Barneysplat

The startup screen from Barneysplat

Barneysplat is a humorous, satirical strategy door game for bulletin board systems in which the player tries to sabotage production of the Barney & Friends children's television program. Barneysplat was created for PC BBSes by Austin Seraphin in 1993.

Premise

Barney & Friends premiered in 1992 and was quickly criticized by older children and young adults for being "saccharine" and "one-dimensional." Barneysplat, with its goal of killing or harming Barney the purple dinosaur, Baby Bop and four children, is an example of anti-Barney humor that arose in reaction to the program.

As one reviewer put it, the player's character in Barneysplat is "a sociopathic Beavis and Butthead-style radical stoner anarchist (of the ~1992 variety), hepped up on H/P/A t-files and prepared to vent his disgust at all the problems of the world on one moronic purple dinosaur ..."

As the game progresses, the player chooses from a list of various ways to sabotage activities associated with the filming of Barney & Friends. Examples including spiking the tea at Barney's tea party, ramming someone's bike during a bike race, or offering beer to the children. References to drugs, alcohol, and violence abound.

The game is essentially single-player. Players cannot interact with each other inside the game. The game offers limited competition in the form of a high score list.

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  The bike race in Barneysplat
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  A status screen in Barneysplat
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  The game over screen in Barneysplat

Break Into Chat blog articles

• Barneysplat memories
• Austin Seraphin, creator of Barneysplat (interview)

Downloads

• BarneySplat! (initial)
• BarneySplat! v .0030
• BarneySplat! v .0041

External links

• Austin Seraphin's Barneysplat page