Bob's Bowling Bonanza

Bowling is a worldwide favorite with millions of people visiting the bowling alleys every day. Now you can have some of the same excitement while playing the Bob's Bowling Bonanza slot machine from Microgaming. The game uses the Microgaming 30 line format and features a bowling theme bonus stage.

As with virtual all modern day video slots you have quite a few betting options. This includes the option to play between 1 and 20 coins per line and select from coin sizes ranging from 1c to 25c. If you hit the max bet button you are looking at 600 coins per game or $6 at the one cent coin size.

Top jackpot on Bob's Bowling Bonanza is 5,000 coins multiplied by your line bet. To win the top award you need to line up five Bob symbols on any active pay line. Hitting the jackpot with max bet pays a very nice 100,000 coins. Unlike most games the Bob symbol is not the wild.

Instead the Strike symbols are wild but they only appear on the 1st, 3rd and 5th reels so you cannot get five of a kind. The wilds do have a second purpose - they activate the bonus game. Back to the pays and the second highest line pay is 3000 coins for five girls. This is following by 1000 coins for five trophies.

The scattered bowling balls also offer some good jackpots. Get all five anywhere on the screen at the same time and you win 100 times your total bet or 60,000 coins at max bet. Oddly the scatters make a noise when they land which makes you get the feeling that they have some sort of bonus feature. Unfortunately the scatters do not activate a bonus.

To hit the bonus on Bob's Bowling Bonanza you need to get a wild anywhere on reels 1, 3 and 5. This stops the base game while the three reels turn into bowling alleys (View Screenshot). You get to click each alley to bowl the ball and see how you go. The amount of pins knocked down are multiplied by your triggering bet to give you your bonus win. If you get a strike your win is doubled.

If you are betting the maximum 600 coins per spin the highest possible win on the feature is 36,000 coins. While this is quite a nice jackpot we would have liked to see some bigger rewards on the feature than those found on the base game. Still the bonus fits in well with the theme.

If you are one of the millions of avid bowlers out there then this game is well worth a look. If however you are more of a die hard video slot fan you might find that this game lacks a bit of depth with no free spin bonus.