#virtual pool

NA release: 17th December 1998

PAL release: 26th February 1999

JP release: N/A

Developer: Celeris

Publisher: crave

N64 Magazine Score: 77%

Virtual Pool 64 doesn’t have a fancy title because is isn’t anything fancy. Instead, it focuses on recreating the game of pool as well as popular. No story mode, no unlockable, no flair – it just sets out on providing you with a fancy pool table, and it’s something the game does really well.

From the “help” available in the menu, I also got the impression that the game was designed to be put in places where people who have never played a game might play it, as it goes as far as explain how a menu works, saying things like “Pressing B will generally go back to a previous menu”.

Graphically, this does a wonderful job at recreating the game, particularly with how perfect the balls look. The table itself is also nicely detailed and the only part that makes it obvious that it’s an N64 game is the room background. The balls react in a very realistic way, so I’m as awful at this as I am with actual pool.

The one oversight for me is that the main pool I’m used to – with red and yellow balls – is not an available game mode, only the “fancier” stripes and dots that I was never a fan of using in real life. It does contain a ton of different rulesets to choose from, though, and you can paly against a friend or a ton of opponents with pun names of varying difficulties.

There’s also the “free style” which lets you set things out how you want – if I really wanted to, I could have had the red/yellow type of pool. This mode also lets you load a ton of tricks shots for you to try and perform.

The controls are quite intuitive, too, using the analogue stick to move the cue. A couple of times I managed to miss the white ball, but perhaps that was due to my accuracy of movement than the game itself.

This is a great playset for people who want digital pool, and it doesn’t try to be anything more.

Virtual Pool’s trump card is its ball physics, which would put Newton to shame. Every roll, bounce, click and rebound feels exactly right, and you never get the impression that a missed shot was the fault of anything other than your own misjudgement.

- Mark Green, N64 Issue #26

Remake or Remaster?

Virtual Pool 4 is the latest game in the series and does all this and more – including “Pub 8-Ball”, which is the variant I know the most (although it seemingly has dreadful DRM).

Official ways to get the game.