In Bowling, you are Captain Craig Bowling, the intrepid captain of the ENS Ten Pin, a soon to be decommissioned ship from the now peaceful Earth’s previous war torn history. As your last command as captain you are tasked with taking a rag tag group of prisoners and political dissidents with engineering and demolition experience off world to dismantle the once proud ship. However, once you reach the wrecking grounds, you begin to realize that the apparent benevolent government may have more in common with the oligarchs they were thought to have overthrown than anybody realizes. You pilot your ship through 100 levels of fast paced action, dodging class traitors and the technological monstrosities created by the billionaire elite on your way to re-liberate Earth and show the workers once and for all that there is only one way to free itself from its wealthy masters; a strike. Craig is a nuanced character that okay I can’t keep this up. Its a Bowling game.

Its actually the last game Larry Kaplan programmed for Atari before telling them to shove it. There are no real physics so its pretty easy to cheese your way to perfect games on the easier difficulties where you can move the ball anyway you want, but throwing a ball at some things you need to knock down is one of those basic concepts that at its core is really hard to fuck up and make not at least passably entertaining in video game form. It fits well in the “Atari games you could play with your friends while couch locked on edibles” category that I personally find to be very important. Also the ball is actually the closest to circular I’ve seen any balls be in an Atari game so far so 10/10 1979 game of the year.