Barbie as Rapunzel

Posted on January 5, 2009 by Multimedia Mike

Let’s keep this Barbie kick going with another game based on the alpha doll appropriating another classic fairy tale (a somewhat profound proposition to be sure, since Barbie is, herself, the modern embodiment of a fairy tale). Fortunately, Barbie as Rapunzel is already in the database, so this is just a screenshot recon effort (and credits entry, and I see that the description could use a touch-up).

In the story of Rapunzel — or at least in Barbie’s version of it — Rapunzel and her Prince Stefan are going to throw a masquerade ball. An evil witch named Gothel grows indignant that she did not get an invite. So she casts a spell on the castle, throwing it into immediate disrepair and the prince is turned to stone while 6 stones from his crown are scattered about the castle grounds. Gothel seems to have exacted the perfect revenge in response to the snubbing.

But there’s one doll she didn’t count on…

Barbie as Rapunzel -- in the damaged hallway

Barbie/Rapunzel’s task in this game is to move about 6 rooms in the castle, clean them up, find 1 stone in each, and then rescue the prince. Simple, concrete goals, and this definitely qualifies as a game. Above is one of the rooms that Barbie must restore. Each room has a number of areas which can be magically renovated by using a magic wand or paintbrush from the magic toolchest. But each room also has a creativity exercise. For the hallway shown above, the creativity exercise is the painting:

You get to select a painting design, color it as you see fit, and select a frame. Printing afterwards is optional. This is an interesting activity, algorithmically, because, rather than a freeform brush or area fill method, the paint brush only works on a particular layer as the program makes you work across sections of the painting.

After the room has been completely revitalized, you get to use a magical magnifying glass to find one of the stones in the room.

It's Big Head Barbie! New from Mattel...

Then it’s on to the other rooms to repeat the same process, only with designing a floor mosaic, a carpet, a mask for the ball, matching thrones for the throne room, and customizing (pimping?) flowers for the flower garden. It became a bit rote after awhile and I developed a pattern for just getting through the activity (the game wouldn’t let me pass until all the areas were colored; I couldn’t even leave the clouds white). I was reminded of Mike Judge’s restaurant manager character in Office Space; I could envision him asking, “What do you think about someone who only does the bare minimum?”

After all the stones are collected, it’s time to hit the hedge maze– real 3rd-person 3D action! At various junctures, that evil witch has thrown up strange obstacles that can easily be overcome by items in the magical toolbox:

And, long story short, the prince is rescued and the masquerade ball proceeds as planned. And the final insult is that Gothel’s evil spell was completely undone in less than a half hour.

See Also:

At MobyGames:

Barbie as Rapunzel
All Barbie universe games in MobyGames

Barbie as Princess Bride

Posted on January 4, 2009 by Multimedia Mike

I’m still working on a good system for capturing screenshots from console video (so very close to solving this problem after all these years), but I had an itch to process at least one game today. I remembered I have a large pool of Barbie games that has gone completely untouched up until now. Even though MobyGames enjoys good coverage of Barbie titles, I still have quite a few that don’t show up. There is really nothing to fear– I’m quite confident that these are well-engineered (i.e., won’t crash or screw up my system), colorful, and above all, easy games that will take no more than a 1/2 hour to breeze through. In fact, I almost feel like I have an unfair advantage at gaining MobyGames points because I have access to such a large pool of games like this.

So I decided to go with Barbie as Princess Bride today. The story unfolds with Princess Barbie and Prince Ken growing up in a kingdom somewhere “on the other side of the world”. They are really quite keen on each other and have every intention of marrying when they become the appropriate age. It’s not explained whether or not the prince and princess are actually siblings, though per my understanding of royal traditions, that would not be entirely unexpected.

When Prince Ken is old enough, he sails off on a vague, undefined journey, as princes are wont to do. After patiently and optimistically waiting for many years, Butterfly Fairy shows up to assure Princess Barbie that Prince Ken is on his way back and that she should prepare for the imminent wedding.

So what kind of game is on offer here? Why, it’s a wedding planning game! If there’s anything this gaming blog can claim to specialize in now, it’s wedding planning games. All 12 of the minigames/activities (even one completely non-interactive musical interlude) revolve around the princess’ upcoming nuptials. The first 2 activities pertain to delivering wedding invitations to all of her woodland friends. Whether she consorts with any humans instead of just fairies and forest creatures is left unexplained.

Barbie as Princess Bride -- handing out invitations to woodland creatures

Note that “woodland friends” includes skunks. Ah, her wedding, her guest list.

Then, Princess Barbie has to bake a cake using such off-the-shelf ingredients as flour, sugar, eggs, butter, and — according to my notes — harmony and the gift of giving. They’re both right there in her pantry. While the cake is in the oven, the princess visits the Butterfly Fairy’s garden of statues and edible plants to find suitable decorations for the cake which she will apply in the next activity:

Barbie as Princess Bride -- Baking and decording a cake while wearing an unnaturally glassy stare

Fortunately, so strong is the love between Ken and Barbie that Ken is likely to overlook the abomination I decorated on his bride’s behalf.

As alluded previously, one of the activities (#6) is actually a musical number. Princess Barbie hops up on a bridge, hopped up on the love she feels for her dear prince, and sings a song.

Barbie as Princess Bride -- musical interlude on a bridge

The music in question is stored on disc in MP3 format. And for this occasion, I’m experimenting with embedding an MP3 file directly in a blog post. Give it a try:

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

Hey, it worked! Thanks, WordPress Audio Player plugin. Oh, the possibilities. Back to the game, though, as soon as Princess Barbie steps off the bridge, she meets a boy by the town well. The dunce has gone and accidentally dropped a bunch of rather important stuff in the well and the activity is to fish it back out with the bucket.

Barbie as Princess Bride -- Crown and wedding ring in the well

Look at that! Both the crown and the wedding ring took the plunge. I can’t help but think that this would be a beheadable offense in a real kingdom. But there are apparently no hard feelings as the kid shows up as the ring bearer in the final wedding:

Princess Barbie and Prince Ken -- wedding photo

So yeah, Princess Ken makes it back safely (one of the later activities is to help sail Ken’s boat back through severe ocean weather and dolphins) and finally, formally proposes to Princess Barbie. The proposal wasn’t even a lock as the Barbie was making all of these preparations. Wow, that could have been one heck of a plot twist for a fairy tale video game if Ken found another princess abroad.

See Also:

Barbie as Rapunzel
Barbie as Sleeping Beauty
Barbie Magic Genie Bottle
Secret Agent Barbie
Barbie Beach Vacation
My Fantasy Wedding, perhaps the authoritative wedding planning game

At MobyGames:

2008 Review; 2009 Prospects

Posted on January 1, 2009 by Multimedia Mike

Here I am at the start of a new year. 2008 really didn’t see that much gaming activity from me but hey, it’s not like this is a job or anything. According to the Master Play List, I only played (or made blog posts for) around 40 games (vs. about 150 for 2007). However, according to my notes, I actually played several games that just bored me to the point that I couldn’t bring myself to compose a proper blog entry or MobyGames record. Who knows, maybe I will get to those in 2009. I only managed to amass around 2500 MobyGames points in 2008 vs 7500 points for 2007, though I suppose that still represents a significant amount of effort, so I can’t be too hard on myself there.

I have something ready to go for the new year– I have a good number of console games to cover (many are already in the database but need screenshots). These include mostly Sega Saturn games, but also some PlayStation 1 & 2, Dreamcast, and GameCube games. While there are excellent emulators for most video older (say, ROM-based) game systems, screenshots from more modern (say, optical disc-based) consoles are pretty difficult to obtain. I have long struggled to capture video from these consoles through different TV capture cards and most recently via a DV capture bridge. These solutions work adequately but the biggest problem is playing the game while capturing. All of the capture solutions introduce a slight lag which makes gameplay incredibly frustrating.

However, I finally thought of a solution: an S-video Y-splitter. Once I thought of the idea, I visited Amazon to verify that such a device exists. Thus, for a game console that has S-video and stereo RCA outputs, split all 3 outputs, sending one set to a real, lagless television for playing and the other set to the DV capture bridge.

It’s all a bit tedious to set up (hauling the TV into the same room as the computer, setting up all the cables), but once it works, it works well. The capture process, I mean. First, I have to suffer as the Sega Saturn CD console (pictured above) struggles to validate the old, used collection of Saturn games. Mostly I get the familiar Gouraud-shaded VU cubes playing the red book CD audio tracks.

But I’m pleased to report that I did get some games to work, and that once a few games worked, some previously rejected Saturn games started working as well (perhaps the console needs to warm up). It’s a real pleasure to play without input delay. Further, I have already discovered a few gems among my old Saturn stock that I look forward to writing up, and have captured hours of footage. The only problem I am struggling with now is properly capturing still images (software likes to squeeze the images to the wrong aspect ratio). I am confident I will work through that soon and transform myself into a console screenshot capturing machine. Ideally, I will be able to put together some decent gameplay videos for posterity as well.

Gaming Pathology

Piles Of Games, Copious Free Time, No Standards

Month: January 2009

Barbie as Rapunzel

Barbie as Princess Bride

2008 Review; 2009 Prospects