Free Online Bowling Games

Online bowling is an excellent source of entertainment and all around good clean fun for you and your kids. There are literally hundreds of places to find online bowling, from arcade websites, to websites that give you chances to earn cash and prizes. Free online bowling tournaments can be quite addicting and you can join bowling leagues and compete against other teams from around the world. These days, with the invention of sites such as YouTube and MySpace it's becoming difficult to keep our children in a safe online environment. Introducing them to these websites could open their eyes to a new form of online entertainment that's quite addicting and fun to play. This list is an excellent resource of the best free online bowling websites available. Each free bowling website will be broken down and ranked based on requirements for signup, ease of use, design, amount of players, league play and will include a detailed review.

Pogo (www.pogo.com) Ease of Use: 10
Design: 9
Game Play: 9
Competition: 10
Leagues: Yes - Multiplayer up to 20 people
Minimum Age: 12yrs old (under 12 only with prior written consent)

I have been a member of Pogo for several years. This is my absolute favorite place to play free online bowling games. Setting up an account is a breeze and shouldn't be any trouble at all for you or your kids to create. You can chat with the opponents in real-time while bowling, which adds to the camaraderie and overall entertainment of the bowling game. Thousands of people are logged in at all hours of the day, so you will always find a group of people ready to throw 10 frames and challenge you for the top score. You can play with up to twenty players online from around the world, earn bonus points for completing objectives, and accumulate points which can be used for different cool prizes.

Parents should create the account for their children, making sure to enter their own personal info instead of the child. Depending on your jurisdiction Pogo asks that children under 12 don't sign up for an account unless a written letter of consent is sent by the parent, certain jurisdictions can be 14, or 18 years old.

Pogo has an excellent clean layout, league play is available, and best of all it's free! Besides free bowling, they have literally hundreds of other games including arcade games, card games, strategy games, free trivia and more.

Candystand (http://www.candystand.com)Ease of Use: 10
Design: 7
Game Play: 8
Competition: 6
Leagues: No- Multiplayer up to four bowlers at once
Minimum Age: No Signup Required

Wrigley's has a free online bowling game located at their candystand.com arcade. This free bowling game has less features then the Pogo bowling game, but the game play here is still quite addictive. I have spent quite some time playing the bowling at this site and have found a few downfalls when compared to Pogo. First, it's common to wait a few minutes at slow times of the day for enough players to fill up an open lane. Usually it doesn't take more time than that, but we all know, minutes waiting online are an eternity.

The design of this bowling game is lacking in terms of aesthetics, but it's still a really fun place to get your online bowling fix. The free games here include the usual games you find in online arcades such as pool, poker, golf, solitaire and more. No bowling leagues are available and no prizes or contest entries are given. Candystand is a step below Pogo but that don't mean you won't enjoy the play here. To obtain more strikes here you must work on your hook shot, as the straight balls just don't seem to have the same effect.

Zepak.com (http://www.zapak.com/ )

Ease of Use: 6
Design: 8
Game Play: 7
Competition: 5
Leagues: No - Multiplayer up to two people only
Minimum Age: No Signup Required

Zepak is another multiplayer arcade type website which features free online bowling. After spending an hour or so playing the bowling here I have found the bowling to be lacking in a few key areas. You're only allowed to bowl against one other person, and the games consist of five frames instead of the normal ten. The 5^th frame is scored like a normal tenth frame, meaning if you make the spare or strike you keep going. A key difference found on the Zepak bowling game is if you don't convert the spare on the second ball in the 5^th frame you go again anyway. This may not be a downfall to some, but it is to me.

You can play online bowling here with a guest account or you do have the option of registering. Before your bowling begins you enter a chat room where you sign-up for a lane. You can chat here with the other bowlers, getting bowling tips, asking for help, finding bowling buddies, and whatever else you would like to do.

The game control could be better as I prefer to use my mouse to create the speed and direction of the ball, which is how it works at both Pogo and Candystand. To bowl here you must set the ball in the position you would like it with the mouse, hit the space bar to choose direction, and hit the A button to determine how fast your ball travels down the lane. To me this is a less efficient and a much more difficult way to bowl online. These arcades should get you on your way to bowling your next 300 game in no time, even if it is just "virtual bowling."