1994Pool+

1994Pool+ is a DOS billiards game released in 1994 by Ninano Software. At first glance it looks like an ordinary top down pool game: a table, the balls, an aiming line. A few shots in, though, you realise the authors treated the rules of pool as a starting point and adapted the rest to suit themselves.

The most useful part is the row of buttons above the table. You choose from eighteen shot settings: eight positions for side spin, follow and draw plus one for the centre of the cue ball, and nine ways of setting the direction and target point. It sounds needlessly fiddly and at first it is, but this is where the only real depth of the game comes from. Once you understand what bottom and side spin do, the cue ball starts finishing where you actually want it.

The other oddity is the hazards. Things that have nothing to do with billiards move across the table, among them a spinning fireball, a helicopter, a UFO, a bomb and a dragon, and touching them destroys your cue ball. The tables underline the tone: the unregistered version gives you two, while the full one offers five differently shaped tables including a triangle and two kinds of hexagon.

As a simulation of pool it does not hold up. The physics are coarse and cushions bounce more predictably than they should. As a joke played on a stately table game it works surprisingly well, because it forces you to play safe in situations where ordinary pool would let you shoot on autopilot.

On oldgame.cz you can start 1994Pool+ directly in the browser, with nothing to install.