Barbie the Detective Has Badge Attitude in Carny Caper

By AARON CURTISS

Dec. 7, 1998 12 AM PT

Given my childhood experiences with Barbie--she always ended up naked and decapitated--I had but two career paths ahead of me: video game writer or homicidal misogynist. To my parents’ dismay, I chose the former.

And in that capacity I was reacquainted with Barbie for the first time since the early 1970s. I’ve changed quite a bit since then, and so has she. Sure, she still has the clothes and the car and the ponies. But now she’s got a badge.

“Detective Barbie” teams players with Barbie and her friend Becky to help find the missing Ken. Sadly, the case is dubbed “Mystery of the Carnival Caper” and not something cool--say, “Mystery of Dismembered Ken in the Dream House Basement.”

Despite some cheesy “Clutch Cargo”-style animation, “Detective Barbie” delivers great game play. Boys might be frightened by the trademark pink box, but what’s inside should not be relegated to the girls’ ghetto in the game aisle.

Players move Barbie around beautifully drawn environments as she looks for clues. The interface is simple and the mystery is just challenging enough that young players will be engaged but not frustrated. Clues can be stored on a pocket organizer that allows players to refresh their memory as the game progresses.

All along, Barbie offers encouragement and advice.

Even on a detective’s salary, Barbie manages to live the good life.

“Barbie Riding Club” puts players astride one of Barbie’s numerous steeds and lets them ride around her rolling ranch. The ostensible goal of “Riding Club” is to explore the ranch and find little surprises hidden throughout.

But the surprises are anticlimactic and most little girls will simply appreciate the thrill of “riding” a digital horse. When clopping along the bridle trails, the view is first-person. There’s not a lot to do except make the horse go slower or faster and occasionally jump over rocks or logs. The course is predetermined so there’s no risk of getting lost.

“Barbie Riding Club” and “Detective Barbie” both require a Pentium 90 with at least 16 megabytes of RAM.

‘Girl Talk’

I’ve always been told that women are better conversationalists than men--more open, more in tune with their feelings. Maybe so. And games like “Girl Talk” may be why. While boys are busy using their computers to save the world from slave-driving, flesh-eating aliens, “Girl Talk” encourages their sisters to use the computer to reflect on their thoughts, hopes and dreams.

Since my thoughts, hopes and dreams are hardly those of a pre-pubescent girl, I needed to get into character. The game requires players to sign in and select a persona. Needless to say, there’s no option for a 30-year-old man to log in and gripe about his job, the fools in Washington or those kids and their awful music.

Instead, I signed in as a 12-year-old girl named Samantha with the nickname Sassy. I gave her red hair and brown eyes and chose to go without lip gloss because I think too much makeup makes me look trashy. Girls can log on and play with friends over the Internet. Rather than risk the cops busting down my door, I chose to play the single-player mode.

Either way, the game is surprisingly fun. Players start in a colorful bedroom with their clique of digital friends. From there, they can choose to enter arenas with names like “Time Trip,” “Chick Chat” and “Boy Buzz.” Each contains a variety of smaller games--varying from quiz show-type questions to reflex challenges.

Some questions are pretty smart. What, for instance, is a quidnunc? Sure, it’s easy to look up, but with just 15 seconds to answer, there’s not much time. Mistakes or wrong answers lead to the ultimate punishment: a zit. But even that’s fun. Players can select the zit they want from a menu of oozing and swelling pimples. It is still a video game, after all.

For girls who tire of the games, “Girl Talk” includes a journal that can be protected with a password. It provides templates for Top 10 lists as well as a space to record dreams with a small guide to help players decipher the images that dance across their minds’ eye. All are appropriately empowering. For instance, flying means “that you know your true self and you can ‘rise above’ the day-to-day stuff in life.”

I’m not sure that’s how Freud would have put it, but oh well.

The game requires a Pentium 90 with 16mb of RAM.

‘Sabrina the Teenage Witch’

It’s not that I always have something better to do on Friday nights, but I’ve never seen the television show on which the game “Sabrina the Teenage Witch” is based. I am culturally hip enough to know, though, that it follows the adventures of a teenage witch named Sabrina--a sort of adolescent “Bewitched” before any of the various Darrins came around.

Anyway, I hope the show is better than the game. Despite plenty of potential and a few nice touches, “Sabrina” slogs along at a pre-Pentium crawl. Load times are annoying enough, but when the CD spins out “Sabrina’s” kind of moronic, repetitive dialogue, the wait becomes infuriating.

The game requires 32mb of RAM on a Pentium 133 or faster with Windows 95 or 98. Power Macintosh users need 32mb of RAM and System 7.5.1 or higher. Even on a Pentium II 333 with 64mb of RAM, the game dragged.

“Sabrina’s” adventures require players to collect items and solve problems--great goals in a nonviolent game. But I’m not sure that any but the most patient young girls would find “Sabrina” worth the wait. Not even the voice of magician Penn Jillette can save it.

“Sabrina” needs a little magic worked on it.

Times staff writer Aaron Curtiss reviews video games every Monday in The Cutting Edge. To comment on a column or to suggest games for review, send e-mail to [email protected].

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX / INFOGRAPHIC)

Essentials

Detective Barbie

Platform: PC

Publisher: Mattel Media

ESRB* rating: Everyone

Price: $39.95

Bottom line: She’s even good at sleuthing

Barbie Riding Club

Platform: PC

Publisher: Mattel Media

ESRB* rating: Everyone