Reviews

You can't beat a bit of bully....actually in this game you may as well because this is more like a double 1 than a Bullseye.

This game follows very little from the show, in fact I don't think the programmer ever watched Bullseye! You play as a single player, not couples, the prize board round replaces prizes with points, you throw FOUR darts instead of three at the gamble round, but the biggest crime of all, not a single bendy bully in sight! Also to mispell oche as "ockey" sums it all up.

Hang your head in shame Macsen.

Bullseye is a darts quiz show which aired on ITV from 1981 to 1995 and was hosted by Jim Bowen with darts commentator Tony Green serving as referee. It was then revived by Challenge in 2006 with Dave Spikey hosting and Tony Green reprising his role as referee, but the less said about that the better.

The show mixed darts with general knowledge and featured three pairs of players, one was the darts player who threw the darts and the other was the non-darts player who answered the questions. In its heyday it was very popular with British viewers, at one point viewing figures were as high as 17 million. So eventually with the show being so popular it was going to get its own computer game.

Right at the beginning we get a fairly decent rendition of the show's theme tune, nothing outstanding but at least it's recognisable. It also features a pretty nice illustration of Bully, the show's mascot. After the tune finishes you are given the option of throwing three practice darts, or more than three darts if you so wish just to get to grips with the controls. Once you're done practicing you get to insert your names, choose the type of game you wish to play, either one game or best-of-three and the level of difficulty, this determines the speed of your timer while answering questions. Bullseye can only be played with two players.

So onto the game now, let's play Bullseye. Round one is the Category Board, here you have ten categories surrounding the dartboard, the categories are Books, History, Myths, Bible, Places, Art, Sport, Food, Showbiz and Pot Luck. After choosing your category you have to throw your dart at any of the scoring areas of that category, the white area scores 30 points, red scores 50, black scores 100 and a bullseye scores 200 points. You will then be asked a question of the category and you must type in the correct answer before the time limit. If you hit another subject you get no bonus points but you can still be asked a question providing the category hasn't already been taken, if a category already taken has been hit again the player loses their turn. Each player is given three turns in this round, correct answers are worth 30 points first time round, followed by 50 points and finally 100 points. If an incorrect answer is given the question is passed onto the other player.

The second round is Pounds for Points, here the players compete against each other to throw three darts on a traditional matchplay dartboard, as Jim would say, the player with the highest score gets asked the question first and the score is the value of the question, so if you scored 81 and you got the question right then you score 81 points, an incorrect answer passes the question to the other player for his score. This continues for a total of three questions. The player with the lowest score after the two rounds is eliminated.

Next would normally be Bully's Prize Board but we don't have any prizes to give away, instead we have more points to score. The board has nine red segments worth points and you have nine darts, the points are worth 10, 15, 20, all the way to 50 for the bullseye. A total of 270 points can be earned. These segments are surrounded by a large black segment and hitting black means you score no points with that dart. A red segment can only be hit once and hitting the same segment twice loses you points, for example if you hit the 25 point segment you score 25 points, but hit it a second time you lose 25 points.

The final part of the game is the gamble. The winning player has the opportunity to gamble their points to score 101 or more with four darts. Should you accept and win your score is doubled but if you fail it is halved and you could end up losing the game if the scores are close. The player may choose not to gamble and keep their points, if so the losing player is then asked if they'd like to gamble. If no-one gambles the game is over. The reason you throw four darts rather than three is because there is only one of you playing rather than a couple. In the show the couple threw six darts, the non-darts player threw three darts first followed by the darts player who also threw three darts, but in this version there's only one person and scoring 101 in three darts alone is quite a feat, so the game gives you an extra dart to compensate that.

After all this, the player with the highest score wins the game or round, depending on what type of game you chose at the start.

In all honesty I think this game follows the show quite well, the rounds are there and the format is largely in tact. There are flaws with the gameplay as there's only one player rather than a couple playing but I think of all the quiz show games I've played thus far this is one of the better ones. And it's certainly a lot like Bullseye than the horrible series revival in 2006 as well as those terrible DVD games.

It's not a classic nor is it brilliant, and it's certainly not super smashing great, but it works.

I'm not massive on darts but I would watch the World Championships occasionally and I did watch Bullseye a lot when it was on, Sunday roast with Bullseye on the telly, that was the norm back then and we couldn't get enough of it. As for the game, I thoroughly enjoyed it. I always liked it and found myself coming back for more. Plus, every other Bullseye game I've played, whether on DVD or an app, has never come close to the joys of this game. So it's not perfect by any means, but it's the best you can play of Bullseye and does the job nicely.