Game Review: Strike (ZX Spectrum, Mastertronic/MAD)

The Opening Main Menu

Before playing the game, you’ll see the main menu screen.  Here you can chose one or two players, their names, controls and difficultly levels.

The difficulty of the computer player ranges from 1 to 4, with the default being 1 for easy.  To change this, pressing the respective key (number 6) takes a while to respond before the level number changes.

Keys are re-definable and the usual range of joysticks are there (except Protek).

Graphics

Strike is played on an isometric screen, and the bowler moves diagonally very slowly left and right whilst stepping his feet up and down.

Vertically in the top left-hand corner are the pins which you are aiming for.  Hitting the pins looks quite good when they are knocked over.  The ball replacement system appears replacing any remaining pins or when it’s the other players turn replacing them all before disappearing of the screen again.

Pins and Scoring

Above that area, the darker blue numbered pins are those where they have yet to been bowled over and the light blue numbers are which have been bowled down.

The bottom right-hand corner displays the scores over the ten frames and symbols if you get either a strike or a spare.  A strike being a filled in square and a spare being a diagonal rectangle.

The first player has with a blue background, and the player 2 has a red background.

Playability

Moving the bowler from one side of the bowling lane to the other can seem like an age and is very lethargic.  By pushing up, you take a run towards the bowling line.  Holding down the fire button until you’re ready to release the bowling will take some practice getting used to.  This is where the skill of the game comes into play, knowing just when to do that.

On many occasions though the ball will be thrown very slowly up in the air and to then takes quite a while before gravity pulls it downwards.  The isometric graphics must be taking up the processing power of the computer here and it shows.

If the bowling ball hits you on the foot, the word “Ouch!” will appear in a blue box.  In other instances, if you drop it before bowling it properly, it will roll away or fall at a very slow pace.

Although there are two gullies down the side of the lanes, it is rather unlikely that you will bowl the ball down those (unlike the real game!).  When you reach the furthest left or right of the lane, just take a step to the side and you’ll miss it.  There is no swerving or spinning of the bowling ball to make that mistake unless you deliberately aim for the gulley here.

Foot Faults and a Strike

Pressing up and not holding the fire button down in time results with you running over the bowling line with the words Foot Fault appearing in a blue box.

If you get a Strike, that word also appears in a blue box too.

Sound

Depending on if you are playing on the 48K or 128K Spectrum, the game has different sound.

The 48K version just has tapping noises when you hit the pins or a couple of beeps when a blue box appears.  Pressing the keys on the main menu make a quick couple of noises. The 128K version starts playing music the moment the first ball is bowled and no tapping noises when you hit the pins.

There is no music on the main menu which seems a bit of a shame.  An upbeat tune here would have enhanced the atmosphere before playing, I feel.

Final Thought

The technology to have fun with bowling games, didn’t really come along until the Nintendo Wii and its controllers.  Although a bowling game is a reasonable idea, there was just no way it could ever come up to the scratch on a ZX Spectrum or indeed any other system of its time.

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