''Barney's Hide & Seek Game'' is a video game that was released on June 1, 1993, by

Sega of America is a Japanese multinational video game and entertainment company headquartered in Shinagawa, Tokyo. Its international branches, Sega of America and Sega Europe, are headquartered in Irvine, California and London, respectively. Its division ...

for the

Sega Mega Drive/Genesis The Sega Genesis, known as the outside North America, is a 16-bit Fourth generation of video game consoles, fourth generation home video game console developed and sold by Sega. It was Sega's third console and the successor to the Master Syst ...

. This game was released exclusively in the

North North is one of the four compass points or cardinal directions. It is the opposite of south and is perpendicular to east and west. ''North'' is a noun, adjective, or adverb indicating Direction (geometry), direction or geography. Etymology T ...

and

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n markets. It was based on the children's television series ''

Barney & Friends ''Barney & Friends'' is an American children's television series targeted at young children aged 2–7, created by Sheryl Leach. The series premiered on PBS on April 6, 1992. The series features the title character Barney, a purple anthropomorp ...

''. Educational concepts taught in the game include counting, matching, and problem solving. There is a self-play feature that guides the player to the objective without input from the player. The voice of Barney was recorded by

Bob West Robert Matthew West (born June 25, 1956) is an American voice actor and graphic designer. He is best known as the original voice of Barney in the PBS children's television series ''Barney & Friends''. Career 1979–1988: Early voice work c ...

, who also did it on the television show. There are more than one hundred words and two hundred phrases spoken by Barney the Dinosaur.

Gameplay

In this game, the objective is to move Barney around four themed levels and locate five children and five presents that are hiding throughout the level. Should the player find all the children and presents in different levels, they would be rewarded with a "special surprise". During the surprise, the purple balloon pop and confetti and streamers fall from above onto excited children, as well as Barney and Baby Bop. Players are unable to lose in the game, even if they did not retrieve all the objects and find all the missing children in the level. When nowhere near an object to interact with, Barney can blow kisses in the air complete with flying heart symbols. Locating a child results in giving him or her a hug. Barney can fly on balloons, float on clouds, and jump on nearby platforms. The inability for Barney to die is indicated by his refusal to fall off floating platforms; instead there is a safety lecture handed out by Barney so kids can learn to be careful like him. Cloud jumping is only possible when the

traffic light Traffic lights, traffic signals, or stoplights – known also as robots in South Africa are signalling devices positioned at intersection (road), road intersections, pedestrian crossings, and other locations in order to control flows of traf ...

is showing a green signal. Favorite things are always mentioned by name by Barney when the player helps him discover them. Most of the lines for the game were recorded with the nouns and verbs being fractured, resulting in one-second pauses between non-crucial words and words crucial to gameplay.

Reception

The game received mixed reviews based on its very simplistic gameplay. Brett Alan Weiss of AllGame gave it a rating of 4/5, stating that the game was "perfectly suited" for its target audience. On the other hand Vince Thornburg of Sega-16 stated that the game "did its purpose of being a simple game for kids, and that’s about it."

Speedrunning interest

The game received attention from the

speedrun Speedrunning is the act of playing a video game, or section of a video game, with the goal of completing it as fast as possible. Speedrunning often involves following planned routes, which may incorporate sequence breaking and can exploit glit ...

ning community due to its unique self-playing feature. The game will beat itself even if given no input by the player, but random elements cause playthroughs to take different amounts of time despite the lack of player interaction. This prompted the creation of a speedrunning category called "Any% No Controller", in which players do not touch the controller, and instead wait for the game to play itself to completion. Inconsistencies in the hardware seem to make it so the world record of 9 minutes and 9 seconds (as of January 2020) can only be achieved via a physical console, and not on an

emulator In computing, an emulator is Computer hardware, hardware or software that enables one computer system (called the ''host'') to behave like another computer system (called the ''guest''). An emulator typically enables the host system to run so ...

References

External links

''Barney's Hide & Seek Game''
on Giant Bomb {{DEFAULTSORT:Barney's Hide and Seek 1993 video games Barney & Friends Children's educational video games Video games about dinosaurs Platform games Realtime Associates games Sega Genesis games Sega Genesis-only games Sentient toys in fiction Single-player video games Video games about insects Video games about amphibians Video games about reptiles Video games about bears Video games about rabbits and hares Video games about raccoons Video games about birds Video games about children Video games about toys Video games with underwater settings Video games based on television series Video games developed in the United States