Minnesota Fats: Pool Legend

Minnesota Fats: Pool Legend was released by Data East in 1995 for the Sega Mega Drive, and it is the last serious pool game the console got. The name belongs to a real American player who borrowed the Minnesota Fats nickname from a film and built a career on it. In Japan the same game shipped as the second Side Pocket, which describes the contents more honestly: this is a continuation of Data East's billiards line rather than a new brand.

What you get is a straight pool simulation driven by a gamepad. First you rotate the aiming line, then you pick the contact point on the cue ball to choose between draw, follow and side spin, and finally you stop a moving power gauge. Three simple steps, but the last one decides everything, because the game models cushions faithfully enough that two-rail shots actually come off if you plan them.

There are more modes here than most console pool games bother with. The tournament lets you select the ruleset, covering eight-ball, nine-ball, rotation, one pocket and classic 14.1 continuous. Alongside it sits a story campaign in which you work through a field of opponents while Fats himself comments between matches and finally shows up as the last challenger, plus training, two-player matches, and a set of trick layouts that are closer to puzzles than to pool.

The weakness is pace. Aiming is slow, the ball animation is slower still, and in the story mode a good opponent will occasionally clear the table without giving you a second turn, so a frame can be frustrating through no fault of your own. The sound is thin and the surroundings barely change from match to match.

If you like pool, though, this is the best the Mega Drive can offer: the physics hold up, the rulesets are generous, and passing one pad back and forth still works. On oldgame.cz it starts directly in your browser with nothing to install.