So I love the effect. It can be very powerful. However it is not without drawbacks.
Firstly, there is the option after buying the trick, to pay an extra $5 for the update, which allows you to input the info via the unlock screen. The link is on the magiccafe. This is a better method to start with and should have been included with the main purchase. Paying an extra $5 might not be much, but it should have been free.
The main method requires your phone's gyroscope. This will take some practice and initially it was inputting two numbers instead of 1. I will admit, I got better with this with practice. But the tutorial is not the easiest to follow.
The actual "app" requires internet access to work and load the music. It also opens onto the setting page rather than the performance, meaning you don't want the spectator to see this part when opening it.
The card markings are sometimes hard to read. You get better at it, but quite frankly, a better font should have been used. Furthermore, the marks could have been the last two numbers of the year instead. This would allow you to know what year they selected from the marks, instead of inputting a random card ID into it.
You have to ask which of the three tracks they have chosen. It flies by in the grand scheme of the trick, but it is fishing.
The artists names have all be abbreviated to get around copyright. Which is understandable. But makes identifying some songs difficult.
Which leads me to its biggest problem; spectators not familiar with songs. I hand them the pack for hem to pick a song, and it can take a while for them to find one. Thus they believe it was forced as they don't believe the other songs are real. Every song is real, but they don't know that. When they can only find one song they know, it diminishes the impact.
There is nothing this trick can do to fix that problem, the songs they have chosen are mostly all famous. But after performing this a few times, it is a noticeable hurdle.
Even with all these issues, I do not regret buying this trick in 2024 (while the app and YouTube links still works.) However check its status if your reading this in a few years time. Its fun to do and has that emotional hook. The gyroscope method is very clever and very unique to this effect. It is genius. I would recommend buying it for close-up walkaround but I feel a 2.0 version of the trick is probably in the works.
