Rapid fire reviews of a single game – brief and to the point (theoretically)
Developer: Steven Walters
Publisher: Zeppelin Games
Billiards. A game with endless appeal to a purveyor of precision sports such as myself. Skill and accuracy are the key to the game of hitting small balls with a stick into holes. Simple to understand, hard to master; a classic configuration.
In video game form it can sometimes be trivial to master – more often, though, deep frustration awaits. This delightfully chunky-looking Commodore 64 version is about as charming as a micro-computing billiards game can be while having the frustrations you’d likely expect.
The robust spriting combined with limited visual space inform the choice of pool formats – first up, a 7-ball iteration of American Pool where you must clear all of your colour of ball plus the black ball to succeed. Contrary to appearances, the pockets are pretty tight to an almost prohibitive degree – deadweight potting is regularly required, so perfect for a connoisseur of finesse but keen jaw-rattlers need not apply.
The second format is, contrary to the game’s title, English Billiards. A white, yellow and red ball are on the table (white being the first player’s cue ball, yellow being the second players). Points are scored by potting your own cue ball after contacting another object ball, potting another object ball, or hitting both object balls with your cue ball in the same shot (known as a Carom). It’s the billiards format Carom with the get out of jail free card of pockets; well, I say that, but actually the pockets mostly hinder your ability to successfully carom.
This is a fairly unique format to see represented in this kind of game, though, which is where the limitations Walters clearly had from the Commodore 64 hardware actually carved a niche for the title. 2 fairly esoteric formats by modern pool standards are represented here in a finely-presented yet mechanically boilerplate billiards sim. All in all, this is worth exploring for enthusiasts of non-standard pool formats or just to swear at with a beer and a friend.