0 to Z of Playstation 1 Games - Big Strike Bowling

        

Big Strike Bowling is a 3^rd person sports game focussed around Bowling, the game was developed by Coresoft, the developers of the previously covered Big Bass Fishing, the game was published by the short lived publisher Gotham Games and release on the 20^th of March 2003 in North America, and the following month on the 17^th of April.

Notable people who worked on this game, Mike Montague who worked on the game as a 3D Artist, he also worked on the previously covered Big Bass Fishing. More recent;y he worked on the 2006 adaption of Barnyard working the games modelling and Backgrounds, and in 2012 he was the Rigging Lead on Resident Evil Operation Raccoon City.

Alan Pavlish who provided Addition Producer on the game, has had a very long career in the video game industry which dates all the way back to 1983 when he worked as a programmer on Galaxian. He was also a Programmer on the 1988 RPG Wasteland, he also worked as a designer on this game.

Through his career Paylish has mostly worked in the Production side of things, working as Executive Producer on games like Wolfenstein 3D, Descent, Star Trek Starfleet Academy and Carmageddon, as well as the recently covered Big Bass Fishing. In 2014 he provided Additional Writing and Design work on Wasteland 2.

Big Strike Bowling definitely gives that feeling of the budget market that took over towards the end of the PlayStation 1 lifecycle, unlike some of those games however Big Strike Bowling does put in some effort unlike some of the budget titles.

On offer in this release from Coresoft are four game modes to choose from, these are Open Game, Team Game, Progressive and Tournament. The latter of the four is a bracket tournament of 32 players, with the player working their way through the rounds to the final, the final has a roll off if the game ends in a tie.

During the course of the tournament the player will earn money, this money is used to access the character customisation, of which there are 12 characters to choose from. These funds can be used to unlock various cosmetic items, from bowler looks, shoes, shirts, pants, ball covers, skin and hair colours as well as hair styles and even names.

While the character options are quite good when it comes to the actual bowling lanes choice is limited, with just four making an appearance in the game, with Rockin' Lanes, Hula Bowl, Starlight Bowl and Alley Alley. These lanes are set in a classic bowling alley, a tropical theme, a space themed alley and a back alley.

The game also features stats that are recorded from Progressive and Tournament modes, these stats include, Players average, high game, earnings, percentage of strikes and spares per game, and number of wins and losses, these stats can be saved.

When on the lane the controls are pretty basic, the D-Pad is used to move your player left or right on the lane, in front of the players character will be an arrow showing the path that your bowling ball will travel. Once happy with your position the X button is used to select the desired path.

Once you have chosen the path the camera will switch to a side on view of your character, with two arrow gauges below them, one saying power the other saying accuracy. Once again you use the X button to set the power level and how accurate your shot will be, these gauges fill with a yellow colour, the more yellow in the power gauge the more power you will put on your shot.

The accuracy gauge is slightly different and works like the gauges you see on Golf games, the gauge will fill with a yellow colour, approximate three quarters of the way along the gauge is a green bar, this is the sweet spot for the most accurate shot, hitting the X button before or after this green bar will result in your ball drifting in that directing, the further away you are from the green bar the more erratic your shot will be.

The player has more options available to them when preparing for their shot, the aiming arrow is moved left to right using the L1 and R1 shoulder buttons. The player is also able to put spin on their shots, using the L2 and R2 shoulder buttons will add curve to the aiming arrow.

 

This being a very late release in the PlayStations lifespan critic review for the game are as a result pretty thin on the ground, we do have a trio of magazine review scores, sadly though the actual review text is unavailable. These three publications are PSX Nation, Computer & Video Games UK and Official Playstation Magazine, these three publications scored the game at a 66/100 a 6/10 and a 3.5/5 respectively.

As a result of the lack of reviews being available, we will head over to GameFAQs for their user data. On arrival we find the game sitting at an average user rating of 2.92/5 from a total of 13 user ratings. Taking a closer look at these ratings we find a large chunk rated the game as average at a 2.5 or above average at a 3/5, with a total of 9 user ratings within this range.

The remaining four users were split three to one in favour of a positive rating for the game, the three users rated the game at either a 3.5, a 4 or a 4.5 out of five. The remaining one user rated the game at a poor 1.5/5. The games difficulty level is up next, here we find a total of 11 users rating this category.

We find a large chunk of those 11 users rated the game as having just the right difficulty level, with 6 in total rating it at this. The next two difficulty ratings have an even split between them, with 2 users each rating the game as having either an easy or tough difficulty level.

The remaining one user found the game to be completely unforgiving, averaging out though the games difficulty level comes in at just right. Lastly we have the games lifespan, this category sadly won’t give us much information as one user has rated the games lifespan. This one user rated the game as having an 8 hour lifespan.

This is the part of 0 to Z where is visit four online retailers and see what the availability of the title is, and what price you would be looking at if you wanted to pick this title up, the sites that I will be using for this are Amazon.com, eStarland.com, retrogames.co.uk and Gamedude.com I know the last one is very location specific, but from a podcast I listen to, I’ve heard they have a huge stock of older games, Ebay has now been dropped unless the game is unavailable at other retailers.

So lets get down to business with Gamedude, where we find this game is another one that is clearly quite common, with a trade in price of just 5 cents. On the plus side if you are in the market for a copy of Big Strike Bowling from Gamedude you will only have to pay $2.

Next we head over to Retogames.co.uk, where sadly we don’t find the game available or even listed. So we will quickly move on to eStarland.com, where we find two copies of the game on offer. The first of these copies is a used and complete copy of the game, this copy is priced up at $3.95.

The second copy available is a disc only copy of Big Strike Bowling, this disc only copy will set you back just $2.17. Also on offer at eStarland.com Is a trade in for this game, with eStarland offering up to $1.25 for a complete copy of the game. This price will fluctuate depending on completeness, with a disc only copy worth just 44 cents at trade in.

Lastly we head over to Amazon.com where we find a plentiful supply of copies on offer, and cheap as well, with the first two copies on offer being complete and in very good condition, these two are priced at $4.96 and $5.50, the latter however is shipped by Amazon so free delivery is for prime users and those spending over $25.

No problem however with a like new copy of the game available for just 34 cents more at $5.84. along with several other cheap, complete and good or better quality copies that are available. New copies of the game are equally cheap as well, with the lowest priced copy coming in at $6.94, with a few copies around this price range.

Prices do rise steadily from this point up to around the $15 to $16 mark, a couple ar priced beyond this with one at $23.98, as usual there is the overpriced new copy that is on the market, that copy that is either a mistake or put on the market by an idiot, the copy in question for this game is priced at $66.14 when shipping has been added in.

Written by

P J Gibbon