BARNEY BEAR MEETS SANTA CLAUS (AMIGA)

Okay, fine, why not? Let’s actually look at a Christmas-themed game for once. ‘Tis the season, and all that. I think this might be the first time I’ve ever covered a Christmas game here at VGJunk. You see, the thing is I just don’t like Christmas all that much. Not in a bah-humbug-y way - I’m not against the holidays or anything, I'm down wih the message of peace and goodwill and I’m not the type to bang on about how it’s all become too commercialised, maaan. It just doesn’t really do it for me, you know. I’ve got Halloween for fun holiday times. But Christmas time is here, and maybe playing a seasonally-appropriate game will increase my levels of festive cheer. If I could get up to “holly jolly” from my current level of “trying to plan around reduced public transport services,” it’d be nice – and if I managed to get such a boost from this game, it’d be a bonafide Christmas miracle. It’s Free Spirit Software’s 1990 Amiga deck-the-halls-em-up Barney Bear Meets Santa Claus!

There’s Jolly Old Saint Nick now, sharing his sleigh with the titular Barney Bear. At the front of the sleigh are the traditional reindeer and at the back of the sleigh is some strange, malformed creature with twiglet legs. I think it’s supposed to be a dog. I’m sure it’s meant to be sitting on top of Santa’s sack, but because they’re the same colour you’d be forgiven for thinking it’s a dog with a hugely distended stomach. You shouldn’t have swallowed that canoe, Fido.

Of course, I’ve met Barney Bear before. A few months ago I wrote about Barney Bear Goes to Space, another Free Spirit title created by the same two people and also released in 1990. In that game, Barney went on a field trip to NASA, fell asleep on a conveyor belt and woke up aboard a space shuttle. It was half digital story book and half low-effort activity centre, so I’ve got a pretty good idea how Barney Bear Meets Santa Claus is going to play out.

It’s Christmas Eve, and all through the house not a creature is stirring except for Barney Bear and his dog Skippy. Not my words, folks, but the words of the robotic narrator whose dulcet tones will relay to us the story of Barney Bear, the jammiest little bear-cub in the world. Going to space and meeting Santa in the same year? What’s he got planned for the new year, finding a golden ticket and appearing in Barney and the Chocolate Factory?
Anyway, the narrator has the same synthesised voice as in Barney Bear Goes to Space. I described it there as like Stephen Hawking reading the CBeebies bedtime story, and that’s a description that holds true for Barney Bear Meets Santa Claus.

Santa has arrived. His unfocussed eyes and swaying, unbalanced gait suggest that a lot of kids have left a glass of brandy out for Santa this year. He tells Barney that he needs help at the North Pole, and asks if the young bear wants to come with him to see his toy factory. Santa, my man, it’s already late at night on Christmas Eve. If you’re desperate enough to turn to a bear-child for help, the situation has probably gotten away from you already.

And so off they fly, away to the North Pole – but not before the game reminds you that Barney Bear must ask his parents permission before travelling to Santa’s Grotto. Sadly, you don’t actually see this happen. Barney’s on his way though, so his parents must have been cool with it. The kid’s already been to outer space, he can clearly look after himself.

Before long, Barney and Skippy arrive at Santa’s Arctic fortress / toy factory. I was expecting an architectural style inspired by cosy cottages and gingerbread houses, not the opening shot of Blade Runner, but that’s what we’ve got here. I particularly like the huge flaming pylons in the background. That must be how they burn off the excess menthol from the Peppermint Mines. Then, just when I was getting my head around the weirdly fascistic look of Santa’s compound, the robot narrator informed me that the toy factory “is bigger than your whole city,” a statement that must have made player in Tokyo or Mexico City look out of their window and say “are you sure about that, sunbeam?”

So now we’re in Santa’s Workshop, and that’s where the storybook portion of the game ends. It feels like there was somehow even less to it than the story part of Barney Bear Goes to Space, to the point that I was, like, did I miss something? But no, I didn’t. Barney Bear Meets Santa Claus is both the title of the game and a complete and thorough description of the story.
Before I move on to the minigames, I must point out that while it’s easy to mock children’s entertainment for sometimes looking unintentionally weird or creepy – very easy, which is why I do it – when I reached this screen the narrator said “this is going to be lots of fun” and I swear to god Santa turns, looks into the “camera” and winks. I’m beginning to regret accompanying an old man to meet the slave workforce he keeps inside a city-sized frozen prison.
Okay then, minigames! If you click on certain background elements on this screen you can do an activity. Let’s start with the toy machine, shall we?

It’s a body-parts-swapping activity, of the kind I’m sure you’ve seen before. Combine the head, body and legs of various wacky characters to create the latest hot new toy that all the kids are clamouring for. You’ve got a few different sets to work with, including all your festive favourites – Santa Claus, a robot, a snowman, the Nativity Frog…

Whaddya mean, you’ve never heard of the Nativity Frog? The frog whose croaks led Mary and Joseph to the manger in which they lay the newbon Messiah? His flesh and shorts are the entire reason that red and green are colours of Christmas! You people need to study your Bibles more closely.

Of course, the real function of these body-swapping games is to come up with the most grotesque abomination that you can. I’ve plumped for this terrifying creation. The soulless, psychotic mind of a clown, the immortal body of a robot and the round lower half of a snowman that allows this remorseless killing machine to chase you over any terrain. Well, it’s not going to be any worse that the last couple of Terminator films, right?

There’s an odd-one-out game, which feels insultingly easy even for a game aimed at very young children. It’s obvious which one you need to pick in this line-up. Barney Bear isn’t nearly cool enough to pull off those sunglasses, and when you consider he’s been to space and met Father Christmas that’s a real burn on Barney.

There are a couple of letter games to play as well. One is a simple anagram solving challenge where you must unscramble words like “owl” and “zebra” - you know, Christmas words – and it’s so dull I couldn’t bring myself to even show you a screenshot. It looks almost identical to the minigame pictured above, where you have to find the missing letter to complete the alphabetical sequence. Beige squares, textured metal floors… I feel like I’m belabouring the point a touch but Free Spirit seem to have forgotten that they were supposed to be making a Christmas themed game. Could the letters not have been iced onto biscuits in front of a snowy backdrop or something? The “factory” part of Santa’s Unfathomably Vast Toy Factory is taking far too much of the focus, if you ask me. Although, I did learn that those textured metal floors are called “diamond plate” so I’ve got something out of the experience.

You can also enjoy a rousing game of “Find the Elf.” This screenshot’s from after I found the Elf, by the way. Even the Barney Bear games don’t make it that easy for you. What happens is that the narrator says, for example, that the Elf is in the red present or the smallest present, so you click on the appropriate gift and the elf pops out. Then the Elf says “you found me hehehehe” in the same robotic voice as the narrator, except it's pitched up a bit. This has the effect of making it sound fifty percent more elfin but roughly one thousand percent creepier. It’s the high-pitched mechanical laugh, it sounds like a disturbed robot child pulling the wings off fly-droids.

Probably the most enjoyable of the activities (a weak field to be the front-runner in, admittedly) is the colouring book. A selection of black-and-white line drawings for you to fill in, plus some very basic drawing tools so you can add your own flourishes as you see fit. It might be the best thing in this game, but it’s still a bad digital colouring book. It works in exactly the same way as the one in Barney Bear Goes to Space, and my description of that game’s colouring book applies here: it’s slow, awkward, fiddly to fill in the smaller areas and the drawing tools seem to create shapes that lay on a completely different “layer” to the rest of the drawing, making them annoying to work with. Still, you can colour in some fairly nice festive pictures, like I have done in the screenshot above. I hope you appreciate the effort I went to in ensuring that the stripes of the candy canes are all filled in correctly. If only Christmas spirit was measured by the amount of f-bombs you dropped while trying to colour a finicky candy cane, this game would be more festive than the Queen doing her speech in a novelty jumper while half-cut on Bailey’s.

The colouring book is the part of Barney Bear Meets Santa Claus that you can spend the most time with before the grinding weight of tedium forces you to stop, which is damning with faint praise indeed. But hey, at least you’ve got some nice Christmas-y scenes to look at, like Santa laughing at Barney as though our little bear friend has just told Santa he wants world peace for Christmas.

How about this toy bear? Or as Barney would call it, "a doll," I guess? Little could be more festive than baubles, gift-wrapped presents and teddy bears, even if the teddy bear does have the blank stare of someone who’s just walked in on their parents going at it underneath the mistletoe.

“Mother and father like to wrestle but it makes them sweaty so they do it with no clothes on.”

Your artistic masterpieces don’t even have to be related to Christmas! I made this horrible thing by accident. Okay, the nose wasn’t an accident, but I was a well-behaved child who was far too decent / cowardly to draw graffiti penises so I’m making up for it now. Erm, merry Christmas, I guess. As an apology, if you’re making a videogame and you want to use this thing as an enemy design, go right ahead. It could use its jug ears to fly at you, that could be pretty terrifying, right?

And that’s your lot. A short story and some rather pathetic minigames comprise ninety-nine percent of Barney Bear Meets Santa Claus. The other one percent? Well, on the main toy factory screen you can click certain things in the background and they play a sound file. The clock chimes, the buttons click and whistle and the elves in the background say “happy new year” although it probably won’t be happy for them because they’ll be out of a job. Barney Bear Goes to Space didn’t include much content either but it had more to it than this game – at least you could learn some (occasionally incorrect) space facts. Barney Bear Meets Santa Claus has some half-decent graphics and an enjoyably robotic voice-over but that’s about all it has – and it didn’t even make me feel more Christmas-y, which is all I really wanted from it. Okay, so it made me want to eat candy canes but that doesn’t take much doing. In short, I feel no more or less of the Christmas spirit now than I did before I played Barney Bear Meets Santa Claus, but it did remind me to buy candy canes. Please clap as I unfurl the world’s smallest “mission accomplished” banner.

Recently on VGJUNK:
Stretch Carstrong in Munch Mobile!
Unlicensed weight-gain-em-up Crazy Burger!

Comic Book Arcade Flyers!

BARNEY BEAR GOES TO SPACE (AMIGA)

You’ve heard of Ursa Major and Ursa Minor, now get ready for Ursa Barney. He’s boldly going where no large hibernating land mammal has gone before in Free Spirit Software’s 1990 Amiga space-learnin’-em-up Barney Bear Goes to Space!

Here is Barney, about to be run over by a space shuttle. Did NASA spend millions of taxpayers dollars developing a special bear-shaped space suit? Not according to the game itself, as we shall see, but he’s wearing one on the loading screen. Barney Bear has definitely gone to space, so at least the game’s title is accurate – but what’s it about, and is it even a game?

Well, the title screen calls BBGtS a “program,” which seems like an accurate assessment. It’s got a couple of game-like elements, but this is an educational title full of facts about space. Hopefully I’ll learning something. Something other than “all cartoon bears must have names that start with B,” because I already knew that. Anyway, you’ve got two options on the title screen: you can click the space shuttle to go straight to the activities, or you can click on the book to hear the game’s story before moving on. Obviously I’m going to hit the book icon. I need to know how Barney Bear went to space and what idiot sanctioned such a dangerous space mission.

The Kennedy Space Center. Mission control. NASA’s scientists and engineers prepare for another shuttle launch, a dangerous and complicated procedure that requires utmost concentration and the ability to withstand extreme mental pressure. Also there’s a bear with a massive head hanging around. I guess Barney Bear is a teddy bear rather than an actual wild bear, which is a shame. I’d love to have seen the artist attempt to capture the look of confusion you’d find on the face of a grizzle bear in zero gravity. So, Barney Bear is on a school trip (I think) and they’ve let the kids / living cuddly toys into the control facility on launch day. There’s definitely nothing that could go wrong here.

This is Bob. I know it’s Bob, because a synthesised computer voice just said “this is Bob.” The whole game is narrated by this synthesised voice, which is kind of impressive. There’s a lot of speech in this one, both explaining the space facts and telling the tale of a cartoon bear who (spoilers) accidentally ends up in space. If you’ve ever wondered what it’d be like if Stephen Hawking did the CBeebies Bedtime Story, play this game to find out.
As for Bob, he’s completely unperturbed by the group of living cuddly toys that he’s having to explain the space shuttle launch to. Bob was a fighter pilot in the war, he’s seen some shit. Talking soft toys aren’t going to faze him.

He couldn’t sleep last night because he was so excited about seeing the space shuttle, but tiredness has finally caught up with Barney Bear and he nods off on a conveyor belt. You might think it’s difficult to fall asleep on a moving conveyor belt, but don’t forget Barney is a bear. They’re real good at sleeping. I know I described them as “hibernating” earlier, but before I get comments from angry zoologists yes, I know bears don’t technically hibernate but rather enter a state known as “winter lethargy,” to which I say “don’t we all?” The game provides the space facts, I provide the bear facts, every day is a school day here at VGJunk.

There goes the space shuttle, soaring majestically towards the extremes of human endeavour, a symbol of mankind’s unquenchable need to understand the universe and a reminder of the greatness we can accomplish by working together as a species. It’s getting good altitude despite having left all its booster rockets and fuel on the landing pad, I must say.
As the shuttle soars toward the space station Freedom, the bears on the ground begin to wonder where Barney has disappeared to. Well, I’m sure you can guess where that conveyor belt was heading.

And there you have it: Barney Bear goes to space. By accident. The shuttle’s pilot looks at his new and unexpected crewmate with the glassy eyes and faint smile of someone who’s just gulped down the ship’s whole supply of Xanax. Barney, on the other hand, seems to be realising the gravity -pun one hundred percent intended – of his situation.

“Barney, what are you doing up there?” says the narrator. “You’ve got school in the morning!” I think that’s the least of Barney’s problems, pal. And if he somehow survives his trip to space without any astronaut training and no opposable thumbs, don’t you think going to space is going to be a more valuable educational experience than a couple of days of junior school?

At last, we’ve made it to the space station. The narrator tells us that there are lots of buttons and that maybe Barney should figure out what they all do by randomly pressing them. Now, I am well aware that this is an edutainment title about a cartoon bear designed for young children, but that didn’t stop me uttering an audible “oh god no!” when the omniscient voice suggested pissing about with the space station's controls.
This is where the actual “game” - the term being used as loosely as possible, of course – begins. Most of the buttons on the space station just make weird noises when you press them, one of them (unlabelled, I might add) buttons quits the game and the computer in the centre is where you can flip through the various activities and try them out.

First up is the solar system (not to scale). You can click on the planets to learn a little about them, like an interactive encyclopedia where the interactivity is set to “as low as possible.”

Being the immature simpleton that I am, I was curious about how the computer voice would pronounce it so I headed straight for Uranus. Then I chuckled about the sentence “I headed straight for Uranus.” As it turns out, the game pronounces it “you-rainus,” which is not quite as childishly entertaining as it could have been. I did learn that Uranus has five moons, though.
I couldn’t tell you how accurate all the facts are overall, mind. It does list Pluto as a planet, which it was back in 1990 and when I’m an old man people saying “the eight planets of the Solar System” will definitely be the thing that makes me say “back in my day...” Then it tells you that Mercury is the smallest planet, which is isn’t if you’re including Pluto. So, if any astronomers want to play this and let me know how accurate it is, then a) thank you and b) I’m sorry for wasting your time.

That’s it for this activity, really. You click on a planet, and get a close-up image and a few facts. With Mars, for instance, it tells you that its moons are named Phobos and Deimos, so I’ll be back to finish this article in a couple of hours once I’ve played some Doom.
Right, I’m back. What else? If you click on the Moon it tells you that the Moon is made of dirt, which makes it sound a bit like the narrator has a grudge against the Moon. Maybe he’s a robot werewolf.

As for the Earth, the voice asks “Barney Bear is from planet Earth. What planet are you from?” which, again, strikes me as a bit rude. I’m from a planet where people play ancient Amiga edutainment games and detect non-existent undercurrents of hostility in synthesised voices. It’s a cold, barren place that I call Planet Get A Life.

The closest that BBGtS gets to being a game is this section. It’s a recreation of the Simon memory game. The coloured panels flash in order, and you must remember the order and recreate it by clicking on the panels in turn. Well, there’s got to be something on this space station to keep the astronauts entertained. I really hope the grandeur of outer space is enough to keep them occupied, though, because this is incredibly dull.

Next up is another brief story segment, this time explaining the basics of the Apollo 11 moon landing. It’s okay, I guess, one small step and all that, but it’s unlikely to keep you coming back time and again. Well, unless you’re a dumbass moon landing denier and you want to shout at something without the worry of being presented with evidence or verifiable facts.

It’s fine for what it is. The artwork’s not bad. It could be a lot better, obviously – the Amiga was definitely capable of some incredible pixel work – but it’s acceptable in a cutesy, chunky, Fisher-Price kind of way. Being the nerd I was as a child, I would have enjoyed hearing the space facts and seeing the planets while making sure to never play the Simon game.

The more artistically-inclined amongst you can also fiddle around with Barney Bear’s Space Colouring Book. It gives you some basic graphics editing tools and a selection of black-and-white pictures for you to scrawl all over, including this image which rather undersells the complexity of rocket science. There’s a reason people don’t say “it’s not letting go of a balloon” when describing an easy task.
Unfortunately, the colouring book is pretty bad. If you stick to colouring it’s okay, even if a lot of the pictures included hard-to-click single-pixel areas, but all the other tools are a pain in the arse. You can draw simple shapes, but as far as I can tell you can only outline them in black and they seem to sit under the other layer, which makes colouring them in a pain. It’s slow, cumbersome and somehow not nearly as good as Mario Paint.

That said, if you’re wiling to put in the effort you can create some real masterpieces. In this instance, I’ve managed to scribble the USS Enterprise into the corner of this image to recreate a pivotal scene from Star Trek: The Motion Picture. Disclaimer: I haven’t seen Star Trek: The Motion Picture in over twenty years so I may not be accurately remembering all the precise details.

Here’s one I call “Man Made From Sausage Meat Walks Across a Giant Cow While People Throw Golf Balls at Him in a Snowstorm.” I demand my Arts Council grant.

Finally, there’s… more space trivia. For instance, did you know that all astronauts are raging alcoholics and must submit to regular breathalyser tests before they’re allowed to take control of the space shuttle? It’s true!
No, it’s not true. This is actually showing you that astronauts drink out of tube because how are you gonna pour a glass of water in zero gravity, smart guy?

Mostly they’re thing like this. Did you know it takes eight minutes for sunlight to reach the Earth? Why yes, I did, but that’s because I’ve listened to a lot of Frank Black so I’m well informed that it takes photon power and eight minutes of an hour.

As Barney floats around in the weightlessness of space, presumably before he vomits everywhere due to having received no training to prepare him for the rigours of space travel, we’ve reached the end of what Barney Bear Goes to Space has to offer. There’s just not that much to it, folks. I’m sure there are even better colouring books on the Amiga.

Barney Bear returns to Earth safe and sound, where he is decorated with the Congressional Space Medal of Honour and a two-week detention for skipping school. He definitely isn’t carrying a deadly alien parasite inside his ever-more bulbous head, no siree. And that’s your lot! BBGtS is over, and it occurs to me that I keep wanting to use the word “okay” in this article because that’s what it is. It’s an okay space-facts entertainment thing, its main problem being that once you’ve learned all the space facts there’s no reason to ever touch it again. So long, Barney Bear – perhaps we’ll meet again some day in one of you other edutainment titles. Oh, that’s right, there are multiple Barney Bear releases. Will any of them ever top the excitement of being accidentally blasted into space? Given that two of them are Barney Bear Goes to School and Barney Bear Goes Camping, no, they will not.

Recently on VGJUNK:
Unimaginable clown suffering with Kid Klown in Crazy Chase!
Super spy action collection Agent X!
Pac-Man Clone Covers!