Play BarneySplat Online

BarneySplat was one of those oddball MS-DOS shareware titles from the early 90s, a game with no publisher or developer name that really stuck in memory. It fit right in with the era's experimental, low-budget software scene, the kind of thing you'd find on a BBS or a packed floppy disk from a friend.

You control a small, pixelated slingshot at the bottom of the screen, aiming to fling a purple dinosaur character upward with as much force as possible. The main objective is simply to see how high or how far you can launch him before he either disappears off the top of the screen or collides messily with an obstacle. There's no complex scoring, just a focus on adjusting your angle and power for each shot. The pacing is immediate and repetitive; you reset and try again instantly after every attempt. It feels silly and pointless in the best way, a five minute distraction built entirely around a single, satisfying physical action.

Each game uses different controls, most DOS games use the keyboard arrows. Some will use the mouse , "Alt" ,"Enter" and "Space bar".