Bachelor Party for the Atari 2600

I did some shopping this weekend at a few late-season garage sales and for a couple of bucks picked up this rare-ish game from the Adult game maker, Mystique, Bachelor Party. I am much more familiar with the more offensively controversial Custer’s Revenge, but had heard of Bachelor Party and was happy to add it to my collection. The game is a paddle-based “brick breaker”, sort of a breakout clone turned on its side, with a healthy dose of adult humor. Well, 1982 graphics adult humor.

See instead of controlling a bar that throws a ball into bricks, you control the “Spanish fly” and invigorate a guy as he bounced off a multi-colored wall of women. The graphics are crude and it is hard to make out what anything is exactly. I mean the guy looks like a guy and the women look vaguely woman-ish.

Although if you stare at them long enough, I think they start to look like Aliens from the movie, Alien, or that other movie, Aliens (but nothing like those ones in Ali3ns). Which would have been a much more interesting brick breaker.

As for the “Spanish fly,” it kind of just looks like two rectangles with a line sticking out of it. Which means it looks like a poorly made sandwich. The more I thought about the poorly made sandwich, the more it made me hungry and I actually stopped playing the game to make myself a sandwich. I am pretty sure that is not the effect that Spanish Fly is supposed to have on you, but it got me thinking.

This game would make an even better tie-in with the sub chain, Blimpie (or as it was known in my hometown, Blimpie Base). You are a daring delivery boy and you keep grabbing poorly made sandwiches and delivering them to the hungry women waiting in line. Missed opportunity Blimpie, missed opportunity.

The gameplay itself is pretty fast-paced and the poorly made sandwich makes for a poor control piece for deflecting the guy into the women. The hit zone is right on the front of the sandwich, near the extruded sandwich meat, and it is not exactly clear where you should be hitting it into the guy. Plus once he breaks through the small line of women, he builds up tremendous speed and the horizontal game layout does not give you much to work with as he bounces off the walls. Most games it was more luck than skill when I was able to return him into the hungry arms of his next customer (I mean next woman — keep forgetting this has nothing to do with sandwiches).

Bachelor Party is a silly game that in today’s world barely qualifies as “adult”. The gameplay is not solid, the premise is shaky (one guy at a bachelor party??), it doesn’t have anything to do with the Tom Hanks movie and its graphics are questionable. But the game has two things going for it, the audio is pretty decent, with constant sound and feedback for just about everything, and the game’s questionable graphics and silly premise will give you a few laughs. Sadly that is not enough to make up for the game’s shortcomings and because of that, I can only give Bachelor Party 1 out 5 stars.