Publisher: FCI
Year: 1987
Genre: Sports
You’ve probably never had to program a physics engine from scratch. I mean, anyone can program a simple physics engine these days in Python, Java, or whatever, but there was a time when all that sort of programming was groundbreaking.
Pool is a game where you use a stick to hit a white ball and knock different colored balls down holes. In traditional pool, you usually knock down either all the striped or all the solid colored balls, then the black ball last. This isn’t regular pool. In Lunar Pool, you just knock all the balls down the holes and try not to knock the white ball down.
Gameplay is fairly simple: you use the direction pad to aim your shot, wait for the appropriate level of power, then hit the button to take the shot. Boom. Simple. From there, the ball skitters around the table and, depending on factors such as angle and speed, ricochets occur. If you planned properly, the balls fall into the pockets.
I’m not going to try to tell you this game is phenomenal. These days, a half-decent rookie programmer could probably create the same game with PyGame and an hour or two to kill. But it’s interesting, at least as a study in what programmers were able to accomplish with finicky code and very few resources to assist them.
John’s Rating: 2.0 out of 5.0. I wouldn’t waste a great deal of time on this game, personally. I can see how some might enjoy the challenge of figuring out the perfect shot order to perfectly finish every level, but beyond novelty value, the game really doesn’t hold my attention.
