In my defense, good taste was never an option.

Revisiting the redecoration segments was truly horrifying for me because it confronted me with the abject lack of taste I had as a child.

Gameplay-wise, you basically redecorate the house room by room and collect a gemstone from each one. Rapunzel was going to have a party, Gothel was unhappy she wasn’t invited, so she uses magic to ruin Rapunzel’s house and turn her Prince Stefan into a stone statue. The game opens with a ridiculously catchy song that I have never forgotten the lyrics to, which states the game’s premise. Barbie as Rapunzel: A Creative Adventure!īarbie as Rapunzel is the first Barbie movie I watched, and I’m reasonably sure it’s also the first game I played. Here’s what it’s like revisiting these games after almost twenty years. Lately, for no once-in-a-lifetime, world-changing occurrence-related reasons whatsoever, I have been succumbing to the siren call of nostalgia, watching gameplay footage of these games on YouTube. I definitely didn’t play all of them, but I’m sure I’ve hit at least most of the major ones. They were my introduction to computer games. There were enough of these so that it made buying birthday presents and gifts for me very easy. And most relevant to this piece: I became a gamer.Įach of the movies had a tie-in video game, and there were also completely original games like Barbie: Secret Agent, the Barbie Horse Adventure games, and Barbie: Beauty Boutique. I read Mark Twain novels thanks to Barbie as the Princess and the Pauper. The movies often used famous classical music symphonies in their soundtracks which served as my introduction to classical music. The impact these movies had on my life cannot be underestimated.

They generally featured Barbie in the lead role of a retelling of a popular story like Rapunzel, Swan Lake, or the best one, Barbie as the Princess and the Pauper, based on the Mark Twain novel. What filled that space instead were Mattel’s animated Barbie movies. The Disney phenomenon flew right by me growing up in the late ‘90s and 2000s.

Barbies old ice skating game