike is preformed when you tap on a character casting a spell at the right time, a special animation plays and the skill does 1.5x more damage or heals 1.5x more HP (depending on the type of skill). A Reflex Guard is preformed when you tap on a character as they're about to get hit by an enemy, when done correctly, they flash green and take less damage. The timing window on these is really strict, which is something I don't like about this mechanic.

About the characters

Excluding you, there are 5 different party members in MS. You can change their names during the character creation screen, but I wasn't creative enough to come up with unique names so I just left them as is. When you arrive to the Earth planet for the first time, it's just you and Lassi, everyone else is scattered across the solar system.

Something I found really charming was that almost every character and most locations in MS were named after some sort of food or drink.

My first hour - The Earth Planet Erd

Final Verdict:

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I'd give it 5/5 Bees.