The Nintendo 64 was sorely lacking in third party support. This was especially true in its early days on the market. Games like Milo’s Astro Lanes certainly didn’t help. It was tough to justify the price tag on the Nintendo 64 when third party support consisted mostly of throwaway games that were cheap, or weird, or both. Bowling has never been particularly popular in the video game realm, and it was certainly not going to justify purchasing a system for on its own. I remember thinking that Milo’s Astro Lanes looked weird at the time, but I decided to finally dive in after all these years. Unfortunately it’s not good, and I can’t imagine the pain of buying this one at full price.
There’s not so much a story here as there is a setting and basic scenario. Milo’s Astro Lanes is set up kind of like a game show, but in outer space, and with a really goofy art style. The stages are based on fun takes on outer space tropes such as Venus being a course with volcanos, lanes with aliens at the end, and more. Besides the unique art style and a fun unconventional obstacles this is, well, it’s bowling. It’s a tough sport to jazz up for a video game, and Milo’s Astro Lanes doesn’t really break any new ground. I actually found the style it uses a little annoying to be honest.
So as I mentioned earlier Milo’s Astro Lanes is a bowling video game. For better or worse. The rules and scoring are basically the same as in real life. You roll a ball down a lane to knock down pins. That’s it. Well, there are a few curveballs thrown in for good measure but they do don’t significantly change the way this game is played. I’ll get to those later. You begin gameplay in Milo’s Astro Lanes by selecting a ball, then character, and finally course. From here you take turns with a number of different players (up to 4). You play by first moving your character left and right, and the strength and angle of your roll. You throw twice, but if you get a strike it moves on to the next player immediately. Simple, right?
Milo’s Astro Lanes has just two tricks up its sleeve to set itself away from the pack. While there are a lot of standard style lanes others present mild obstacles. This includes things like ramps and objects that block particular sections of the lane. These aren’t actually a huge detriment, but it’s at least something. Second up is the power ups. In each course you’ll find different colored stars which each represent a different item that you can stockpile and use at will. These specials have numerous effects such as changing the size of your bowling ball, making it go faster, putting more balls into play during your turn, etc. Unfortunately this is the highlight of a rather mundane experience. The only really interesting twist to this is that you can use them as anti-specials during an opponents turn to affect their gameplay negatively.
It sounds more fun than it actually is. You’d think the specials would make things hectic and fun, but they’re all just sort of sad. I admit that when playing with four different players it can be mildly entertaining, but that’s it. This is the best that Milo’s Astro Lanes has to offer, and it just isn’t enough. The game suffers from a lack of content. You can choose from one of six different characters to play as, but they’re all functionally identical. The only difference is in the graphics, and to be honest, the designs are all trainwrecks. The fact that you can choose from one of six different fantastical bowling balls as well, but your choice here also offers no change to gameplay. These options are basically just there to be bullet points on the boxart because they do nothing.
I would be able to overlook that fact if the main game was fun but it just isn’t. Unfortunately the bowling pins react in a very unrealistic manner. It’s like they’re heavily weighted. You could argue that the game is using different gravity than on Earth (that’s a cop out for sure) but in all stages it’s the same problem. Getting a strike without using a special is far more difficult than it should be. I’m usually pretty good at bowling video games. I really struggled in Milo’s Astro Lanes. At least the CPU players aren’t cheap and they also have problems scoring strikes or picking up spares as well.
The graphics aren’t half bad by technical standards. The characters and environments feature a lot of animation with a lot of polygons. Milo’s Astro Lanes actually animates better than most other third party Nintendo 64 games released around this time. As I mentioned earlier the main problem is the art style. The characters are annoying in a very forced edgy kind of way. The outer space motif is kind of lame to be honest. The developers failed to take adequate advantage of it and put in the bare minimum effort to make the art style unique. At least it’s colorful, but that’s hardly enough to save it. The music is also quite poor. It consists entirely of low quality midi. There’s some voice acting but it’s all pretty lame and muffled to be honest. Milo’s Astro Lanes is kinda bad looking.
Milo’s Astro Lanes is lame. I hate to put it so bluntly, but the game isn’t particularly fun. What really ruins it however is that darn art style. It’s offensively bad. They could have toned it back a few notches and it probably would have been fine. Well, not quite, because the content is so light here that I really can’t justify picking this one up for more than a few bucks. That’s even if the art style doesn’t offend you. It’s bowling, and it’s on the Nintendo 64. I guess that was enough back then, for some people, but Milo’s Astro Lanes has aged very poorly.
