Barney's Hide & Seek Game

Warning: This game is awful, please do not hunt it down, it's not worth the time or effort.

Now I had to start the review with that as some fool (you know who you are) WILL go and download this game and will go "you are talking garbage mate, it can't be that bad", trust me, it is...thankfully however it will complete it's self if you leave it to it's own devices.

Anyway onto, arguably the worst Mega Drive game in history which, as you may had realised is based on Barney, the big purple smiling idiotic looking dinosaur. In the early 1990's "Barney and Friends" was one of children's TV's biggest...stars and in 1993 Realtime Associates along with Sega were responsible for bringing the Barney to the home console market.

The player controls Barney as he goes looking for a number of children and items associated with the children in a slightly more interactive version of the  equally appalling The Great Search for Waldo. Barney can hand on to balloons, jump and walk and yet no matter what he does, you can't help but want to punch the ugly grinning fool. What you swiftly realise though is that he walks as slowly as an old peadophile chasing down a bunch of pre-schoolers. This idea of pedophilia just gets worse when he actually finds on of the poor kids and hugs them. Not only does Barney hold them tightly but he also seems to sniff their hair and smile as he wraps his ugly, stumpy pink arms around the children.


As well as the nasty thoughts about Barney and children that would make Gary Glitter want to dress up in such a ridiculous costume you also come across 2 other very weird parts to the game. First you cannot kill Barney. If you try to step into the water or off a ledge you get Barney holding a stop sign. I thought for a second that this was subliminal messaging telling me to stop playing so then left the control and came to the other issue and the one that might make Stevie Wonder happy. If you leave the control for a minute or two Barney will walk through the entire game with out you needing to press anything. The smiling happy dope will literally complete his own game.

I really have no idea who decided that any of this was a good idea, I really need to wonder about the sanity of not only the programmers but also the poor folk that have played this, it's nothing short of a gaming nightmare that actually makes the aforementioned Waldo game look like good, challenging fun.

I was going to finish this by saying that this is the video gaming equivalent to self harm but it's not, the game completes it's self so it's more like video gaming assault. Really avoid it, avoid it like the plague, it'll last you 5 minutes of actual gaming as you swiftly breeze through it, then another 5 minutes of watching it complete it's self.

9%

Details:
Console-Sega Mega Drive
Release-1993
Developer-Realtime Associates
Genre-Self completing platform game
Players-1

Trivia:
Despite Barney being unable to go into the water on 1 level he's happy to walk underwater in another level and is unable to drown.
This game was the cause of "Retro Video Game Reviews' Hall of Shame"