Barbie officially entered the video game industry way back in 1984 with a wildly underwhelming title for the Commodore 64, making her one of the earliest established brands to desperately attempt a digital cash grab.

A closer look

Barbie officially entered the video game industry way back in 1984 with a wildly underwhelming title for the Commodore 64, making her one of the earliest established brands to desperately attempt a digital cash grab. The game essentially consisted of forcing players to talk to Ken on a rotary telephone, drive a horribly pixelated yellow convertible, and try on different blurry outfits in preparation for an upcoming date. Long before games had sprawling open worlds or morally complex narratives, this piece of software was happily reinforcing the bleakest gender stereotypes available to the 1980s public. It is genuinely hilarious to look back at the origins of female-targeted gaming and realize it consisted entirely of performing unpaid emotional labor for a plastic boyfriend while trying not to crash a sports car rendered in exactly three colors