Original Release: Titus, 2001, Game Boy Color
An interesting sprite-scaling “psuedo-3D” take on the game that pushes the GBC, and actually turns out to be kinda decent
3D Pocket Pool (GBC, Titus, 2001)
Where to Buy: eBay
How to Emulate: coming soon!
Review by: C. M0use
Around the year 2000 there was an odd trend of developers trying to push the Game Boy Color to its absolute technical maximum right before it was supplanted by the GBA, like the ports of Dragon’s Lair and Alone In The Dark. 3D Pocket Pool is in that general milieu, AFAIK the only attempt at doing psuedo-3D billiards on one of these humble first-wave handheld systems.
3D Pocket Pool only came out in Europe, but a pretty-much-complete beta of a planned US version was leaked several years ago. That one was slated to be released under the more auspicious title of 3D Allstars Pool, due to the apparently unique American idiom shared with the original name. The development story is actually kinda interesting, the creator of Sharkey’s 3D Pool (the first quasi-3D sprite scaling billiards game for computers) first pitched the concept to Nintendo as a Wario pool game, but they passed. He was working for Virgin Interactive at the time, which was a subsidiary of Titus then, and they eventually decided to greenlight the concept as an independent title.
Funny enough, the end result is a roster of oddball mutant/weirdo characters and a vibe that really wouldn’t have had a hard time fitting into the surreal Warioverse later established by the Wario Ware series in 2003. To compare to something that came before it, it’s very reminiscent of Shufflepuck Cafe in that way. As far as the billiards options go, you can play a one-off practice match or a full tournament in one of four different rule sets, ranging from the UK style where each player gets a single color ball without numbers to the US nine-ball styles that have you pot shots in numerical order.
The game has a cool aesthetic style, with character portrait responses at the top of the screen and kind of a neat use of the limited Game Boy sound chip to do some breakbeat background music (though it’s a tad staticy and rough, not sure how much of that is emulation issues). It also has a nice ball tracker, though it doesn’t show beyond the trajectory of the first ball you hit. But the pockets are also quite generous, so all-in-all it’s a game on the easier side.
The sprite scaling also comes off pretty well, though I think the easy difficulty really helps to smooth the limitations over. The only real issues are that there’s a little flickering when you rotate the camera (not sure how much of this is an emulation issue) and the CPU can take a long time picking its shot at times.
3D Pocket Pool really illustrates how much pool/billiards games improve just with a jump to quasi-3D. In 2D pretty much the best prior option you’ve got is the Side Pocket series which is much more limited and can be absolutely maddening in terms of imprecision. It doesn’t stand up to later pool titles on better hardware, but it’s a nice showpiece for the GBC that offers some fun.
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