3-D TableSports

When computers finally got fast enough to actually compute things decently, they started playing table games. 3-D TableSports from 1996 is exactly that — a digital version of ping-pong, billiards, air hockey, and the like, the kind of stuff that normally survives in a cottage room behind closed doors.

It's a simple sports collection in pseudo-three-dimensional execution. The graphics look like a plastic model to today's eye, but in the nineties, this way of wrapping up 3D without Quake was pretty standard. It's more of a pleasant little exercise — short matches of individual games with no ambition whatsoever for deep entertainment.

The mechanics are expectedly straightforward. You move the cursor, adjust the angle and force of your shot, the computer handles the physics convincingly for a moment, then it's a matter of whether the ball ends up where you want it. There's no drama here — simple keyboard or mouse controls, no getting up from your chair. The game is almost impossible to get lost in, but there's almost nothing to play in it either. After two matches you know what to expect, and if that's not enough for you, tough luck.

TableSports belonged more in the "something for a while" category — an evening with friends when you want something brainless. Their time is long gone. Today you've got something better on every phone, and the screen resolution your computer remembers without breaking a sweat. The graphics age particularly poorly — pixelated 3D without textures looks like a broken exhibit these days.

The fact that someone even fires it up is a surprise. There are emulators for old DOS games on the web, and TableSports sometimes wander around there. If you want to go back to the time when such things meant something like modern entertainment, you can find it there. Otherwise it only makes sense as an archive curiosity — proof that developers in the nineties dared to port pretty much anything to a computer.