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.[1]
Premise
Barney & Friends premiered in 1992 and was quickly criticized by older children and young adults for being "saccharine" and "childish."[2] 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. [3]
A high schooler in 1993, Seraphin wanted to write a BBS door game as programming exercise. A friend suggested he make a game where the player has to kill Barney. Seraphin liked the idea of making fun of the television show and began to work on the game.[4] The first beta was released in October 1993.
References to drugs, alcohol, and violence abound. 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.
Seraphin designed most of the scenes in the game, but also incorporated ideas from other players and even his own younger sisters. Eventually he added a scripting language to Barneysplat, allowing users to expand the game with their own scenes.[4]
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. [5]
Barneysplat! quickly became a favorite on many BBSes. One sysop reviewed it for the "Synchronetics" e-zine in 1994, citing it as one of the top five games on his board. "While some might think it to be cruel, or even crude, there is no denying that it is very popular," he wrote.[6]
Even newspapers took notice of Barneysplat. "[T]he goal is to get that lovable purple dinosaur and all his too-cute sidekicks wasted," wrote one columnist in 1995, "and then you waste them."[7]
In a retrospective review in 2006, the player character in Barneysplat was described as "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 ..." [8]
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The bike race in Barneysplat -
A status screen in Barneysplat -
The game over screen in Barneysplat
Break Into Chat blog articles
References
- ↑ Austin Seraphin (7 Aug 2015). "Hello again to all my friends, I'm glad you came to play!". Clear White Light. Archived from the original on 4 May 2024. Retrieved 17 Sep 2025.
- ↑ Mitchell, W.J.T. (1998). "Chapter 37: Why Children Hate Dinosaurs". The Last Dinosaur Book: The Life and Times of a Cultural Icon. University of Chicago Press. ISBN 0-226-53204-6.
Parents admit to a cordial dislike of the saccharine saurian, and no self-respecting second-grader will admit to liking Barney ("He's too childish" was the response of first-graders I talked to at the University of Chicago's Laboratory School.)
- ↑ Thombs, Dann (2009-06-23). "Barney Splat (1994) review". Goshzilla. Retrieved 18 Sep 2025.
This game came my way from a friend right after graduating from junior high. At the time, we were all in the height of Barney hating. ... Overall if you still don't like Barney, you can re-live some of the glory days of hate and get a few things worked out.
- ↑ 4.0 4.1 Seraphin, Austin (8 May 2013). "Austin Seraphin, creator of Barneysplat!". Break Into Chat (Interview). Interviewed by Renaud, Josh. self-published. Retrieved 28 October 2025.
- ↑ Adams, Tyrone L.; Smith, Stephen A., eds. (2008). Electronic Tribes. University of Texas Press. p. 31. ISBN 9780292784475. Retrieved 18 Sep 2025.
- ↑ Mauldin, Doug (November 1994). "BARNEYSPLAT v.003". Synchronetics e-zine. 1 (1). Retrieved 28 Oct 2025.
- ↑ Kerr, Justin (25 Jan 1995). "Hot stops on the Calumet Infobahn". The Information Age. The Times. Munster, Indiana: Howard Publications.
- ↑ Rowan Lipkovits (20 Mar 2006). "BarneySplat". MobyGames. Retrieved 5 Feb 2013.