Kingpin - Amiga, 31/3/95
Kingpin - Amiga
With a name like Kingpin, you might expect a crime-bustin' shoot 'em up or a gangster adventure.
Or a 10 pin bowling game. And if you still expect one of the former two, you must be stupid, because this is a 10 pin bowling game.
Realistic, adequate sounds and graphics and smooth animation...but come on - this is a 10 pin bowling game!
Granted, Kingpin provides bowling fans with a slick simulator to fill a previously unexplored void.
You can play with up to six others - recommended, as with just you and the computer you will soon be both bored and humbled - and it comes one one disk so no swappy-diskoh.
You can have some fun with the create bowler option, but we found just name and shirt colour a little bit unsatisfying for our lurid psyches.
Where Kingpin really falters is that for 13 quid, you can go and have three games of real bowling which is about five billion times more satisfying.
Also, there's no option to chuck three balls down at once, run down the alley and kick the pins over, throw the ball into the air and watch it smash down.
You can't even deliberately take daggy shoes to swap with the stylish bowling ones and not give back.
As suggested in the press blurb that came with our copy, Kingpin is ideal for wasting a few hours with some chums at midnight on a Friday.
Football can survive without the "funny deliberate handball", "chat to goalie" and "just-popping-down-the-road-to-get-a-drink" options.
But bowling without the added extras is just bowling, and as a result in the long term is a bit poor. Still, £12.99?
Kingpin - Amiga - by Team 17
Players: 1-6
Graphix: 74%
Sonix: 63%
Gameplay: 73%
Lifespan: 48%
Originality: 91%
Uppers - Original, plays well
Downers: Ten pin bowling sim?
Overall: 63% - Toilet bowl-ing joke
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