Barbie Game Girl (Game Boy) review "Have you ever wanted to be a game girl? I know I have. When I was 6, I dressed up all of my Transformer dolls and made them date each other. I even built a fancy car out of legos for them to drive around in. It was loads of fun. As you can tell, I had a deprived childhood. It has always been my dream and destiny to be a game girl. My ex was one too, but that's a whole other issue. From the age of six, it has been MY choice. What does that have to do with this game or review? Absolutely nothing. ..."

Have you ever wanted to be a game girl? I know I have. When I was 6, I dressed up all of my Transformer dolls and made them date each other. I even built a fancy car out of legos for them to drive around in. It was loads of fun. As you can tell, I had a deprived childhood. It has always been my dream and destiny to be a game girl. My ex was one too, but that's a whole other issue. From the age of six, it has been MY choice. What does that have to do with this game or review? Absolutely nothing.

Game Girl is a completely crappy game that should not exist. But you could have probably already figured that out, huh? Barbie games were never made to be anything more than technological tools aimed to turning young impressionable girl minds from innocent playful kids to wild, out of control women. I mean, have you seen Barbie dolls? Take the clothes off. What is underneath? Nakedness. And Barbie likes to shave her nether regions. This is sending out a bad message to the girls!

The game doesn't really have much of a story. Barbie wants to be a game girl, so she goes from stage to stage doing increasingly stupid things in an attempt to do something that most girls manage to do in far less time. I mean, it's not exactly hard to be a game girl. Oh well, whatever works for Barbie. I seriously don't know what the story is, because when I bought this game off eBay, it did not come with an instruction manual. Talk about bad deals. :(

Barbie has never really been about sending a message out to the youth of America, but surely the developers of this crap could have thought of something better. You control Barbie through several tedious and boring stages. And I swear, I played the same exact stages in the NES version. And in every other Barbie game ever made. They really became interchangable by this point. It's like the developers had a checklist. ''Crappy controls? Check. Boring level designs? Check. Weird graphics? Check. Enemies that make no sense? Check. Ice cream store and mall? Check, because if there's two things every girl loves, it's ice cream and the mall. Horrendous music? Check. Okay, go ahead and produce the game!''

I mean, one stage has you avoiding BEACH BALLS in the mall. BEACH BALLS. Now, Barbie may be a little whore that can't get from Point A to Point B without needing her big bad man to take care of her (remember kids, stereotypical girls are okay! It's okay to be a wimp! Just make sure to reward yourself with ice cream!), but I would assume she wouldn't have too much trouble with BEACH BALLS. It would be okay if she had weapons, but she doesn't. All she can do is jump. Slowly. And awfully.

So, since she has a really bad time jumping, the developers decided to make this a point by throwing in 376,093 platforms. And that's just in the first three levels. I gave up after that. I mean, it's not like the game is suddenly going to turn into Mario 3 by the 4th level or something. At least Mario got weapons. See kids, it's okay for Mario to be cool and strong. He's a guy! Barbie is a girl, so she can only run her pretty little stick figure body across the mall, being attacked by enemies like brooms and beach balls, all while maintaining a perfect hairstyle! Thank you for teaching me this valuable life lesson, Mr. Japanese Game Developers!

The controls are crap. Barbie likes to jump very slowly, and she doesn't get a choice of weapons. Plus, you have to jump with the A button. The A button for christs sake. That's assuming it actually works, of course. Sometimes she does jump, sometimes she just tells you to do it yourself. Typical girl.

Do I really have to tell you how crappy the music is? You've probably played a Barbie game in your life, and if you haven't, you can probably deduce how hideous the music is. Note to developers: Girls may be shallow gamers who like pretty things and 40 platform jumps in a row, but they don't like 2-instrument beats that sound like me trying to sing alto. The game also looks hideous. I've heard it compared to rat vomit. I've seen rat vomit. I'd rather play that.

THIS GAME IS JUST CRAP. I cannot reiterate that enough. It is one of those games that make you question why you waste so much money and time on games, when developers throw crap out there just to take advantage of a fad that most girls gave up years ago. As a game, it's one of the worst I've ever played. As a message for young girls, it's even worse. Shame on whoever made this degrading piece of hogwash. May Hades shoot the eternal flames on your anus!

Community review by psychopenguin (March 07, 2005) A bio for this contributor is currently unavailable, but check back soon to see if that changes. If you are the author of this review, you can update your bio from the Settings page.