Bob's Bowling Bonanza spearheads Microgaming October releases
Designing an online slot themed on bowling must kinda be like cooking with bleu cheese: As long as you follow some basics, it’s pretty difficult to mess things up. And Microgaming certainly has a hold on the bowling-alley fundamentals in the 5-reel 30-payline Bob’s Bowling Bonanza, thereby making it fun and mostly unlike, say, the tepid Alley Cats.
For symbols, we get the funny looking fat bald dude who probably averages just over 200 and is an utter badass in the lane; the interesting super long-haired chick who's tops in singles in the women's league; and the satisfying strike sound when you clear the pins, along with ball-on-Louisville Slugger the most distinctive sound in sports.
Still here is the blah A-K-Q-J-10-9 run, the characters of which the Microgamers at least tried to make look interesting. (The Os Man has no idea why stuff like X’s and slashes – symbolizing strike and spare in alleyside notation – couldn’t be employed here.)
And then there’s the elusive “Perfect Game” bonus feature, triggered by ten pins symbols in lanes (reels, actually, but just going with the spin of the game, eh?) 1, 3, and 5. It's a good one – What about bowling isn’t good? – though utterly minimalist, asking the player to choose the three players in some sequence – netted the Os Man $560 on a 60-cent spin.
All they’re missing here is the beer. Which you can supply, presumably. Rating: 7/10 but picks up the spare on the second ball.
In contrast to Bob’s Bowling Bonanza, Microgaming’s companion release Jonny Specter is a bit of a high-concept game with surely a deep imaginary backstory. Roughly approximately a combination of the Ghostbusters films and, well, the “Real Ghostbusters” cartoon of the mid-1980s, Jonny Specter’s symbols include the familiar old-fashioned phone and sassy female lead (“Ghostbusters, whaddya want?” Oh, Annie Potts...). The ghost in crosshairs symbol, however, is suspiciously Pacman and the background music is almost Elfmanesque.
And while the Os Man doesn’t quite get the haunted Mona Lisa painting, he’s gotta love the version of slimer trying to scare players, bobbing over the reels...a swell and original wrinkle here is that this "Greedy Ghost" turns one square wild per spin, but let the Os Man tell you that other WILDs – and thus payouts on them – seemed rarer than a full-torso visible apparition on this 20-reeler. The “Ghostbusting Bonus” (shameless recognition there) consists merely of choosing one of three ghosts. Yawn. LCD rating: middling. Right up there with Ghostbusters II. (And who remembers that one?)
In Spike's Nite Out, Spike is a poker-playing dog; does that fairly well sum it up for you? The caricatures on the symbols in Spike’s are pretty funny; the Os Man loved the Chihuahua with lotsa chips and the tied-up kitty cat. (So he doesn't wake the owners up while the canines smoke all the Cubans and quaff all the beer or what?)
When three to five SCATTERing “DOGGY TIME” symbols appears, the bonus jump for 2x to 10x to 20x to 100x, perking up a game with some long empty stretches; the bonus game is some fun. An OK tribute to that classic American artwork “Dogs Playing Poker.” LCD rating: 6/10.