Party Mix (Starpath)

Entry posted by DoctorSpuds August 24, 2018

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I’ve said before that some games are difficult to review, but this may actually be the hardest game to review out of the lot of them, because it’s very difficult to review a party game by yourself. It’s mainly because I don’t know a single person in 50 miles that actually wants to play 2600 with me, and I only have a single pair of Paddle controllers to boot. This game is rather amazing, in both concept and execution, a four player party game with three minigames that actually engage all four players, with split-screen action to boot? Well it seems almost too good to be true, but then again after all we’ve looked at from Starpath, we know what they’re capable of. Party Mix was the final commercially released game from Starpath, their final two games, Sword of Saros and Survival Island, were mail order only, and what a game to go out on. This game has a very large problem though, and this likely explains it’s rarity, not many games back in 1983 had two sets of Paddle controllers, and the only reason why they would is because they own Warlords, and in addition to having two sets of Paddle controllers they would have to have three friends willing to come over, because something tells me Mom, Dad, and sibling, aren’t too interested. Because you had to fit this set of criteria not many people bought the game and therefore its rarity has been boosted, and coupled with the fact it likely didn’t have a very wide release what with the crash likely beginning to take effect, and you have the perfect recipe for rarity. Instead of doing my usual style of review, I’m going to review each minigame individually in their own paragraph, some will be longer than others but it’s the only way this game can get a fair review.

Minigame #1: Bop a Buggy

In this game, as player 1, you race player 3 to the end of an obstacle course, whilst player four drops bricks on your head and player 2 drops bricks on player 3’s head. Since the game uses the Paddles control is fluent for all players. The graphics are quite impressive; the different screens are extremely colorful and look rather like a futuristic obstacle course/racetrack, I like the rainbow gradient. This game has very minimal sounds; all you’ll be hearing are the sounds of the buggies chugging along, and driving over obstacles, when a player completes the track a cute little jingle plays to indicate the winner. The real seller though is the split-screen co-op gameplay, everybody is doing something so there is no waiting around for the other player to finish their turn or anything so it’s fast and fun.

Minigame #2: Tug of War

As the manual says ‘This game is simplicity itself’, you mash the button and try to pull the other team over the line. Due to how simple the game is, the programmers went berserk with the graphics, the player sprites have 6-7 unique colors, and the horizon is absolutely incredible, so is the castle, actually all of this looks amazing. The background music is Wagner’s Ride of the Valkyries and another song I don’t recognize, both are well mixed and have good instrumentation, and nothing is off-key so bonus points there. If I had anybody to play this game with I’m sure it would be a great time.

Minigame #3: Wizard’s Keep

This is a classic shooting gallery game. Each of the four players placed on the far left of the screen windmilling their arms around as objects descend from the far right of the screen. This is as much a game of timing as a shooting game since the game does the aiming for you, the only thing you have influence over is the speed at which you spin your arm. In comparison to Tug of War this game looks rather simplistic, but all of the sprites are large and well defined, the wizard sprites are seven colors each, and all of the wizards have different color palettes, most impressive. The sounds are very simplistic, you have several different sounds that play when you hit an item, the sound the fireballs make when they miss an item, and a beeping noise to indicate the end of the game, there are probably five or six different hitting sounds so at least that doesn’t get too tiresome too quickly. The game is fairly fun alone but I’m sure it would be hectic fun if there were three others playing with me (wow this is sounding depressing.)

Minigame #4: Down on the Line

This game very much resembles Cakewalk from Commavid, there are five color coded conveyor belts that are spittin’ colored boxes at you as fast as possible, your job is to pick up the box and pass it to the second player who then passes it on to the correctly colored conveyor belt. This game is crazy, requiring fast reflexes and spot on multitasking that very few have, especially when played alone. The sounds are nothing special; the backing track is “I’ve Been Working On the Railroad” which totally doesn’t get irritating faster than it takes to say the name of the song, otherwise there is a weird sort of explosion noise to emphasize every beat of the song, and the angry buzz of you losing a package. This is the most difficult of the five games in that it requires cooperation between the two players, and as always there is split screen so four players can play at once, very good let it pass.

Minigame #5: Handcar

This is probably the only bad minigame in the collection, the controls are absolutely impossible to figure out; I’ll just insert an excerpt from the manual to try to explain.

“… each paddle knob controls a handcar driver. Hold the driver’s arm even with the crossbar of the handcar, and it will start to accelerate. Continue to touch the crossbar and the handcar will continue to accelerate, but if you let the crossbar get away from you, the handcar will start to slow down. Don’t try to lead the bar; let it lead you.”

Basically you just spin the paddles back and forth and the handcars might move, I just can’t get it to work properly. The graphics though are quite nice; the handcars themselves wouldn’t look out of place at a modern art exhibit, they have over 10 different colors on them. The background music is another American classic “Camptown Races”, which get s annoying very quickly. If it isn’t obvious this is my least favorite of the minigames, and is the only one that I wouldn’t play again.

Very impressive four winners and one stinker out of five, unfortunately this game falls into the same crevice of rarity that The Official Frogger does, greatly increasing the price. These days loose cassettes go for 80-110 bucks and boxed copies are going as high as 300 dollars, I’ve seen one that was factory sealed, it was quite a sight to behold. Unfortunately due to how unlikely it is you’ll have enough people or controllers to play the game and that just getting the game is a minimum of 80 buck I’ll have to place this one gingerly in the Collector’s Zone due to inaccessibility.