Bullseye Review

Costas Stephanides’s Review

The game that launched a thousand catchphrases is super, smashing, great.

Bullseye's back on your TV and it should come as no surprise that it will be available on your mobile at the end of November. Bullseye Mobile has pretty much everything you could expect from this revival.

If you were going to design Bullseye, what would you be looking for? A few catchphrases, the infamous intros and special prizes? Well you get all that and also a pretty good recreation of the quiz format. The game has a certain retro style to it and makes me wonder if this is actually a Spectrum port. As soon as you start the game you are greeted by the classic theme tune recreated in wonderful polyphony. You have the chance to play either the Bullseye game or a standard darts game. The Bullseye game has pretty much everything the TV show had apart from the Eric Bristow guest appearances. Jim Bowen and Tony Green are missing but at least Bully is ever present.

The game has all the old rounds and manages to successfully combine the skill of darts with a general knowledge quiz. Each round has all the trademarks of the original with the Prize Board being particularly funny as all the naff prizes float past your screen. There may not be any speech included in the game but there are plenty of subtitles such as INNNNN1... INNNNN2, and so on. Old timers like me will uncontrollably start providing the voices while undoubtedly chuckling to themselves.

It's not just a game of general knowledge and kitsch; there is some darts involved and the mechanics are quite good. Rather than having it as a very easy horizontal and vertical aiming game, they have added a bit of wrist action to the proceedings. After you aim vertically and horizontally, the dart will then start to pivot to simulate the dart player lining up the shot. If the dart points upwards when you release, then it will land higher than your original aim. It takes a little bit of practice and you'd have to be very good to regularly get 180 - but consistent high scores are definitely possible.

For those that remember, Bullseye had a dart player and a non-darts player (aka geek who answered the questions). In a cruel twist the non-darts player would also be asked to throw the arrows to win the prizes and take part in the grand finale. Most of the time the non-darts player couldn't throw a dart to save their life and it was just as funny to watch them miss than it was to hear Jim's catchphrases. Morpheme and Player X have tried to recreate this in the mobile game as well. When it is time for the non-darts player to throw, the aiming cursor will jitter along to make things a bit harder to control. It's a neat touch but it's not too difficult to accustom to the jittering and it just becomes a mild annoyance rather than a frustration.

The Bullseye quiz is pretty easy and you should be able to win the speedboat or 2 door hatchback on most occasions. There are over 1000 question so the game shouldn't repeat too much on you. If you do get bored of the show, you can play a normal game of darts against another opponent (pass-the-phone) or against the computer. You can play 501 and 301 but for more of a challenge try 'round the clock' against the computer.

Overall the game does very well in recreating the 80's and 90's show and there's nothing like a bit of nostalgia to make you feel old. The only thing missing is some unlockable ringtones. 'Super, smashing, great' or Bully's moo would make great ringtones.