Oshare Majo

I hadn’t heard of OSHARE MAJO — and usually I pick up on things that kids are into because of my students — but it’s certainly nice to see games expanding out of the boy-only ghetto. The DS is also helping a lot with this. From Kotaku:

For boys, there’s Mushi King. But for girls, there’s Oshare Majo(“Fashionable Witch”) Love and Berry. The arcade card game has been a hit with little girls since Sega introduced it last October. Put in a 100 yen coin, and if the player wins one of the mini games, they get a new card, which depict things like clothes or hairdos. These can be scanned into the machine, changing the character’s look. The cards of course have become quite valuable, and a quick scan of Ebay will turn up collections going for high prices. According to Sega, there’s been 43 million Oshare cards shipped since launch. Compare this to the 280 million Mushi King cards and do the math. The game is one of the few female arcade hits. Stereotypically, women are in arcades to take sticker picture photos or humor their boyfriends. Oshare fans don’t have boyfriends, because they’re like six years old. But, that’s beside the point.

And a link to the official site (in Japanese).