Yes, it's true. I am indeed reviewing "Barney's Hide and Seek". I'll bet you're asking yourself, "Exactly why is this handsome guy torturing himself this way?" Let me explain something: as much as I enjoy reviewing video games, I absolutely ADORE reviewing awful video games. There's just some inner euphoria that is released when I find a game that is truly terrible, a game that defies the laws of human reasoning, a game that causes you to wonder why you like video games so much if such travesties are occurring. It is a pleasure to inform you, the fair-minded (and possibly equally fair-haired) reader, of this game's existence so that you may avoid it at all costs and not be accidentally subjected to its heinous nature. You have been warned.

As you can likely already tell, "Barney's Hide and Seek" is not a great game. It's not good, it's not adequate, it's not mediocre. It's instead an insult to humanity. Here's the basic premise: there are five kids (okay, four, plus that blood-thirsty green Baby Bop thing) and five toys in boxes wrapped nicely with beautiful blue paper and ribbon. Both the kids and the toys are hidden in a few different locales and it's up to Barney to try his darndest to find them all. That's the entire object of the game. So you play the role of a grown man in a purple dinosaur suit whose goal is to find children hiding somewhere in strange lands where they shouldn't be in the first place. Where are their parents? Probably loaded up on scotch and Demerol. Anyway, are you ready to begin your search? Ah, ah! Not yet! Before that, we get these stupid parental instructions:

The first "hint" states the obvious. The second wedge of advice pretty much explains how the game is played. I'm pretty sure any child aged three and up could have figured this out, unless they are one of those kids whose favourite pasttime is still taking large dumps in their pants and drooling on the upholstered furniture. But don't forget that the buttons are for more than just finding the friends and the presents! You can also jump with them and PLAY! That's right, you can manipulate many things in your environment. If you stand next to a carrot, for example, you can pick it up and give it to a rabbit. The rabbit (or anything in the game's four scenarios) seems even remotely freaked out by a giant purple monolith wandering around touching the fauna. However, even though fondling the woodland creatures may seem like a good Saturday night activity, your main purpose is to find the children and the presents. The presents are always sitting on ledges above ground level, so you'll usually have to jump up there or use a balloon to haul your fat ass up there. And the children are hiding behind stuff (usually behind steroid-infused plants or something of that nature). As soon as you find them, they'll come out from their hiding place and...

...Son of a biscuitbox! Barney gives those kids a good squeeze while an eardrum-damaging sound sample has him saying "Remember: I love you." I really REALLY wish he would at the very least open his damn eyes when he's hugging them. This is too creepy. (And yes, I threw in a picture of him hugging the overjoyed grizzly as well for good measure.) After he is finished grabbing the child, he or she runs off into the distance, likely in sheer terror and mental disarray. I'd be in absolute shock if a purple dinosaur started grabbed me and held me tight to his mesozoic green chest. I don't feel right playing this. And why would a dinosaur love you anyway? Shouldn't it want to devour you whole? ...On second thought, that could make for an even more disturbing game...

So that's pretty much the entire game in a nutshell right there. There are only four areas to explore: 1) the forested region where lots of goofy animals live; 2) the musically enhanced area where musical instruments seem to be quite animated and play tunes for you if you press your button while near them; 3) an underwater area, which begs the question of how Barney or any of the kids can breathe down there — this isn't Atlantis, people!; and 4) a farm where, if you press your button near a sheep, it bounces about 10 feet into the air for no reason. All these areas do not use very detailed graphics, and likely could have been drawn by anyone with a single-digit age; they just needed a grown-up to program everything together for them. At the end of each level, Barney counts how many children and toys you've found. Whether you get zero or all ten, Barney doesn't care. Even he knows he's trapped inside a monstrosity of a video game and just wants you to finish the journey so he can get out and go home to his wife. He's married, right?

Frequently (and annoyingly), Barney speaks in this game. Someone acquired the wonderful idea to have the voice actor of Barney come into the studio and record a variety of happy vocal samples to be inserted in the game. So throughout the game, you'll hear Barney say moron garble like "Stooooooo-pendous!" or "Super-deeeeee-duper!" Sometimes while you're walking around, he'll just chuckle at random as though a tickly fuzzy dandelion just brushed against him. The samples aren't even high-quality; they are quite grainy and grating to listen to. Such is the way with cartridge-based games, but if the developers knew that the sound quality was so low, why did they still allow for audio trash like this to still make it into the final product? Gah! ...oh, and the music is pretty cheerful, too. Not unexpectedly so, however.

Let's discuss just how hard this game is to complete. Well, let me put it to you this way: releasing stool is more difficult than this game. There is absolutely no challenge to it, PROVIDED THAT you know one basic bit of information. Note that you start in the middle of the level; therefore, if you arrive at one edge of the level, and you still haven't found all ten of your lost items/persons, you need to TURN AROUND and GO BACK the other way in order to find the stuff you haven't found yet. As long as you have some form of logic in your head, there's no problem! However, this could be a potentially challenging concept for very young children; if you are the parent of a toddler trying to play this game, play it with them to ensure they understand the complex notion of 'turning around'. Or better yet, just keep this game away from them and entrust them with a Nerf ball. Safety first, people.