Barbie (NES)

What a surreal experience this game is. I've been playing it since I was a little kid; it was one of my first NES games.

See, Barbie is going to sleep. She has unusual dreams about the mall. Because she's Barbie and this was made in the late '80s / early '90s so she didn't exactly have a doctorate or anything yet.

So she goes to the sporting goods store in this dream, where she pulls charms off of her bracelet (bottom left of the screen) and pelts a dog with them until it removes the bouncing tennis ball from her path. No really, that's what's happening here:

Later, she goes clothes shopping. Duh, she's Barbie; she's not going to go to the mall (even in her dreams) without clothes shopping.

There seems to be an issue with haunted clothes, though, starting with these floating blouses (though when I was six, I would have sworn up and down to you that these things were plastic bags wafting in the wind, because it made an equal amount of sense):

The "boss" for the clothing store is a bouncing outfit. The shoes come at you (with a vengeance... perhaps Barbie is having a nightmare about buyer's remorse?) but the rest of the clothes just bounce up and down in place as one until you toss some bracelet charms at them and one by one, the articles of clothing disappear.

This is the piece de resistance in this game: the Galleria. Anyone who has ever gone to a shopping mall in America has seen a mall fountain. But the fountains in this mall (yes, I know, it's a dream, but come on now) have FISH in them. Not like, "oh look at the pretty koi in the fake pond." Silver, jumping, FISH. Like, trout or something. I don't know; I don't fish. But these guys don't belong here. Also, Barbie got all dressed up in some '80s prom monstrosity to get doused with fountain water and fish-slapped (instead of her timeless pink crop top and black leggings, above).

Whatever, you walk your way through a mess of fountains, fishless and... fishful... and Barbie wakes up and comments on what a wonderful dream she had (weirdo).