Capcom Bowling, 1988 Incred. Techs./Capcom (20 From 1988 #9)
11Far from graphically impressive but this game of bowling was the best of its time, and very popular. It's an overhead game of bowling with no visual of your bowler; just the ball, the lane and the pins. Controls consisted of the usual trakball and left hook and right hook buttons, and that's really all you need.. though it's much better emulated and using your keyboard! Why, you may ask? Well, simply position the ball right down the middle of a dark stripe just left or right of the center dot, set the hook one degree back to the left or right depending on which side of the center dot you're on, and press straight up. The ball will hook just enough to get you a strike every time! Now, it takes some time to just position the ball right, but when you do it's not super-tough to get a perfect game. The general feel of rolling the trakball in the arcade won't be quite the same but who cares! For me, the biggest draw in this game was the funny animations after rolling the ball-- depending how you did you'll see a brief animated scene of, say, a ball punching the pins, a smoking ball, a cow (for the exclamation "Holy Cow"), and many others. Plus, the graphics-- though they're far from impressive-- convey the feeling of a bowling lane rather nicely. Fun game of bowling and really, the closest to the real thing at the time, and with the cabinets appearing everywhere I turned at the arcades, I think gamers agreed with me. Have a great Juneteenth weekend, everybody! See you soon with game #8.