Another Pool

Another Pool is a DOS billiards game from 1995, one of those unassuming freely distributed programs that circulated on BBSes and shareware disks. There is no intro, no menu stuffed with modes, no licensed players and no career. There is a table, the balls and a mouse, and the whole weight of the thing rests on how those are handled.

The controls hold it together. The mouse sets three things: the direction of the shot, the point where the cue meets the white ball, and the strength of the stroke. That sounds obvious, but the contact point matters more here than in many flashier pool games. It is how you put spin on the ball, how you make the white draw back, follow through or slide off to one side after the collision. Ignore that layer, aim and hammer, and you will find yourself badly placed after every single shot and conclude the game is random.

What the author left out is just as telling. There are no guide lines showing where a ball will travel after a cushion, so you judge the angles yourself, which is a more honest arrangement than most commercial pool games of the period offered. Sound is essentially absent and you notice it, because a shot without the click of colliding balls feels oddly hollow. In exchange you get an undo function and running success statistics for both players, which suits practice better than invented tournaments would.

It is built for one or two players at a single machine and works best with two. As a simulation it is modest: the physics are decent rather than perfect, and the overhead view is purely functional. Even so it pulls you back more easily than glossier rivals, because nothing at all stands between you and the next shot.

On oldgame.cz it runs directly in the browser, with nothing to download or install.