Original Release: American Sammy, 1994, Arcade
A simple arcadey bowling title that offered trackball or joystick setups in its cabinet, but either way didn’t really do much to justify getting ported or being revived at any point.
Krazy Bowl (Arcade, American Sammy, 1994)
Where to Buy: eBay
How to Emulate: Arcade Emulation Guide
Review by: C. M0use
Krazy Bowl is a simplistic bowling game from American Sammy with not a lot of meat on the bone. It offers just two modes of play, both of which have you play 10 frames each in what are basically just “score attack” competitions to get your initials on the ol’ leaderboard. Both of these zip along quite quickly as the game is definitely “arcadey” in design over “realistic”; one mode is a straightforward game while the other is a series of oddball pin configurations where you have to pick up at least a spare in each frame to keep going.
The controls are also somewhat odd, at least if you’re emulating. The cabinet was designed to support either a trackball or joystick installation, but clearly the trackball was the preferred and emphasized. But emulation in MAME and such will usually default to the joystick setup, which takes the odd tack of having you simply line up the ball vertically and choose any level of hook you desire within 10 seconds, then press up to roll at a fixed “max power” level. This makes it easy to pick up at least spares on every frame without any real practice, the only real challenge is in the wonky physics when pins are knocked over.
So the game is barely mediocre overall, but with the caveat that playing it with a proper trackball setup may well improve it somewhat.
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