Barbie Magic Hair Styler CD-ROM

• Platform: IBM PC Compatible
• Release Date: October 01, 1997
• Genre: Home
• Style: Fashion and Beauty
• Similar Games: Barbie Fashion Designer CD-ROM (IBM PC Compatible), Barbie Nail Designer CD-ROM (IBM PC Compatible), Barbie Jewelry Designer CD-ROM (IBM PC Compatible), Barbie Fashion Designer CD-ROM (Macintosh), Barbie Cool Looks Fashion Designer CD-ROM (IBM PC Compatible)

Game Description

Mattel's Barbie is joined by friends Kira, Christie, and Teresa in a virtual beauty salon filled with styling tools, makeup, and accessories in Barbie Magic Hair Styler CD-ROM. In the Hair Salon, players use a style guide, brush, curler, hair coloring, scissors (straight and angled), and a special comb that magically makes hair grow. Lipsticks, eye shadow, blush, foundation, and tattoos are available in the Makeup Salon, while the Accessory Salon features glasses, jewelry, and costumes with masks for all occasions.

Children four and up can prepare Barbie and her friends for careers or special occasions like dream dates, costume parties, and weddings. A snapshot camera allows users to take up to a dozen pictures during each styling session to create a slideshow chronicling the makeover process. After makeovers are complete, a Grand Finale showcases Barbie or her friends at their special event where one picture can be taken, framed, personalized, and printed.

Roots & Influences

The Barbie Doll line is one of the most successful in history, with sales of more than $1.7 billion (U.S.) in 1998 with the average American girl, between the ages of 3 and 11, owning ten Barbie dolls currently sold in more than 150 countries around the world, with 1999 marking Barbie's 40th anniversary, with the franchise expanding. But the world of Barbie today is a great deal more than a doll and accessories, including interactive games and software, as well as licensed products for girls, including books, apparel, food, home furnishings, and home electronics. While software for Barbie has been available for several years, Barbie: Magic Hair Styler CD-ROM continues the long tradition of Barbie PC games.

Review: Overall

When it comes to hair, Barbie's been in the biz for years selling life-sized heads to curl, color and style. But how long did these awkward heads with plastic hair really keep anyone entertained? This might change now that Barbie has entered the computer age. Barbie Magic Hair Styler CD-ROM offers today's stylists a fast and easy way to exercise a little creativity.

Most features in the game actually produce the desired results, high praise considering the limitations of other hair styling games and dolls. Using the various tools, you can cut, style and color the hair of one of four models, add makeup, jewelry and thematic accessories. No more tugging hair to make it longer -- a sweep of the magic comb transforms a crop-cut into a luxurious shoulder-length hairdo. Various hair templates give you other options such as curly, long, side parts, bangs, and so on. Other styling templates let you apply French twists, ponytails and braids.

Lipstick, eye shadow, blush, and beauty marks are easy to apply and limited to the appropriate areas (for example, eye shadow on eyelids). Hair and eye color are changeable and you can add highlights in a rainbow of colors. However, the pièce de résistance of the program is its ability to actually simulate hair brushing. Select the brush and sweep it over the model's hair and "voilà," your motions actually tug on the hair to sweep long hair behind the shoulder or reposition bangs. Another impressive feature is the 360-degree adjustable view of the model using arrow buttons to view her from all sides. Once you've selected all the styling and accessories, you're treated to a video of your model at her special event -- wearing the look you've created for her.

Unfortunately, there's a downside to almost all of these features. After cutting hair, selecting one of the hair or style templates resets it to the template style's length. Cutting hair, although very easily done, can sometimes be awkward and difficult to make even on both sides. Although highlights seem like a good idea, given today's styles, the results this program produces look more like zebra stripes. There is an impressive palette of colors for makeup and hair, but while a standard red triggers a verbal response of "beautiful," blue lipstick receives "that looks funny," making Barbie appear to have specific opinions about what's appropriate. Even the hair brushing, once the "cool" factor has worn off, doesn't really affect the hair in a large way; with few exceptions, once the brush moves over the hair, it falls back into its original position. You can, however, leave Barbie's bangs in truly awkward positions.

The choice of career accessories is limited to nurse, fireman, and gym coach or construction worker. On top of this, the audio guide goes beyond obnoxious and condescending, even if it's meant to be complimentary and encouraging. Luckily, you can turn the voice off.

All in all, the well-designed gameplay triumphs over small annoyances making Barbie Magic Hair Styler CD-ROM a victory over previously available doll styling options that provides a great deal of fun and playtime, even if there's still room for improvement. Maybe the day will come when weddings and dream dates aren't the highlights of a Barbie girl's life. Until then, thank goodness for costume parties and the nine-to-five construction job.

Review: Enjoyment

A large range of options combined with neat special effects make this game a fun, creative tool for children.

Review: Graphics

All models have the same features and aside from skin tone, you don't really benefit from the various options. The color palettes for styling do offer a wide range of choices.

Review: Sound

While audio instructions help ease of use, the actor's over-enthusiastic voice is annoying.

Review: Replay Value

The numerous combinations of styles and accessories allow for hours of make believe.

Review: Documentation

Thorough but basic documentation complements the already straightforward gameplay.

Production Credits