Barbie

Posted on February 25, 2002 - Arts/Entertainment - 0 Comments

As a child, the greatest thing was going to a toy store to marvel at all the great and wonderful toys on display, and to dream which ones you wanted in your room, which was usually all of them. For male children, every toy store also had one place that could make them whimper and scream just to get away from it. I’m talking about the aisle set aside for the girl toys, or as I call it, ‘The Pink Mile.’ The pink mile was a place where parents would take their little boys into as a punishment for making a scene earlier in the day when they would scream and cry because they couldn’t get a roll of Bubble Tape from the checkout line in Pamida.

Barbie was a game that came out of the pink mile and playing it was a trying experience as I had to deal with the past ghosts that have walked the mile.

Plot

As expected from a game about Barbie from the early nineties, the plot is extremely thick. The cast of characters is quite large, and surprisingly each one gets enough character development that they feel as if they are real people, You end up caring about what happens to them throughout the game as they go through their happiness and sorrow. If that isn’t enough, the plot so good, and filled with so many twists and turns, that one can not help but want to keep playing the game through to the end. It is the type of story that you would swear was written by somebody like Hideo Kojima.

If you actually believed any of that, you have fewer brains than Barbie herself. The plot of this game is so shallow that it is surprising that this game was never used as the fuel for a feminist bonfire. The plot consists of Barbie dreaming about her upcoming ‘busy’ day of having lunch, going to the beach, buying a dress, and going to a party with Ken. Now if this is too much plot for you, you better just put this game down, and go back to something less involved, like watching TRL on MTV.

Oh the Pain

Well, since there isn’t a whole lot of plot in this game, and since this is based on Barbie, I can’t really extrapolate a fictitious plot to fill the holes and have any confidence in it since the actual plot is probably as about thick as you can get from the world of Barbie, so I’ll just present a list of things in this game that caused me pain.

I. That god damn first wall [FigA] - I would have had this game reviewed about eight months ago if it wasn’t for that damn wall. I tried and tried and tried and couldn’t figure out how to get past this obstacle that appeared roughly twenty feet from the start of the game. How the hell am I supposed to reason out that the solution was to feed a damn toucan a diamond from the charm bracelet?

II. Barbie’s Feet - Either Barbie is wearing a size ½ shoe or she is an ungulate. (that is a hoofed mammal) Whatever it is, there is no way those two little pegs could provide adequate stability for what appears to be about a nine-foot eight-inch body height. There is a reason why horses, giraffes, and antelope all have four legs. It is so they don’t look as stupid as Barbie does.

III. The burning sensation in my eyes [Fig B] - It is good to know that the art director was into fluorescents. Because of that person, (There were no credits after beating this game. I don’t blame them for not wanting credit) I can no longer legally drive in the state of Minnesota during the nighttime hours.

IV. Barbie’s disregard for the laws of physics - Newton’s first law states that “An object in motion continues to travel with constant velocity unless acted on by an external force.” Well, in Barbie’s world, I guess that the will of Barbie is an external force since she can throw her little diamonds and decide exactly when she wants gravity to take told and bring it back down. They will constantly raise until Barbie says other. With a gift like that, I think she missed out by not pursuing a career as a world class lawn dart thrower.

More Bitching

To finish up my review of Barbie, I’m just going to bitch about her some more.

Extraneous Bitching I

Boss Dress — I have the same fashion nightmare.

Go back to the title screenshot and ask yourself this question. How in the HELL can somebody grow THAT much hair? Christ Barbie, sell it to make a wig and make ten grand. You won’t have to spend that much on shampoo weekly then, and you won’t have to have that second spine implanted to help keep your head in its proper upright position.

Extraneous Bitching II

Examine the second screenshot in the plot paragraph and ask yourself this question. Who in the HELL sleeps sitting up using their hands as a pillow under their chin? Well, I guess since Barbie has six times the amount of hair on her head than any single metal band from 1987 did, it must take fifteen to twenty hours to do it up, and the required amount of hairspray for that procedure could kill seven baby seals. Therefore, sleeping in a natural position would destroy a lot of time and effort.