Ten Pin Alley
There's something unique about the experience of an evening at the bowling alley. Wearing those uncomfortable shoes (and wondering what communicable diseases the previous occupant had), finding you can only cope with a girlie number 12 ball, dropping the thing onto the lane with an immense thud that makes you want to hide, sending your second ball too soon and hitting the guard - don't you just want to be there now? If you can't wait for your next session, Ten Pin Alley brings the bowling alley to Windows 95.There's plenty of choice, with different alleys, assorted players, each with their own special tailorable skills, and options to play open, in a league or in a tournament. There's limited network support too - but you need to understand what you're doing with IP addresses as it's only provided for TCP/IP, with limited guidance.
Sports sims like this are as good as the way you control your play. Golf games have got remarkably good at mimicking the action of taking a swing - I didn't get any feel at all for how I should handle the "bowling meter" that is used to set spin, power and drop point. There just wasn't enough linkage to the actual action of bowling. After a while I got the hang of what to do, but it felt too mechanical. That's a shame because the simulation is good and otherwise the game is fine.
Overall - a good simulation of ten pin bowling, but would benefit from a more natural feeling control. Priced around รบ39.99 in the UK. 1 Win95 CD.
Produced by ASC games-http://www.ascgames.com
Distributed by Electronic Arts - http://www.ea.com
Reviewed by Brian Clegg