Original Release: D3 Publisher, 2000, PlayStation
A very basic and budget billiards sim that plays a rather off-the-wall game, surprisingly nice music though
Billiards (PS1, D3 Publisher, 2000)
Where to Buy: eBay
How to Emulate: coming soon!
Review by: C. M0use
D3’s “Simple” series of budget games is best known for oddball stuff like the Oneechan bikini zombie slayer games and whatnot on the PS2, but the series actually started out as suitably simple reproductions of common offline sports and recreation games on the PS1. Kinda reminded me of the Atari 2600 approach to games like this, just in the first round of the 3D polygonal era instead of the first round of all consoles.
One such of these titles, Billiards gives you six game modes, no story or tournament type action, and one dim and dank basement to play in. You just pick your mode, pick an opponent (each gets a Street Fighter style entry and exit screen) and play for fun basically. There are a few extra characters to unlock, but I couldn’t dig up exactly how.
It does basically serve its purpose of being a simple and competent billiards sim, though. It looks spartan but alright, there are three surprisingly good pieces of BGM to choose from (D3 games do like to surprise you with some good jazzy soundtracks sometimes), and the physics feel good if not being the most robust pool sim around (you can choose where to hit the ball but there seems to be little in the way of ability to do trick shots, and the game doesn’t offer any kind of advanced tutorials).
Also, if you want quality AI competition I guess you have to figure out how to unlock the hidden characters? All of the four starting opponents play very strangely, seemingly randomly alternating between making terrible attempts then going on runs of sinking balls with tough ricochet shots. Maybe it’s some kind of flawed attempt to adapt to the player’s skill level, maybe I’m just getting Husteru’d. I dunno.
It’s certainly not bad, but there are so many other pool/billiards games that managed to do this much and also offer more. In fact, developer Argent took this basic engine and did it themselves … if you feel like the basement setting with its weird quasi-African art looks familiar, that might be because you’ve seen it before in Backstreet Billiards, which added a story mode and more stuff to do.
Links
According to The Cutting Room Floor, this is actually a stripped-down version of Backstreet Billiards released afterwards to double-dip … they also have the game’s soundtrack at that link
Videos