Penguin Wars (1990)

You know in Europe they called this King of the Zoo? That’s a way better title. At least both games feature the same amount of weaponized bowling.

This is an early Game Boy game and yoooooou can tell! It’s incredibly simple: there’s an animal on each side of a bigass table. They have 5 balls per side. The balls are rolled across the table at the opponent, with variable power depending on how long you charge a shot or what your character is good at. The winner of the round is determined 1 of 2 ways: getting rid of all of the balls on your side, or having fewer balls on your side when time runs out.

There’s also a very slight dodgeball element? If a rolling ball makes contact with a player they get stunned for a bit, which again, is a variable stat. This is, predictably, quite exploitable against the AI! My lil Harvest Moon-ass cow won most matches by beaning its opponent upside the head until the ref had to step in. I say it’s slight, not because you’re not smacking people, but because the roll is fairly slow and easy to dodge unless you get caught charging a shot too late. In a mildly impressive feat of programming balls can bounce off each other mid-roll, but 3D-ish effects hadn’t been fully figured out on the Game Boy just yet so it’s pretty hard to gauge doing that on purpose.

You’d be forgiven for thinking that there not being much here means it’s a lesser GB game. Hell, depending on who you ask you may be right. I don’t agree with that hypothetical hater! The Game Boy is excellent at these sorts of bite-sized experiences meant to be played for no more than half an hour or so at a time, and Penguin Wars is exactly that. It feels like an bartop arcade cab set to free play in tiny form, and while the novelty of having that in the pocket has long since worn off for many, I still find value in this sort of design. At the very least, it’s fun to chant “somebody’s getting fuuuuucked“ at a mouse as you continuously launch bowling balls at its tiny frame.

3/5