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Rockin' Bowl-O-Rama

Game designer Andrew Pines tells us about this new and sensationally cool retro game!

Interviewer: Scott Voisin

Game designer Andrew Pines may not be a household name, but chances are you've seen (and played) his work. With credits that include the original Golden Tee and the Ms. Pac-Man/Galaga combo, Andrew and his company, Cosmodog, are about to release Rockin' Bowl-O-Rama, a sequel to his 1991 coin-op hit, Bowl-O-Rama. On the eve of the game's debut, Andrew spoke with Scott Voisin about the challenges of being an independent game developer and his dream of bringing coin-op howling into the future by drawing on the past.

Scott Voisin: The first thing I want to ask about is the cabinet. What inspired you to go with the future-retro look?

Andrew Pines: The idea came from not wanting to have a cabinet that was just like everything else. Every step of the way as we were making the game, we were like, "How can we make our game unique, differentiate it from everything that went before it, make it fun and make it stand out?" Fairly early on, I wanted to try to come up with something that would make the cabinet look different from every other game and tie-in to the game itself. I had done a whole bunch of research and pulled up 50s architecture and design and bowling alley reference photos. One of the artists who was working on the game came up with the idea of merging an old scorer's table with a Philco Predicta TV set. The Philco is the TV that appears on-screen in the game, and we thought. "That's a really cool idea," and it kind of evolved from there.

SV: So the whole project is based on the 50s?

AP: Yeah. There's a jukebox playing 50s music in the background. Some of it's authentically old, some of it's recorded recently, but it's in the same style so it all feels very 50s. The look of the cabinet is inspired by the 50s future-retro look, right down to the edge along the table, which is chrome like you would find in a diner. The animation graphics that congratulate you or make fun of you are all made to look like 50s animated TV commercials. When you get a strike or a spare or throw a gutter ball or events like that, an old-style Philco TV flies up onscreen and a commercial will play. There's funny little things that happen in those commercials, and even the people who aren't playing are entertained by the graphics. It was all about focusing on that one look and having everything tie together.

SV: In the early 90s you designed the original Bowl-O-Rama. What led you to do a sequel after so many years?

AP: It actually started out, strangely enough, around 1998. I was thinking -- and a number of other people were thinking the same thing -- that the world was ready for another bowling game because there wasn't really anything out at that point. We had the idea of doing a The Simpsons-themed bowling game, and we went as far as to contact Fox and talk about licensing. At that point in history, my company, Cosmodog, didn't have the money to do it ourselves internally, and we couldn't find anyone who was willing to fund it. So it kind of went away, and about a year and a half later, Konami came out with a The Simpsons bowling game. I thought, "Well, at least it was a good idea if somebody else did it." As time went on, we did the engineering for the Ms. Pac-Man/Galaga combo game, and another one we did was the combination Centipede/Millipede/Missile Command game, which we did with Team Play. It was doing okay, but it wasn't doing anywhere near as well as Ms. Pac-Man/Galaga. Ed Pellegrini at Team Play suggested that we try adding Bowl-O-Rama to it. The problem with that was it was completely different hardware, and since it wasn't really meant to do that we basically did a stripped-down version of it, which was like what you could have done in 1982 on Atari hardware. The surprising thing was that Let's Go Bowling!, the game we added, actually out-earned Centipede and the other classic games in that cabinet. It completely confirmed that the world really wanted a bowling game. My position was, maybe the world didn't want that bowling game so much, but it definitely wanted a bowling game.

SV: What does Rockin'Bowl-O-Rama have to offer players?

AP: There's actually four different games you can play. You can play regulation bowling, but in addition to that, you can also play "10-Pin Poker," which is something that people who bowl in leagues do a lot. You have a deck of cards, and every time you get a strike or a spare, you get a playing card, and at the end of the game, whoever has the best poker hand wins. We have another game that's called "Blackjack Bowling," which was actually in the first Bowl-O-Rama, but we changed the rules a little bit. The idea is that you get three full racks of 10 pins, and you try to knock down a total of 21 pins without knocking down more. It's tricky because now instead of always trying to get a strike, you're trying to knock down a specific number of pins, so you have to be very careful about how you aim. Lastly, there's a "Trick Shot" game, and for each frame, you choose one of 60 different trick shots. Some of them are basic like a 1-10 split, which is not that hard to convert, but some of them are much more complicated. One shot in bowling that you might get stuck with is called a double wood, where there's two pins, one right in front of the other. It's not a terribly hard thing to do, but it's a little bit tricky. Well, one of the trick shots is to pick up the one in back without knocking down the one in front. It's pretty engaging because you're having to learn how to make very unusual shots.

SV: I imagine most people are familiar with the concept of bowling even if they've never played it. Did you gear this towards people who are more active in the sport, or did you try to keep it simple?

AP: We tried to make the game easy for someone who didn't know anything about it to just walk up, fling the ball, knock down some pins and have fun. At the same time, we had to make it sophisticated enough so that someone who really understands bowling is going to know how to control it and have it behave the way bowling is really supposed to behave. Bowling in the real world is like that, where someone who doesn't know what they're doing can just pick up a ball and throw it down the lane, and someone who knows what they're doing can get some pretty amazing control. What we did is try to simulate that so it would have the same kind of feel, and I think we really achieved it. The physics model -- the way the pins behave, the way the ball behaves, the way the lane behaves -- all of that stuff is pretty realistic. We had a couple of bowling pros who helped consult on the game, and when it was all done, they said, "Yeah, this plays the way it's supposed to play."

SV: The cabinet design is unique and uses minimal 'off the shelf' parts. How did you keep the project's cost down under these circumstances?

AP: The truth is that we spent more on the design, engineering, prototyping and tooling of the cabinet for this game than we've spent on entire games in the past, but this is also a much bigger game than anything we've done before. Our feeling was that by not having just another big box we'd be able to place the game into locations that previously wouldn't have coin-op games at all, and that we'd get better placement within traditional locations. To get the best possible pricing we considered many different fabrication techniques for each of the molded parts, then selected the process that best fit each part. Some parts are injection molded while others are thermoformed. The rear of the console, which was originally supposed to be injection molded plastic, turned out to be less expensive out of sheet metal. For the aluminum t-molding around the edge of the control panel we saved money by making our own extrusion die and extruding and polishing our own t-molding rather than buying completed pieces from a diner furniture supplier. In the end we have a game that looks like nothing else, yet only costs slightly more.

SV: How long did it take to create the game from the first idea to the final product?

AP: It took a long time, partly because we were doing it as we could afford to do it. We couldn't afford to hire a big staff and do everything all at once and slam it all together, so it sort of evolved over a long time. From start to finish was a little bit over three years. Right now, we're still working on tooling for the cabinet even though the game is essentially finished. Another thing that held it up was initially we were going to use custom hardware, and we spent more time than we probably should have going down that road before we decided it just wasn't cost-effective. We switched to using a PC, and the PC comes with many problems, but it does come with functioning 3D hardware right out of the box.

SV: Compared to when you first started, has the improved technology made it easier or harder to design a game?

AP: It's interesting because the technology has become much more sophisticated and so many things are much easier, yet the development cycle is so much longer because the expectations are higher. We generally can't get away with the really simple play mechanics anymore that we all know and love because people expect to have the sophisticated graphics and all that kind of stuff. I just try to come up with something that makes the game unique and different from the very beginning and guide everything around that. In this case, we gave it the theme and we decided we wanted to make sure the controls made sense. There were a number of people early on who thought we should make the controls similar to Golden Tee golf because it would be easier for players to go from one game to the other, but we quickly realized that Golden Tee golf controls don't make very much sense for a bowling game, so we made up our own. It's definitely very different, and it takes a little bit to learn now it works, but once you understand - and especially if you know how to bowl -- you can throw a fairly spectacular hook just the way you would in the real world.

SV: How did Namco get involved with Rockin' Bowl-O-Rama?

AP: We developed and funded it internally, and a lot of the work was done via sub-contractors. Once it was finished, we took it to Namco and they licensed it from us to manufacture it. Actually, it was a pretty easy deal. We talked to a total of five companies, and once people heard about it. we had people coming to us, we didn't even have to go out. A couple of different companies at the AMOA show in September were asking, "Do you guys actually have a signed deal with Namco?" They were trying to hijack it, which was flattering.

SV: As a designer, what's the most rewarding part of your job? Is it the overall final product, is it commercial success, is it popularity...?

AP: You know, it's funny... The best part is to just see people playing it and enjoying it. If we have the game out on test in a bar and some people walk up and start playing it and they're really having a good time, that is absolutely the best part. That's when you know the game is doing what's it's supposed to do. and that's entertain people.

SV: Do yon have any upcoming projects in the works?

AP: Actually, we don't. We'll probably be maintaining this thing for awhile. Assuming it does well. I'm hoping that we'll be able to do updates that include some things we would've liked to have done in the first place but didn't have time for. The original idea wasn't to just do the 50s. The idea was really to do the 50s, 60s, 70s and 80s. and you'd be able to choose your venue. The music and the art and the look of the space you're playing in would all tie-in to whatever decade you choose. If you chose the 60s. the music would be Motown, the 70s would probably be disco, and the 80s would be cosmic bowling. Basically we ran out of time, so we decided to just do the 50s for now and maybe do updates in the future with the other decades if the game does okay.

SV: I think you'll be busy for a long time to come. The game looks like a blast to play.

AP: Thank you. This is definitely the best thing I've ever worked on, so I'm happy it's getting attention.

Scott Voisin is a contributing editor to GameRoom, and co-writer of the Auction Watch column. He is currently conducting a series of character actor interviews for the prestigious VideoScope magazine.

GAME ROOM     DECEMBER 2005