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So, you played this as a kid, but your interest in it kind of got reignited recently. I asked the narrative designer about that and she couldn’t really remember it, but she seemed slightly unnerved. Imagine if Mattel had trademarked all of the character names in this game. Trapped in a room with nothing but Twitter. In the opening sequence of the game Twitter the bird flies up and lands on Rapunzel’s window, and they have-it’s got a real kind of 2020 lockdown energy to it. In the article, I thought it was kind of funny that Rapunzel has a companion that she sits alone and talks to in her room named Twitter.
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But I think Barbie as Rapunzel was kind of already in the pipeline, so it didn’t really benefit from any extra budget, I don’t think. Yeah, I mean, from what I learned they were all kind of being made around the same time, but Barbie Fashion Designer definitely came out first and was the big runaway success that then gave them the platform to go on and create more games afterwards. So there are sort of Barbie thematic video games in here, right? Like the dressing up and stuff?Īnd this is coming off of the back of Barbie Fashion Designer, right? This is after Mattel Media’s first, kind of, big Barbie hit? We’re looking at wedding dresses, and decorating cakes, and all of that that you wouldn’t necessarily associate with the Rapunzel story. So it’s Rapunzel, but it’s also, we’re looking at dressing up. And I guess it’s that interesting kind of Barbie brand thing of, it’s Barbie as Rapunzel. Rapunzel with the roles reversed a little bit, it sounds like? Yeah, so it’s just kind of a minigame collection with sort of a narrative wrapped around it, which is essentially Rapunzel. But yeah, it’s a really charming, slightly unhinged game that I really, really loved growing up. Has a bit of a WarioWare vibe to it in some parts. It takes you through kind of a, I guess at the time a semi-progressive fairy tale narrative of Barbie rescuing the prince and negotiating with trolls and that kind of business with a kind of collection of slightly bizarre minigames. Pretty much does what it says on the tin. So, Barbie as Rapunzel is a virtual storybook game from Mattel Media. But can you briefly just to start us off here describe this game that we’re talking about? First of all, it wasn’t targeted at me as a boy necessarily, but also, I mean, I couldn’t have. So, Ally, it may shock you to learn that this is not a game that I personally played as a child in the 90s.
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Ally recently published an article on Kotaku Australia diving into the history of Magic Fairy Tales: Barbie as Rapunzel on the Windows PC platform from the 90s. Ally is a game developer and author and I guess I call you an advocate for underrepresented people in the video game industry. This time around, I’m happy to bring in Ally McLean. And every episode, we have a guest with us. And I’m here as always with Frank Cifaldi, the founder and co-director of the Video Game History Foundation. I am the co-director of the Video Game History Foundation. Every episode we’ll be bringing in an expert guest, someone who’s done their research and has an interesting story from video game history to tell. Welcome to episode number three of the Video Game History Hour presented by the Video Game History Foundation. Twitter: Video Game History Hour music is Blippy Trance by Kevin MacLeod ( ) Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License: Transcript In this interview, Ally takes us through her very personal journey into uncovering the whole story surrounding this not-so-strictly for girls title. From being heckled at GDC, to stalking MC Hammer’s press tour, all the way to how this game even inspired Ms. We sit down with Ally McLean to discuss her recent article The Incredible Story Behind The Barbie As Rapunzel Video Game to learn some behind-the-scenes stories of how Barbie as Repunzel came to be.
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