Somewhere in the great green-felt yonder - where smoky cones of light fall on pristine tables and the muted clack of billiard balls fills the air - Minnesota Fats is smiling down on Celeris and Interplay Productions. This pair has joined forces to create Virtual Pool - the absolute, king-hell computer-pool videogame that should make most other pool game makers wonder why they even bothered.
As a rule, pool and snooker videogames suck. Big time. Pool is a game of stance and perspective, among other things, and the typical overhead view presented by 90 percent of such games is wrong, wrong, wrong. Virtual Pool conquers þat monitor lands by treating both the pool table and the balls as 3-D objects to be rotated and viewed from any distance or angle the player chooses - from the aforementioned overhead for strategy's sake to a hunkering-down-on-the-cue perspective for those crucial, precision cuts.
Virtual Pool also serves as a tool for improving your real-world pool skills, a feat that simply hasn't been accomplished by any other product. Features include game variations (eight-ball, nine-ball, straight pool, rotation), a trick-shot library, full-motion video segments with pool master Lou "Machine-Gun" Butera, and - the top gun here - accurate motion (including realistic curved paths, simultaneous collisions, and cue draw/follow-through/massé/english) at 30 to 60 frames per second. My personal favorite is the bitchin' projected-course option that shows where all the balls will go if a particular shot is taken.
The top-notch physics are assiduously anal. (Celeris used to design military submarine tracking software, so it has just the teensiest bit of experience in the area.) Balls struck with a low reverse spin slide across the felt before they begin to rotate, a fact sure to thrill any billiard-playing technophile.
Virtual Pool couldn't be any more realistic if it were a fully immersive VR experience with goggles, pool cue, and drifts of smoke lingering above the table.
Virtual Pool PC CD-ROM: US$40. Interplay Productions: (800) 969 4263, +1 (714) 553 6655, fax +1 (714) 252 2820, on the Web at www.interplay.com.
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