In recent months I have become something of a completionist. My collecting has slowed down a bit, and I am using more time to actually finish games. It was completely quantity over quality for a while there, and I even organized it to give myself maximum completions. I listed every Game Boy Color game ranked by difficulty according to GameFAQs. It helped both my backlog and self-esteem, but it sure left me with a bunch of boring kid games to write about. Hey, I have to rank them all which of course means I have to play them all too. The Game Boy Color feels like the system most targeted to kids of any Nintendo system, so of course there are a bunch of Barbie games. There are five total, and instead of writing about each one separately, I thought I would do another multi-game post and take them all out at once. That’s how to get views, right? Once again, they are ranked from my favorite to least favorite. There actually is a gap between the top and the bottom.
Barbie: Magic Genie Adventure
Developer: Vicarious Visions
Publisher: Mattel
Release Date: November 2000
Almost every game aimed at children from the era is a collection of mini games, so I hope you enjoy reading about different versions of memory matching. Luckily, Barbie: Magic Genie Adventure adds much more depth to the typical formula. It has a story for one thing. An evil sultan stole all the powers from the genies while Genie Barbie was conveniently off screen. It’s a good thing he got so impatient or there might not have been a game at all. As Genie Barbie you fly around on your carpet, solve some simple puzzles, find items for people, collect treasures, and explore dungeons. You also collect the powers of the other genies which give Barbie more tricks and open up new areas to explore. Sure, you have to play the typical mini games sometimes, but I applaud the developers for actually making it feel like a real action-adventure game. There are even hidden treasures to find which means you may actually want to keep playing the game after going through the story. It even has a memory matching game! I actually had fun with this one, and it is easily the best of the lot.
Kelly Club: Clubhouse Fun
Developer: Vicarious Visions
Publisher: Vivendi
Release Date: 2001
I played Kelly Club first not even realizing that it was a Barbie game. As it turns out Kelly is one of Barbie’s little sisters, and she never really caught on having since been retired. Since it was the first of the mini game compilations I played through I might’ve enjoyed it a little more than I actually should’ve. Still, I like the way it is set up, and some of the mini games are actually fairly challenging and take a few practice rounds to get used to. As Kelly, you have to search around your clubhouse looking for various people and items needed for a magic show. I do appreciate that it at least attempts to feel like a real game and not just boring mini games. Also, the graphics are good for what it is. I think people forget sometimes that the GBC was more powerful than the original Game Boy. The game ends with a magic show that is even more magical than they intended. The magic tricks happen, but there is no magician to be found. Kelly and the gang somehow conjure up real magic and don’t even bat an eye. Some guy in a goofy magician costume juggling three balls isn’t all that impressive, but three balls magically juggling themselves in mid-air is against the laws of the universe itself, and I’m here for it. So I guess I enjoyed this game a little bit even with no memory matching game. Don’t worry, there are plenty more of them in the GBC library.
Barbie: Pet Rescue
Developer: Vicarious Visions
Publisher: Mattel
Release Date: September 2001
I must admit I had a bit of hope for this game. It sounded like an intriguing premise, and the presentation is good, but it all ends up being smoke and mirrors. At the turn of the century Barbie started to turn away more from the “fashion and princess” world into a more action-oriented role, and you get to see that a bit here. When Barbie goes out to rescue an animal the game turns into a side-scrolling driving game full of obstacles complete with a life bar. It’s actually a decent little action section. Sadly, the game falters in the larger section of the game where you have to take care of the animals. The vet section is just simple button pushing. The game tells you what is wrong with each animal, so you just either have to feed, bathe, or bandage the animal until its health is full. Then you have to restore their happiness by, what else, playing mini games. The problem is that there just aren’t enough games to play. They seem to be selected at random, so I kept getting the same three over and over again. I know there are a few more, but mostly it was a much to easy maze game, an annoying ball bouncing game, and of course, memory matching. It’s disappointing when a game looks like it might have some depth only to become just another lazy memory match. I tried, but sadly this game doesn’t get out of the red section
Barbie: Fashion Pack Games
Developer: Hyperspace Cowgirls
Publisher: Mattel
Release Date: some time in 2000
Now we’re getting into straight up mini game territory with an obscure developer to boot. I love the name Hyperspace Cowgirls, and they had a noble goal of creating games with strong role models for girls. Unfortunately, they only released about a half dozen licensed games before disappearing. Of course, it sends a bit of a mixed message trying to empower girls but falling back on lazy fashion tropes. Hey at least this game is colorful. Basically, you go through Barbie’s wardrobe and collect different items by playing mini games. Each type of clothing or accessory has its own game, so to collect all of each item you have to play the same game over and over again. The game doesn’t even tell you when you’ve collected them all. You just have to keep checking until they start to repeat. The games do get harder as they go along, but the less fun ones get tedious fast. I enjoyed the pipe dream inspired game, and I was relieved when the game that looked like a sliding puzzle turned out to be a much more tolerable tile moving game. It’s just a shame they couldn’t sneak a memory matching game in there somewhere. So this game’s tolerable, but nothing special
Barbie: Ocean Discovery
Developer: Gorilla Systems
Publisher: Vivendi
Release Date: 1997?
Oh no, it’s the company that made Flip Out! Run for your lives! Okay so I guess I haven’t written about Jaguar on this blog yet, but Jaguar developers give me the willies. Gorilla Systems stuck around for over a decade making mostly licensed games aimed at girls, and the two I have played from them are not encouraging. Ocean Discovery is definitely the most basic mini game collection of the bunch. It falls behind the other ones because it is easier and much slower. The menu screens imply that there is some depth to be found, but mostly all you do is plod along underwater and uncover slow, low risk mini games. There’s not much else to see in the ocean, so it’s really just swimming and basic games, and each one has to be played three times. This one does have a memory match at least. Those must be easy to program. This is the only Barbie game I am putting in the red. Nobody likes water levels or memory games and that’s about all this one has to offer. The only thing you’re likely to discover in this game is the fact that toy companies are just out to make a quick buck. Disillusionment comes at a price.
My Barbie odyssey passed along quickly enough, and I enjoyed it about half the time. The other half of the time I felt like a complete idiot, but that’s normal for me. I didn’t play them back-to-back, but they sure feel like they exist in one big clump even with the different developers and publishers. It looks like there are about 200 lazily made kid games on the GBC, so I wouldn’t be surprised if it has one of the lower quality percentages. Not surprisingly, most of the Barbie games are clumped together in the upper part of the red section. I tried to push them through to purple, but they just didn’t make the cut. I liked Mario’s Time Machine better than 3/5 of them. Magic Genie Adventure is the closest one to reaching green with a respectable ranking of 65. Maybe there’s a high-quality Barbie game out there that a middle-aged white man can truly enjoy, but until I find it, I don’t mind going through the mediocre ones. Sometimes it’s all about the journey.
Game Boy Color Quality Percentage: 3/8 or 37.5%
The List: https://1drv.ms/w/s!AvR1pVOGMfAniEZub_KTCsR7twUv?e=p0AAm6
images are from mobygames.com as usual
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