Barbie (1991 Video Game) - Reception and Legacy

Reception and Legacy

While noting that the game held little interest for the average gamer at its time of release, the game has been described in modern times as "not bad" for a generic platformer. On the other hand, critics have pointed out that the game feels like it has been shoehorned into an inappropriate genre for its content and that even for a platformer it is wholly unremarkable. Indeed, in her book, From Barbie to Mortal Kombat: Gender and Computer Games, Justine Cassell uses Barbie as an example of typical "pink" software—software designed with a male audience that is merely re-skinned for female gamers without regard for their different tastes in gaming. Cassell notes that in the design of the early 1990s Barbie video games, Mattel supervisors were only interested in the superficial visual appearances and left the game mechanics and development to third parties.

Barbie was discussed in 1992 by the United States House of Representatives during a hearing chaired by the Subcommittee on Intellectual Property and Judicial Administration (under the Committee on the Judiciary) in which it was noted that the game had been subject to frequent counterfeiting and related copyright and trademark infringements. The bulk of Barbie counterfeits were noted to have originally come from Taiwan, however at the time the counterfeiters were shifting operations toward Korea, Hong Kong, and China. As the House noted, the counterfeit operations that sought to infringe Barbie's intellectual property rights were large-scale and sophisticated operations working with the very latest ROM technology. Some of the counterfeit cartridges were essentially exact duplicates indistinguishable in quality from the original product.

In October 1992, the game was remade for the Game Boy under the title Barbie: Game Girl. The Game Boy game was also designed as a platformer and in many ways it presented a very similar feel to that of Barbie.