Winx Club is an animated TV series that transfers perfectly into a video game. It features the adventures of six teenage fairies from Alfea — the best school for fairies in the realm. Each fairy comes from a different planet, has her own distinct look, personality and powers, and they use their magic to defend themselves and protect the Realm of Magix from evil.

The Realm of Magix is a highly technologically advanced, as well as magically enchanted, universe of hospitable planets populated by pixies, fairies, witches and monsters. The usual teenage angst prevails — the homework, the need to accessorize, to decorate — complete with boyfriends from the nearby School for Specialists. Thwarting their evil counterparts of the school for witches, Cloudtower, destroying monsters and rescuing their boyfriends are all part of their adventures.

Voila! Instant protagonists, antagonists, a world where both technology and magic prevail side by side, at least a dozen things to do such as dressing the fairies, decorating their dorm rooms, assisting each fairy in their hobbies such as helping Flora water and feed her plants, apart from their adventures which are dozens upon dozens of mini-games, ranging from flying a spaceship, skateboarding to mazes and different types of memory and pattern matching games, as well as a Winx Club trivia game. The controls are simplistic — for example, the joystick to toggle and the X key to select or the arrow keys to move and the X key to jump. All of them are the type of games that children are capable of playing and that they love. Altogether, Winx Club is a great IP for a video game.

You pick your favorite fairy as your avatar and head to Alfea. Like many console games of this sort, the more games you play, the more you unlock, and there are three areas, each with their own lobby and mini-games that you can advance to. You enter the Alfea dorms and find two of the Specialist boys sparring with swords. I'm not sure why they are sparring in the girls' dorms, but you cannot interact with them. They are there just to fill up the middle space. Instead, you may enter the fairies' rooms or interface with the dorm decorator.

Designed for girls ages 6 to 11, this is a wonderful little game to keep them interested and occupied. They can pick their favorite fairy to serve as their avatar. There are unlockable items, such as clothes for each fairy and items for their dorm rooms. There are Winx music videos to watch. They can live the lives of each fairy. But — and it's a huge BUT — the loading times are (ed — elided for language). Seventy-second load times to get to a lobby — the entrance of the Alfea dorms for example, then another 70 seconds to enter a fairy's room, then ANOTHER 70 seconds for a mini-game to load, which takes under a minute to complete, is not acceptable. Heaven forbid you enter the wrong room.

I asked to review this game because Winx Club is my niece's "most favoritest cartoon," and it reminds her of Grandma — who has all the DVDs for her to watch when she visits. She's 5 — one year younger than the target market — so I figured I would play it with her, reading the instructions for her. I sat down with her, and we fired up the game. Then we waited. And waited, and waited as we stared at the blank screen.

"Is something wrong? Is the DVD scratched?"

"No, honey, it's loading."

"Why does it take so long?!" accompanied by an impatient huff.

We peeked into all the dorm rooms and got through to about three mini-games before she gave up her "most favoritest cartoon" with a snort and pout.

"This is no fun!" She declared as she handed the PSP back to me. "You play. Can I do painting instead?"

I brought out the brushes and paint, searched for and printed out her favorite Winx Club fairies as a consolation and let her paint while I continued slogging through the game, waiting through the interminable loading times, unlocking new games and trying to find the games that she would be able to play on her own without having to stumble through the minefield of load times. She does ask for the game every now and then, as she likes watching Musa's music videos. Her brother likes to play the spaceship game, but he's a little younger and often loses patience before the game loads as there are other spaceship games that load faster and last longer.

I could talk about the graphics — quite lovely, making good use of the PSP graphical capability; the music — the best you can get from the PSP speakers and familiar to anyone who have watched the television series; the large number of games that are available; the longevity and replay value (you can trade items with your friends via local wireless connection) — but I cannot get over the insurmountable hurdle of the agonizing load times.

All in all, Winx Club: Join the Club on the PSP as a video game targeted toward 6- to 11-year olds is a wonderful concept. Really neat little mini-games and great use of the IP; but what about the execution? In the words of the young girls that this game is targeted toward — "Stink!" I am hugely disappointed. But if not for the load times, this game could have been fun, exciting and easily, my niece's "favoritest" game of all.