Awright, I
might be a big lanky nerd, completely inept at every manner of team sport this side of...
well, everything.
Except BOWLING.
It’s the one thing I’m good at and dammit, I enjoy it whenever I can.
(When I’m not locking myself in a dark room to play some freakin’ Fire Emblem in peace,
that is.)
Anyway.
From the depths of my big ol’ box of Super Famicom games comes...
SUPER BOWLING.
Because it’s a 16-bit game on a Nintendo system and the word “Super” is mandatory,
I guess.
Fine by me.
I just want some BOWLING.
And what do I get?
BOWLING.
And that’s about it.
And, you knock down pins.
And that’s about it.
Look, what were you expecting, Jerome Bettis to come out here and offer you a towel?
It’s a 1992 game about bowling; you’re lucky to get a decent game out of it.
In fact, the mechanics are pretty sound, even if it does seem like your spin doesn’t travel
as much as you’d like it to.
All you have to do is position your bowler, aim your shot, set your spin and your throw
strength, and BAM.
Pins go flying.
And while the pin action is certainly better than, say, that Intellivision bowling game
I played a little while ago, there are some circumstances where the sprites would seem
to indicate a perfectly good hit but then screw you out of one pin.
Seriously?
It’s the last ball of the 10th frame, jerk!
There are a couple little flourishes just to spice up the fact that this is, all told,
a pretty thin experience.
You’ve got victory animations whenever you get a strike or spare!
(Or gutterball, for that matter.)
You’ve got... um... actual racial diversity, which is pretty darn rare for a Japanese game.
And there’s...
Golf!
Well, bowling golf.
You’ve got a strange spare figure at the end of the lane, and you need to take it out
in as few balls as possible.
Interestingly, this mode sometimes breaks from the actual bowling setup of 10 pins and
goes to a 4x4 square formation of 16.
That might’ve been a stretch for the word “interestingly,” but I don’t care.
It’s still some deviation from the standard, and that’s pretty cool.
But I just know that friend of the show Dave Patricola would tear me a new one if I didn’t
mention that this was developed by the same folks who brought us PEPSIMAN for the PS1.
And in a really strange twist for these kinds of games...
it actually saw a US release!
So find a copy of your own - they’re pretty readily available, from what I’ve seen - and
help me try to determine what the heck these announcer things are supposed to be.
Are they birds?
Chickens?
Turkeys?
That’d make more sense.
Simpsons rejects?
PLEASE, SOMEBODY PUT AN END TO MY IGNORANCE.