Pool Game Extravaganza!

Entry posted by DoctorSpuds June 29, 2019

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I have too many pool games, and by that I mean I have more than one. Surprisingly, or not if you’ve seen my collection gallery, all but one of my pool games are for PC which will give us a very wide range of graphics sounds and gameplay. I will be covering four and a half games in this review so I’m going to try and limit myself to just one paragraph per game, though depending on the game things might be longer. The games in order of viewing are Trick Shot by Imagic, Sharkey’s 3D Pool by Microplay Software, Championship Pool from Wizardworks, Virtual Pool by Interplay, and Brunswick Billiards ProPool3D by Head Games. Oh boy, here we go.

Trick Shot (Imagic)

I find trick shot to be almost false advertising. You look at the box see classic 13 ball pool and immediately think that’s what you’re going to get, but it most certainly is not. Trick Shot is a puzzle game plain and simple. All you do is hit the cue ball in such a way that it hits all the balls on the table into the pockets, there is no classic pool gameplay to be seen. That being said the graphics are quite good, especially for such an early Atari game, the table is detailed albeit the massive pockets. Sounds are almost nonexistent with a small selection of dings and clanks to indicate balls going in pockets, and that’s about it. Honestly I can’t really recommend Trick Shot, unless you like puzzle games with Atari physics which I would guess is a few of you.

Sharkey’s 3D Pool (Microplay)

This is quite a step up from Trick Shot, of course we’re jumping from the 2600 to IBM PC Compatibles so there’s definitely going to be a jump in quality also a jump from 2D to 3D. The 3D is fairly shallow and only really serves as a marketing blurb since there isn’t much to this game at all. You have several options on startup: Tournament (pretty self explanatory), Competition (also self explanatory), and Trick Shot (Hmmm, you get the gist), you can also select 8-ball or 9-ball variations of the Tournament and Competition modes. Sadly the game isn’t all too much fun to play as the extreme sensitivity of the aiming makes shooting with any accuracy a near impossibility. You’re also saddled up with some AI that serves as Player 2, and oddly enough I think it’s too smart. The lowest setting AI can sink geometrically impossible shots while I’m struggling to hit the ball half the time. The UI is also very clunky and not very user friendly. If you want to apply English on the ball you have to place a cursor on a tiny icon at the top of the screen, same goes for calling your pocket the cursor you use is as big as the tiny table icon you’re supposed to select to pocket on. This just isn’t the sort of game you play for fun since it just isn’t.

Championship Pool (Wizardworks)

If you want to know about my difficulties in getting this game to run I’d recommend you take a look at my previous blog post HERE. You might think that just from looks alone this is a bit of a step down from Sharkey’s, but you’d be quite wrong about that. The game plays in a window which is alright, the game was programmed for Windows 3.1 it might as well. The game is in a fixed top down view which, again, is alright as long as the game plays well since graphics aren’t everything. Thankfully the game has mouse support so you’re going to be able to have fluid control over the positioning of your ball which is far better than what you’re given with Sharkey’s. You also have more game modes on display which is always welcome; there is Straight Pool, 8-Ball, 9-Ball, Billiards, and Snooker. Sadly the documentation on how to play any of these games is rather limited, apart from Snooker which has six pages, 23 paragraphs, and more words than I’d care to count dedicated to it, the manual is only 12 pages. The sounds are just digitized audio so no complaints here, same went for Sharkey’s I just forgot to mention it. Yeah, the game is fairly fun in short bursts, and since it strikes me as the sort of thing you have installed on your office computer I think that was the overall point.

Virtual Pool (Interplay)

This is most definitely the big motherfucker of DOS Pool games, Interplay rose from the depth like a godlike behemoth to release this gem to us consumer mortals. The tagline for this game is “The Ultimate 3D Pool Simulator” and they aren’t lying this is one of the best pool games I’ve ever played and blows every game I’ve just looked at out of the water. The game is rendered in 3D, which is a step up from Sharkey’s, and it makes you really feel like you’re playing on a real table. Unfortunately I am unable to configure the game correctly which means it’s set at the lowest resolution and the included videos will not run on my 3.1 setup, but that doesn’t really affect my enjoyment of the game. Everything you’d expect of a pool game is here, 8-ball, 9-ball, Straight Pool, and Rotation, not Billiards or Snooker but I’m not going to lose any sleep over those. The ball physics are perfect and you use the mouse to apply English and hit the ball fairly easily, though I have run into a bug where if you reel the stick too far back it will break the DPI settings and the cursor will become stuck, but that’s rare and only happens if you have a mouse with adjustable DPI. You have a selection of mathematically minded computer opponents who are always better than you of course but the competition is still fun. A warning though if you intend to play this game just to hit the pretty balls around the screen then you’re gonna be hit in the face by rules. Yes this game adheres to all the professional rules of Pool so if you’re going to mindlessly hit them balls around you’d better get into practice mode before you make a fool out of yourself. There are a variety of feature I haven’t even begun to explore yet so I don’t even know what I’m missing out on, but needless to say this is the best Pool game out of the lot so far!

Brunswick Billiards ProPool3D (Head Games)

I’m afraid I’m going to have to cheat on this one since it will only run on Windows 95 and my attempts to install it in DOSBox have been quite unsuccessful so far. Because I can’t run the game I can’t give it a review, but somebody else can. While trawling for info about this game I came across a review for it on old-games.com. Here’s a link to the page, I will also include a transcript in a spoiler window beneath this paragraph. Just to clarify: I did not write this, in fact I do not know who actually did write this, the review is not credited and I wouldn’t doubt if it came from somewhere else entirely.

Spoiler

ProPool 3D is the epitome of what a pool game should not be. Let me repeat that: should NOT be. The game is horrible in nearly all aspects.

For starters, there are no instructions other than a four-page booklet for installation purposes. A few online instructions exist but are not helpful. It's as if HeadGames Publishing does not want you to know how to play their game. Apparently, they feel people should be confused while playing and, if that was the intention, they succeeded admirably.

Once past the lack of instructions, we move on to the actual game itself. Now, had ProPool 3D not been too terribly difficult to figure out, HeadGames could be forgiven and congratulated for making a decent game. Unfortunately, this is not the case. ProPool 3D is nearly impossible to decipher. Buttons do not perform the actions expected, the view does not change when it should, the cursor disappears from the screen after pulling the cue back and so forth. Nothing works as it should in ProPool 3D.

In terms of graphics, ProPool 3D could be worse. The table looks nice but that's about it. Nearly every shot is marred by extraneous pop-in graphics, an aspect that is pathetic for a game made in 1999. Something seems to always get in the way of your view; either the table's lamp, a corner of the table or something else. It is simply incredible how terrible the views are.

Taking a shot is a chore in and of itself. Pulling back the cue and keeping accurate aim on the cue ball is the most difficult aspect of the game. The slightest move throws the equilibrium out of balance and sends the view flying. Furthermore, you really don't have much control over how hard your cue stick hits the cue ball.

The one aspect I like about ProPool 3D is the option to set how you want to play. You can change the display and emulation modes depending on whether your computer is faster than 166 MHz or not. This allows players with lower-end computers to play on a smaller screen. Unfortunately for HeadGames, however, I can't see anyone giving this game enough of a chance to really care about the different modes -- so the importance of the option becomes slim to none.

Graphics: Not terrible until you take into account the intrusive pop-in graphics factor.

Sound: The sound effects are fairly well done as is the instrumental rock music.

Enjoyment: The control is so horrible and gameplay so weak that enjoyment really doesn't factor in.

Replay Value: Too many problems to even consider replaying.

Welp, that’s all five of the Pool games I currently own and of those five I’d only recommend you get Virtual Pool on account of it actually being a really fun pool game that works most of the time. If you’d like to buy any of these games the prices on Ebay are as follows:

Trick Shot:

· 5-13$ Loose

· 11.44-30.52$ CIB

Sharkey’s 3D Pool:

· NA Loose

· 71.65$ CIB 5 1\4 ver (This is a particularly rare game I paid 20$ for the 3 1\2 version)

Championship Pool:

· NA

· NA (This seems to be a particularly rare game too, I paid 20$)

Virtual Pool:

· 4.49-9.99 Loose Disc

· 21.27-26.77 CIB

Brunswick Billiards ProPool3D:

· 5$ Loose

· NA CIB (I paid 4$)

1 Comment

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carlsson 26,545

Posted June 30, 2019

Oh, a game I kind of can relate to! I picked up Virtual Pool Hall (including Virtual Pool 2) by Interplay on budget release some 10++ years ago, something like $2-3 in the store (*). I played it a few times and had some fun, then put it back in the drawer and mostly forgot about it.

(*) Bought together with CD-ROM re-releases of Sim City and Sim Life at the same price, though I found both of those unplayable on my then AMD Athlon XP 2000+, as those games once were programmed for 386/486 era systems.