0 to Z of Playstation 1 Games - Barbie Gotta Have Games

Barbie Gotta Have Games also known as Barbie Groovy Games is a collection of mini games using the Barbie license, unlike the previous games released on Playstation Barbie Gotta Have Games was not developed by Runecraft which had developed the previous three Barbie Games.

Instead Swedish developed Digital Illusions would develop the game with their Canadian Division in Ontario leading up the development, Digital Illusions would go on to develop Battlefield Vietnam and Battlefield 2. The game would only see a release in the North American market with the game release very late in the Playstations life cycle in November of 2003, with the game releasing first on Game Boy Advance in September of 2002.

Barbie and her friends head out into the city and visit a couple of the cities hotspots, with 1 or 2 players able to choose from between Ken, Barbie, Christie and Teresa. Barbie Gotta Have Games provides the player with a total of eight mini games to play, with these games falling into several different genres. The first mini game is called Four Scoops and is a variant on the Connect 4 game with the player attempting to complete an ice cream with four matching colours.

 

D J Booth is a concentration game is set in the music store where the player must match compact discs into their corresponding cases. Next up Barbie and her friends head to the Jewellery store for a mini game of Gems and Jewels, with the player trying to match up a line of four of a kind either the same shape, color or size of gem or jewel.

Heading over to the arcade next for a game of Daisy Derby where the player faces off against an opponent in what is pretty much a game of Hangman, with the player taking turns to guess a letter of a word, a correct guess moving your horse forward while a wrong guess moves your opponent forward.

 

The beauty salon is the next destination with a mini game called Bubble Machine which is a Bust-A-Move variant, with the player shooting coloured bubbles aiming to match three of the same colour to remove them from the board.

 

After a hard game of bubble bursting it is time to head over to the Dance Studio, with a variant on the arcade classic Snake with the player trying to form the longest conga line they can. The Disco is the next destination with a rhythm game with the player controlling skipper as they try to quickly match the directing prompts on screen.

The Farmers Market is the final game and is exclusive to the Playstation version of the game, here the player can play Fruit Fallout, with the player trying to match three identical fruits in a basket before they overflow. The Game Boy Advance version of the game has two additional mini games these are The Park which is a Tic Tac Toe game and The Beach which has a checkers board game.

This being a very late release in the Playstations life cycle critic review for the game are non existent, so we head over to GameFAQs for their user ratings. Where we find the game sitting at an average user rating of 1.89/5 from a total of 9 user ratings.

Taking a closer look a those user ratings we find a majority were disappointed with the game with 3 users each rating the game at either a 0.5/5 or a 1.5/5. the remaining three users did save the game from receiving an even lower average scoring the game at either a 2.5, a 3.5 or a full 5/5 from one user.

Next we have the games difficulty with a total of 10 users rating this category, with a huge majority of users 7 in total rated the game as being simple, when it comes to difficulty. The remaining 3 users are split 2 to 1 in favour of the game being easy, with the remaining user finding the game to have just the right difficulty level.

Finally we have the games lifespan, where we find a total of 8 users rating this category, with 3 of those using spending less than an hour with the game, another 1 user spent around an hour with the game. The remaining 4 users are split evenly between 2 hours with the game and 8 hours. Averaging out this comes to an average time spent with the game of 2.8 hours.

This is the part of 0 to Z where is visit four online retailers and see what the availability of the title is, and what price you would be looking at if you wanted to pick this title up, the sites that I will be using for this are Amazon.com, eStarland.com, retrogames.co.uk and Gamedude.com I know the last one is very location specific, but from a podcast I listen to, I’ve heard they have a huge stock of older games, Ebay has now been dropped unless the game is unavailable at other retailers.

So lets get down to business with Gamedude where this game seems pretty common, with Gamedude paying $2 if you are looking to trade in your copy of Barbie Gotta Have Games. On the other hand if you are in the market for a copy of the game, then one can be picked up pretty cheaply at $7.

 

Retrogames.co.uk sadly don’t stock or list the Playstation version of the game, they do stock the Game Boy Advance version which is priced up at £7. Moving on to eStarland.com it is the same case with no Playstation version of the game stocked or listed, they do have the Game Boy Advance version with a copy missing the manual priced at $2.85.

 

Lastly we have Amazon.com where we find a good supply of the game available with good quality used copies starting from $5.50. Better quality copies are not much more expensive with a very good quality copy available for $5.99 which comes with free shipping, a couple of like new copies are also available for a very reasonable price at $6.77 and $6.80, the latter ships with Amazon so the free shipping only applies to orders over $25 or prime members.

A new copy of the game that is available is also competitively priced at $8.64, the remainder of the new copies on the market are a fair bit more expensive however, with the next cheapest priced at $19.97 once you add in the shipping costs. Prices for a new copy of Barbie Gotta Have Games are currently peaking at $25.41.

Written by

P J Gibbon