The Flintstones: Bedrock Bowling for PS1 falls short of being a gay old time

We do a little bowling and we drink a little vino

This one is another recommendation from my local video game dispensary. They told me they thought I had asked them to keep an eye out for The Flintstones: Bedrock Bowling on PS1 (also on PC). I did no such thing. I had never heard of this game since then. However, I can understand why you would want to exploit a boon, such as someone who intentionally buys bad games. You don’t have to be dishonest about it.

The Flintstone’s was something that was perpetually syndicated when I was a kid, so even though it was off the air for 20 years before I was born, I’m rather familiar with the source material. I also love bowling when I was growing up. It was the sport that took place in the closest proximity to a Metal Slug arcade cabinet. I also love games that I can wrap up in 20 minutes, so The Flintstones: Bedrock Bowling really has a lot going for it out of the gate.

New saucer-sled land speed record

The story sees the stars of the popular vitamin bottle really wanting to go bowling. However, Fred Flintstone’s boss demands he put in overtime in the quarry, which threatens their evening activities. I guess they didn’t have unions back in the Stone Age. Wait, yes they did. Unions were the butt of a joke once. I guess it’s not so funny when Fred is having his job threatened by his employer unless he does overtime.

Anyway, The Great Gazoo, the universe’s most lovable genocidal maniac and one of the show’s worst ideas, shows up and decides he’s going to help out. He converts the quarry into a giant bowling course complete with bowling sleds, and sends Fred, his neighbor, his children, and his dog hurtling down it on a collision course with various trash. I’m not sure how much you know about bowling, but this is entirely not it. This is more like tobogganing down one of those hills with “No Sledding” signs everywhere.

I chose Fred as my bowling ball because Pebbles, Bamm-Bamm, and Dino are all just variations of the worst things imaginable. Every utterance they make is like a hailstorm of glass raging in my ear canals. I also tried Barney once, and he controls like an oiled-up sea lion.

Prolonged exposure

I may have hinted at this already, but The Flintstones Bedrock Bowling doesn’t really share anything in common with actual bowling aside from the pins. That’s a shame because the early 3D era of video games definitely didn’t give us enough mediocre bowling titles.

Instead, Fred and everyone less tolerable get dropped into little sleds and are sent down twisting hills. You need to steer into pins and gems. There are also obstacles you need to avoid, but these just seem to slow you down. Let me be clear that there is no time limit to Bedrock Bowling, and I don’t think you get a bonus for doing a lane quickly, so I have no idea why getting slowed down would be considered a punishment. Similarly, I also don’t know why there is a boost button. Wait, yes, I do. It’s so the pain will end quicker.

For that matter, there are also three “Dodos” on the track. If you hit them all before getting to the finish line, the track gets extended, which is necessary to hit the three-or-so more pins needed for a strike.

If you manage to hit all the Dodos in a group of lanes, you’ll get to visit a secret stage. There are three secret lanes in total, with the last one being a reward for turning every Dodo into road kill. Once again, The Flintstones Bedrock Bowling rewards you by giving you more game to play, which seems more like a loss here.

Dum-dum

I’m a Canadian, so tobogganing is in my blood. However, I’m not sure you need to be a walking perversion of gravity to win at The Flintstones Bedrock Bowling. I can’t even say if losing is possible. From what I can tell, this is supposed to be a competitive sort of affair, which sounds like a good way to progress a relationship beyond simple friendship and into the realm of a mutual nap.

If you play it by yourself, you just get a tally of your score at the end. The Great Gazoo doesn’t call you a dum-dum if you do poorly. Or, perhaps I just didn’t do poorly enough to get cussed out by the spaceman.

I suppose that’s sort of what bowling actually is. It’s a game of physical solitaire that we usually play in proximity to other people to make it more interesting. Nobody interacts aside from hoots and butt-pats when a strike is landed. There’s an overall cap on how well you can do, so playing by yourself is only beneficial in improving your consistency and technique. In a way, that’s what The Flintstones Bedrock Bowling is doing for you, only you’d have a much tougher time finding anyone to play with you.

Actually, I never checked. Can you add an AI player?

No, you can’t. Nevermind.

Cooked turkey

I said this earlier, but a complete playthrough of The Flintstones: Bedrock Bowling takes about 20 minutes for an entire playthrough. That’s probably a good thing, because it doesn’t even really earn that runtime. It also could have been longer. There is at least a good variety to the tracks, with one of them even letting you jump inside of a movie. So, they could have gotten more mileage out of repeating themes, but let’s pretend I didn’t say that.

At my very most generous, I’d say that The Flintstones: Bedrock Bowling is at least not offensively bad. Unless you really like The Flintstones. Or bowling. Or just fun in general. Um, okay, that wasn’t very generous. Let’s try: it took me less time to play The Flintstones: Bedrock Bowling than it did to scream out all the lasting trauma that it inflicted on me. I think that’s the best I can do.

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Zoey Handley

Staff Writer – Zoey is a gaming gadabout. She got her start blogging with the community in 2018 and hit the front page soon after. Normally found exploring indie experiments and retro libraries, she does her best to remain chronically uncool.

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