I never played with Barbie dolls as a kid (it was My Little Ponies and Lego all the way, for me), but a few years ago I tumbled headlong into the world of one of a kind fashion doll-making – a hobby wherein one modifies fashion dolls, such as Barbies, with a variety of techniques including repainting faces, shaping limbs and re-rooting hair in order to create unique dolls, often representing favorite characters from books and movies, etc. – and I’ve had something of an interest in everything Barbie since. I’ve watched a few of the animated Barbie movies, and I’ve sent Barbie greeting cards (usually modified to humorous effect with permanent markers beforehand) to friends and, a little while ago, I bought my first Barbie video game: Barbie in the 12 Dancing Princesses for the Nintendo DS.

I probably could have picked a worse game for my very first attempt at using my new DS, but it’s hard to imagine what that might have been. You see, Barbie in the 12 Dancing Princesses is a platformer. That’s right. Jumping. Lots and lots of jumping.

I know this makes me sound like a total n00b (which, of course, I am), but I’m going to confess to you all that despite playing this game – this game designed for young children – on and off for several weeks, I still haven’t beaten it. And I’m playing on the easy setting.

I do keep trying, though, because even though the game is almost entirely jumping, which I hate, it’s still fun. And also very weird – after facing a boss who threw bottles at me which I had to hit with a butterfly net so that they’d shatter on the ground and hurt his feet, I knew I needed to see everything else that this game has to offer in the way of sheer goofiness.

I’m (obviously) no connoisseur of the platformer genre, but Barbie in the 12 Dancing Princesses seems well-crafted from a gameplay standpoint. You play as Genevieve, jumping your way through your father’s palace and a large enchanted garden (reached through the floor of your bedroom, of course) in search of your eleven sisters, who will do what they can to help you progress through the levels by giving you dancing shoes with useful properties (one pair gives you access to the enemy-whacking butterfly net, for example, while another provides stilts that allow you to walk across some areas without even jumping).

The upper screen is where the action takes place, allowing the lower touchscreen to serve as an inventory where you can access the different shoes by tapping them with the stylus. The abxy buttons are used for jumping and for deploying the properties of your various shoes. The direction of your movement is, naturally, controlled by the directional pad. Periodically, you’ll also have to do some things that will get you stared at in public, such as blowing vigorously into the DS’s microphone in order to put out fires that stand in your way.

As you make your way through the game, you’ll be challenged by a host of minor enemies including bugs of all kinds, carnivorous flowers, falling vases and floating teapots that pour scalding liquid on you (I have no idea what Genevieve could have done to provoke the teapots. I think maybe they’re just naturally aggressive), as well as boss battles. If you’re playing on the easy setting, you’ll have plenty of time to sort out how best to approach each enemy – there’s no life bar on easy, and you’ll just flash a lot and sometimes fall off the ledge you’re currently standing on when you make a mistake. On the normal setting, you’ll have to be more careful, as each strike from an enemy will lower your life bar by one, and when you run out of life you’ll swoon dramatically and then return to the beginning of the level. Ouch.

The graphic design and animation is fun and appealing, but not exceptional, and the music gets old fast. But that’s what the sliding volume control is for, right? The repetitive nature of the main game can be broken up with mini-games which are unlocked as you progress.

From a feminist standpoint, Barbie in the 12 Dancing Princesses does pretty well. You’re playing as a young woman who is on a quest to save her family and has to show considerable physical aptitude as well as bravery, resourcefulness and quick thinking. And while that’s a story I’d like for any female character, it’s not often that I see a very feminine, dress-wearing, dancing-shoe-toting princess in the scrappy heroine role, and it’s nice to get that variety in there. I wish there was a little bit more variety – it would be nice if video game Genevieve was available in different skin tones, as the actual doll version released by Mattel is – but I was overall pretty impressed with the storyline presented in the game.

Final verdict? I wouldn’t recommend Barbie in the 12 Dancing Princesses to beginners, unless they really like (or show an unusual aptitude for) platformers, but I’d be happy to give young girls (or boys!) who are better at DS games than I am their own copies of a fun, cute game with a capable girl hero.

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