Nerdicus NES Review #60 : Barbie

Title : Barbie

Publisher : Hi Tech Expressions

Genre : Platform

Players : 1 Player

Release Date : 1991

Estimated Value (as of today's date) : $5-$10

I'm a Barbie girl, in a Barbie wooooorllld.....I want to shoot myself. I don't have a thing against Barbie. I mean, she is the epitome of a childhood for most girls growing up. And while I didn't grow up playing with Barbies ( I was a GI JOE guy ), I did steal my sisters Barbie Dreamhouse to use as a base for Cobra Commander.

Now, it's too bad that stuff like that doesn't happen in this masterpiece of a Nintendo game. Sense my sarcasm there? In all seriousness, this is one of the games that made it on to the AVGN's list of horrible NES games, so you just know it's going to be a crap shoot.

But, Tom. The box says it's a glamorous quest full of magic fun and adventure! Well, if by magic, fun and adventure they mean eye gouging torture, then they're right! Oh wait, I just thought of something. This game would have been awesome if it was about Barbie chasing around a cheating Ken with a chainsaw. Now THAT would be great.

Anyway, let's see what we're left with......and thus my insanity begins.

Well, when you load the game it starts up with some pretty catchy tunes. Surprising....usually crappy games are accompanied by crappy music. But then you get to the title screen, with a creepy looking pixelated version of Barbie. Just look at that vacant expression. It's the devil.

Then it starts....Once upon a dream.......save me...

So Barbie goes to sleep after reading a book about mermaids, because she's tired and she has a busy day tomorrow. Her definition of a busy day is getting lunch at the soda shop. GET A JOB, BARBIE. STOP MOOCHING OFF KEN! WE ALL KNOW WHO BOUGHT YOU THAT DAMN DREAMHOUSE.

Ahem, sorry.

So the game is a platformer that takes place through various stages of Barbies drug induced coma. The goal is to find a nice outfit for an imaginary ball in your head. I'm serious. Each stage you collect accessories while avoiding stupid inanimate objects that I've come to life to kill you. Who would want to kill Barbie? Yeah....don't answer that. 

You'll see at the bottom of the screen that you have a charm bracelet. Well those are your weapons, but they're not really weapons. You don't kill anything, you just feed your charms to animals and hope that they'll choke on them. Kidding, you toss em charms and they do certain things that are supposed to help you on your way.

The Zzzzz's are your life bar, so every time you get hit you lose a Z and are in danger of waking up. Someone needs to wake me up from this nightmare.

The game is an absolute mess. There is no rhyme or reason as to what you're doing. You're basically just slowly walking across the screen, with no ability to do anything but jump over the enemies that move at triple the speed that you do. Good luck avoiding getting hit, because you're not going to be able to. The sound of getting hit is even worse. Sounds like a dying animal.

It's just one of those games that were made by a company that had no idea how to create an effective game that would hold a gamers interest. I can't see anyone in their right mind at a young age enjoying this game. It has no real reward. There's no urgency to get to the next stage. Everything looks the same, and even when you get to the other stages, it's just the same as the last one. Avoid getting hit, pick up things that don't do anything, and move on.

All I can say, is that Ken needs to drop Barbie and get out of there. Leave her in her dream world to rot, along with all her animal friends.

Final Score (out of 5) :

Until next time. Keep on gaming!