the controls are fucking horrid on this thing. there are sometimes where you don't know what to do, and sometimes the thing you have to do you can't at first because you slide through it (ex. you're supposed to jump on the glass cups in the soda shop stage but you have to jump at it a certain way or you slip through.). i had to look up a video to know what to do with the final boss even and that's a complicated coin flip thing that takes forever to do.

The last stage was a nightmare with all the precise jumping you had to do. the mermaid stage felt more well done than the other stages and you could tell the game developers loved that more than the other stages. might as well worked on a mermaid barbie game instead of a regular barbie game

Well, would ya look at that? There’s this new Barbie movie coming out in theaters pretty soon, and since I feel like torturing myself, not only am I gonna go see that movie, but I figured I might as well go ahead and take a look at one of the Barbie games that exist out there, because my life just wouldn’t be complete without beating at least one of these things. Now, I’m pretty sure we are all aware as to what a Barbie is, so no need to get into that, but what you may not know is that Barbie has had A LOT of video games made over the decades, with more being made even to this day, and while I myself haven’t played any of them, I can make a good educated guess that not all of them are as fantastic as the life in plastic is made out to be.

In the case of the Barbie game I am covering today, the one on the NES, it was one of the very first games based on the doll, and it was primarily designed to get more girls to play video games. Not sure how well that turned out, but either way, it got released to the public, and it got the response that you would expect for this type of game. I myself wasn’t looking forward to playing it at all, not just because it was a Barbie game, but also because it was made by the same company who made A Boy and His Blob (those games will haunt me till the day I die). However, to my surprise… the game wasn’t actually all that bad. It’s not good by any means, but I was expecting way worse with this, so I am happy to say that I didn’t absolutely despise every part of my journey through this game.

The story takes place entirely in Barbie’s various dreams, so I am at least proud of the game also admitting it is a waste of time, the graphics are fine on their own, but they then have to be paired alongside the sprites of the characters, which look UGLY AS SIN, being on par with something I would’ve drawn in the 4th grade with my spazz-ass hands, the music and sound effects hold the exact quality you would expect to hear for a Barbie NES game, the control, for the most part, is acceptable, although the take-off speed for moving in the underwater levels is unbelievably slow, and the gameplay is mostly what you would expect from a Barbie NES game, but they do throw in some mechanics and gimmicks that are noticeably different from other games of the era… not to its benefit, but at least they are there.

The game is a 2D puzzle platformer, where you take control of Barbie, traverse through some of the most boring stages that I have ever played through, avoid deadly obstacles such as water, food, and clothes (the three deadliest foes to humankind), collect health items and invincibility powerups along the way, and take on several “boss battles” that stand in your way. Thankfully though, this game does have some elements that make it stand out, such as with the main gimmick and your main “weapon” of the game, the charms. You can throw these charms at various animals, objects, or foes throughout the game, and they will have a varying effect based on what type of charm you throw, such as with the animals helping you out throughout the stages, and “doing damage” to bosses. It’s not the most creative mechanic in the world, but it does keep things varied somewhat when progressing through stages.

However, none of that saves this game from its one central problem: it is BORING. I wasn’t expecting much from a fucking Barbie game, but throughout pretty much the entire game, you are just moving from left to right, throwing charms around, and practically nothing else much different from that, and it gets really tedious very quickly. Sure, there are different gimmicks throughout the levels, such as one section where you play as Barbie the Mermaid (because of course you do), but none of it is enough to change the monotonous gameplay. Not only that, but the game is also pretty light on the difficulty, so you won’t have too much trouble throughout most of the game, so it just ends up feeling like a slog that you just have to push through.

Well, aside from boring me out of my mind, is there anything actually wrong with the game? Yes, there actually is. The final stage before the final boss is ridiculously annoying, moreso then it ever needed to be. Throughout most of the stage, there is this moving conveyor belt under you the entire time, while you are jumping across these very tiny platforms that sometimes also spin around or fall down. If you fall down whatsoever, you don’t die, but you get sent alllllllllllllllllllllll the way back to the beginning of the stage, and for those playing the game for the first time, this will happen A LOT. It is appropriately challenging for the final stage, but it does get pretty aggravating after a while, especially with how small the platforms are compared to Barbie herself, and how you need to keep proper momentum at all times, because especially with the falling platforms, if you stop at any time, you won’t be able to make your next jump, making it so you have to do the whole thing yet again.

Overall, while not a terrible game by any means, and while it does try out elements that most other games at the time didn’t have, the game as a whole was just one giant snooze fest, with slow-as-hell gameplay, lack of major gameplay changes throughout stages, and a basic look that fails at keeping my attention for more then a second. Don’t bother playing this game whatsoever, unless you wanna check out what early Barbie games were like, but trust me, there are probably much better, and even much worse, choices for you later down the line. Let’s just hope that this new movie actually manages to make me feel some kind of emotion, which would be an improvement over this.

Game #280