Game

“Liz, why the hell are you playing this game for children?” Shut up, disembodied voice in my head.

God, remember Barney? I was the right age for Barney, and I grew up watching him. And then also, children my age were ALSO the EXACT perfect age to grow a little older, once they reached the “I’m too old for this” stage, right as they could start making flash animations on the early internet, so that instead of just going “Pff, Barney is for babies” in the school yard, they could instead take their aggression out and show how adult and cool they are by blowing his head off in a flash animation. God, the early internet was a time. ANYWAY.

Barney’s Hide and Seek Game for Genesis is a CLASSIC meme game, especially in speedrunner circles. It’s a simple kids game. You play Barney, move left and right around a map, and press A by presents and children to “collect” them. Barney says things in a pretty well digitized voice the entire time. You can also press A to interract with things in the environment, and they do things. You can blow hearts at animals, play with instruments, it’s a very “click on a thing and it does a thing” game. If it was just that, would anyone care? Prolly not. There’s 4 levels and that’s it, your done.

Game

But its MORE than that. See, Barney’s Hide and Seek Game has a feature it advertises itself, directly on the box: It plays itself. If you set the controller down, Barney will walk along, and tell you what things you can interract with. He’ll walk by a kid and go “Press the button when you see a friend!” He then waits a minute, and just continues on. If you turn the game on with no controller plugged in, “you” can “beat” the game in about ten minutes. Just sitting there watching Barney walk around and talk about things. There’s some variance, but people legit speedran this. The WR holder for a while was a dog, which is great.

As a game? It’s y’know, it’s fine for very young kids. As a MEME GAME? Perfection.