Come on Barbie, let’s go party like it’s 1991
I’ll admit that I was always less of a Barbie girl and more of a Bratz baby in my formative years (huge crush on Jade). That said, Barbie of Swan Lake is a cinematic masterpiece that I would watch endlessly after school, and barbiegirl.com (RIP) was one of the few flash game portals that my primary school had not yet blocked.
But it wouldn’t be until I watched 2023’s live-action Barbie film starring Margot Robbie and Ryan Gosling that I would become truly Barbie obsessed. The movie opened my eyes to a truth that hadn’t been afforded to me growing up – that Barbie was more than a plastic blonde with an impossible figure and an infinite fashion budget. The world had failed to impart on me just how strong, independent and important Barbie truly was, and still is, and the hugely influential role she’s played in the lives of girls and women since 1959.
So the announcement of Barbie Rewind – which sees Atari and respected video game preservation house, Digital Eclipse, put together a collection of 16 classic Barbie games that I never had the opportunity to play growing up – had my immediate attention. Never mind the fact that the physical Deluxe Edition comes with a 1-in-20,000 serialised Barbie doll wearing an Atari t-shirt.
After first going over the list of retro titles included in the Barbie Rewind package, I was shamefully astonished at just how prolific Barbie’s video game output has been, and not just in sheer volume but in the breadth and variety of gameplay and genre. The collection covers multiple early-90s titles on systems like the NES, SNES, Genesis/Mega Drive and Game Boy along with PlayStation and Game Boy Advance games from the late 90s and early 2000s.
Importantly, it’s not all dress ups and tea parties. Detective Barbie: The Mystery Cruise is an island-hopping adventure about recovering stolen art works, Secret Agent Barbie: Royal Jewels Mission is an action platformer with stealth and gadgetry, while Barbie Super Sports dares to bring together two of the world’s greatest extreme sports – roller skating and snowboarding. It’s genuinely exciting to look back at the history of Barbie video games and see that her virtual efforts have been every bit as radical as her on-shelf persona.
Barbie Rewind also features Barbie Vacation Adventure, a SNES and Genesis/Mega Drive game that was developed and set to release in 1994, and even went as far as being reviewed in at least one gaming magazine, but was cancelled before it ever reached the public. The fact that Digital Eclipse could rescue this one and finally give folks the chance to play it is such an incredibly cool thing, and is exactly why we need teams with this kind of passion for preservation to be allowed to look at every part of gaming’s history, not just the big names and big sellers. Sure, by the very nature of *gestures broadly at the licensed games of the 90s/00s* there are more bombs than bangers in the mix, but historical and educational value comes to the rescue.
Just being able to scroll through all of the included titles, inspecting high-quality scans of the original boxes turned into 3D models and flipping through the original manuals took me right back to being a kid. There’s just something so special about the experience of getting a new game and immediately poring over every page of the manual in the car ride home that everyone of a certain age misses, and while that might be difficult or expensive to recreate in a physical sense, the work done here to represent it digitally goes such a long way to invoking those same feelings.
So far, that’s a lot of what anyone who’s touched a Digital Eclipse retro collection would already expect, but Barbie Rewind is a little different. The studio has taken a very unique approach with this one, and married the catalogue of classics to a completely original experience. In true Barbie fashion, the main way you’ll find and enjoy these titles is through a highly-customisable Barbie Dream House where the more retro Barbie games you play the more rooms and decorations you’ll unlock.
I can’t think of anything more fitting for a bundle of time-honored Barbie video games than Barbie herself requesting that you play through her interactive history to unlock iconic items from decades of real-life Dream House products, and then giving you complete freedom to decorate with them. This all comes via a very Unpacking-esque pixel art aesthetic, and with very few rules or restrictions on how you place items and furniture, so it’s a great little cosy experience that Barbie fans of all ages can appreciate.
It’s also just a really neat way to encourage players to engage more with the retro content. I’m embarrassed to admit how often I’ll get overly excited at the release of a remaster or port of something from my childhood, only to play it for 30 minutes and bounce because that desire for nostalgia is so quickly satisfied. But Barbie Rewind makes getting the most out of its classic titles a driving force for expanding your Dream House, with new packs of items tied to completing in-game objectives. Some of these are very simple – open a game, play it for 15 minutes, that sort of thing – but as you go on you’ll start being asked to fully complete games or achieve high scores to fulfil requests.
As something of a video game completionist who also happens to not be very good at most video games, the idea of those more involved targets seemed a little daunting at first. But thankfully all of the games feature a rewind (heh) function, and many also pack optional enhancements such as unlimited health or timers to help take some of the edge off of these classically-challenging games.
Reviewed on PS5 | Review copy supplied by publisher
Great
- A wide-reaching collection of retro Barbie games, including an unreleased title
- Wrapping everything in a Dream House decorating game is genius
- Tons of historic material to look through
- Welcome extra settings and cool border visuals
Not great
- A lot of the included games aren't exactly memorable classics
