Introduction...
Barbie - A Fun-filled Adventure is a side-scrolling jump'n'run arcade game.
Tell me a story...
Tomorrow is Barbie's great day. She will pick up her new outfit at the mall, have lunch at the soda shop, go swimming at the beach, and, meet Ken at the party. Now, she first has to sleep because it's late and she needs here rest for these upcoming businesses. But she is so excited that she gets strange dreams...
The same procedure as every year?...
You jump through your dream world which is built on the events of the next day, and your only weapon is this beautiful bracelet you are wearing in the black display frame at the bottom of the screen. Its three pendants have magical powers. For example, you can trigger some animals and living things to do some task for you. Bad luck that you can't tell friend and foe apart and don't know what to do. I think it's a large part of the gaming experience to leave it to you to find things out. But to give you a little help for the bracelet: the x means erase, the double arrow means move, and the question mark means "I don't know, just use me". Coming back to the use of the pendants, you have to "throw" them at an angle of 45° and when you release the key, they decline rapidly until they strike something. That's an advanced and absurd technique, but you should become a skilfull user after a while.
Since you are sleeping, your energy is represented by comic-like snore Zs. When you get hit by an enemy, you lose one of them in a speech-bubbled. To get more you have to collect tokens like the ones with the Barbie B on it. The blocks hide nothing most of the time; in the other cases you can get points, a mini B which gives temporary invulnerability, and even reach secret places! When you lose all Zs, you can use one of two continues. When you used both of them and lose, game's over - and: no save-games, no passwords.
You see, Barbie AFFA is difficult, although I was able to reach the last of the 13 stages at my third try. The score does not serve a real purpose - there is no highscore table.
Eyes and ears...
The graphics is EGA or CGA mode 4, palette #1, high intensity (high magenta, high cyan, high white + low black). The latter is screenswapping instead of stuttering scrolling, raising the difficulty even more. Style = eye candy; and even the CGA is freaky enough to have a wondering look at it. No music but various internal speaker beeps and blips for the sound effects.
After output now the input...
move - Arrow keys
jump - Ctrl/Shift
change bracelet pendant - Spacebar
use ("throw") bracelet pendant - hold and let go Alt/Alt Gr/Z
pause - P
quit match/game - Esc
(fake pause - Break/Alt+Arrow Key)
Transduction...
My opinion fluctuated strongly between four and one point while reviewing Barbie AFFA. In the end, I would simply go for the average three points if there wasn't the absence of a save-function and passwords. TWO points! Recommended for Barbie fans, experience-seekers and people with the right touch of humour, not recommended for choleric persons and members of the mainstream.
If you want to run the game under pure WinXP turn Num Lock off, otherwise you will get constantly jumping barbie. But, of course, DOSBox is recommended.
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