Barbie Team Gymnastics features bright colorful graphics and wonderful animation.

Barbie and her friends – Kira, Christie and Teresa – need your help in preparing for a gymnastics competition. If they do well, they could win a trophy at Nationals. But there is so much to do, and players have all the time they need to perfect the routines.

Barbie Team Gymnastics, a PC release from Vivendi Universal Interactive Publishing, Bink Video and Blue Planet Software – is a wonderfully animated three-dimensional program that is perfect for young girls. Though this game does not have a target age group, girls from ages 5 to 10 should enjoy the program.

It is not complicated to run, features wonderful graphics and sound, and the opportunity to change costumes whenever the player wishes.

The program begins in the team lounge. Players can choose which gymnast to work with. Together, the player and her gymnast can venture into the dressing room where the player can dress Barbie and her friends in one of the outfits available. There is also a Video Library in the lounge, which players can use to replay routines that their cyber-gymnasts have done.

Of course, the main draw of the game is the actual routines – both in practice and in competition.
There are four apparatus for the players to become skilled on – the vault, balance beam, uneven bars and floor exercise.

The controls for each event are relayed through a power bar. It shows players which keystrokes to use. The game uses the spacebar, and arrow keys on your computers keyboard to launch the gymnasts. Below the power bar are the move symbols. You can change the routines by dragging and dropping new moves from the clipboard. The tougher the routine, the higher the score. It is simply a matter of setting up the routines, then hitting the right keys to execute the move.

It really is quite simple, and while hardly familiarizing players with the keyboard, it will take hand-and-eye coordination to pull off the moves.

The animation of the game is very good. The gymnasts move realistically and the overall look of the program is bright and colorful. This is a well-maintained gymnasium, just the perfect setting for a Barbie competition.

The audio is lively and encouraging, certain capturing the essence of Barbie’s world and making the entire experience fun.

There are two- and three-player game options, where players can choose a gymnast and take turns at the controls trying to get a better score than their opponents.

Barbie Team Gymnastics is a simple and sweet program that delivers enjoyment with bright graphics, and solid audio support.

Install: Easy.
This program installs quickly, and requires very little hard-drive space.

Gameplay: 8
Living dolls perform gymnastics routines in a mechanical fashion, but other than the coaching from you receive from one of the gymnasts in a circle at the top of the screen – which delays the overall routine – this game moves nicely through its format.

Graphics: 8.5
The graphics are lush and bright, and the animations are excellent.

Sound: 8.5.
This is a game that encourages players through the coaching and congratulations they receive for performing a routine well. The sounds of the apparatus are very well rendered.

Difficulty: 6.5
Younger players may have some pauses in flawlessly performing the routines, but the game will help them improve hand-and-eye coordination.

Concept: 8
This is another well-done Barbie product.

Multiplayer: 6
This is a one-player (at a time) game.

Overall: 8.5
This program lives up to the Barbie reputation and while it may not be high in overall content, it is the type of game that has enough variation, and scoring, to keep players interested and continuing to play.