[musical riff]
Snooker. It's one of the few sports I actually enjoy watching. People running about punting
a slab of leather can be entertaining sometimes, as can a couple of people smashing a yellow
piece of rubber at each other. But with snooker, you get loads of balls... and if you ask me,
the more balls the better... no, not like that.
Seriously though, it's a gripping game. You can watch snooker without particularly caring
who wins, and that's part of the beauty of it. It's just enjoyable to see both the sheer
skill on offer and the strategy involved. A bit like a more exciting, and uncertain
version of chess, with massive sticks to smash the pieces about. You wouldn't think it on
first inspection, but seeing a 5 ball plant almost pay off, or the black reverberating
in the jaws of a pocket is pretty tense stuff. Combine that with the courteous nature of
the game, and the often humble characters, and you get an enjoyable viewing experience.
Plus they drink beer during matches. Well, they don't anymore, but they did once. BEER.
BEEEER.
Not everyone will get this, of course. In North America for example, pool might be universally
known, but snooker is almost unheard of. In fact, American Snooker, is actually a different
game to the international version, we know and love, operating on simplified rules and
very much an obscurity today. Which is strange, because they have more space than us for the
whopping great tables required.
Thankfully however, space isn't a problem when you have a home computer, and that's
what I'm going to explore today. Snooker games, starting from the beginning;
This is Snooker on the Commodore 64, released by Visions Software Factory and developed
by Tim Bell. Now, this is about as simple as you can get for a snooker game. Not only
that, but terrible ball physics and abysmal collision detection make this a pretty upsetting
affair. It might have pleased the die hard 10 year old, but more demanding fans would
have to wait, or alternatively jump ship to the Spectrum.
Steve Davis Snooker emerged later the same year, 1984 being the year which Steve Davis
actually won the World Championship, beating Jimmy White by 18 frames to 16. Now THIS is
a much more playable game. It has some irritating quirks, like the atrocious ramping sound when
moving the cursor, but that aside, balls go roughly where you expect them to and everything
plays out in a satisfying fashion. You even get treated to speech if you have a Currah
Microspeech unit.
In 1987, Codemasters would add Professional Snooker to their Simulation line of titles,
and again, it's a pretty decent affair. Decent graphics, easy to play, but still the familiar
top down perspective. That would all change though...
... with 3D Snooker released in 1990. Now, here was a perspective much more like we were
used to seeing on the TV, which just made the whole experience that bit more thrilling,
and of course, realistic. Well, I say realistic. There are actually fewer red balls on the
table than there is supposed to be, and the 3D mechanic isn't quite there yet, but it
was a big step in the right direction.
This was around the same time Steve Davis World Snooker was making it's way onto 16
bit machines, and the addition of a mouse, higher resolution and increased palette of
colours meant a very playable and well tuned game of snooker. I honestly played this one
for hours, and didn't feel hampered or even put out by the top down perspective. But I
knew there could be more.
It would be Championship 3D Snooker which would get the formula almost perfect, back
on the 8 bits. Developer by Stephen Walters, this is probably the best these machines mustered.
Again there are only 6 red balls, as opposed to 15 in the real game, but we're working
with chunky pixels here and a limited resolution. The end result is a pretty playable game,
although arguably more suited for pool than a real game of Snooker.
It would be Jimmy White's Whirlwind Snooker that would really perfect the formula. Like
our previous games, this was released for a variety of platforms, including Sega's Mega
Drive, but I found it most at home on the Amiga, with the joy of mouse control. Using
keys seems almost archaic once you have a mouse, and combined with the fine tuning of
shots on offer here, it wasn't hard to pull of some truly satisfying shots. I mean, this
actually felt like you were playing snooker, just without having to top up the light metre
at your local snooker club.
It seems strange then that we would go back to the previous top down perspective with
Arcade Snooker in 1995. This was a Team 17 release for the Amiga which tried to follow
in their footsteps of their highly playable Arcade Pool release. However, this one falls
a little short, and doesn't quite translate to snooker as well as it did to pool. Honestly,
this felt like a backward step after playing Jimmy White's.
And so then, we jump straight into Virtual Snooker, released for MS-DOS and Windows during
the summer of 1996. This was the first snooker game I experienced on the PC and personally
I really enjoyed it. Being able to move freely around the table meant it felt even more realistic
than Jimmy White's Whirlwind Snooker, but it was slightly hampered by more clunky gameplay.
Handling of shots isn't too bad, but the game becomes boring far quicker than you'd expect,
and I think that's down to the lack of satisfaction you feel from each shot.
It was therefore most excellent to receive Jimmy White's 2: Cueball in 1998. This is
the dreamcast version, and it manages to pack all the elements which made the original fun,
along with new camera anglels and realistic coughing noises in the background. What more
could you ask for??.... Apart from a fruit machine, juke box and playable version of
Drop Zone! Wow. Whilst we're here and going slightly astray...funny story, I actually
accidentally squared up to Jimmy White. He came to play in Norwich Snooker club. I went
along, got pretty hammered, and stumbled into him as he was leaving the table. A slight
awkwardness ensued which felt quite tense, and we parted ways. CRAZY TIMES.
Probably around the same time that happened, World Championship Snooker would arrive for
the Playstation. Offering, what felt like a more TV like level of realism, and a pretty
playable game, jagged edges included. We even had a referee to keep score.... AND no less
than Dennis Taylor to offer the odd tit-bit of commentary. Nothing really insightful,
but combined with crowd applause it added to the atmosphere.
Further versions appeared on subsequent consoles, each adding more graphical realism, along
with slightly more appropriate commentary. Other games came and went, but really we can
follow this line up....... until we get WSC Real 11: World Snooker Championship, which
although receiving mixed reviews, for me, really improved the atmosphere provided and
left you with an experience equivalent to what we experienced with Whirlwind Snooker
in the 90s.
International Snooker, from 2013 and released for Windows was sold as "Quite possibly the
most realistic Snooker game to come to any gaming platform", and although it looks ok,
I'm still a bit upset about their version of the classic BBC Snooker Music. It has been
updated several times since its release, and is now known simply as International Snooker.
One nice feature is the ability for online multiplayer. There's something quite uplifting
about being able to play snooker against someone else, anywhere in the world.
Now, you'd think that with the rise of VR, we'd have a decent VR implementation of Snooker
by now, but all we really have is a clip of Ronnie O'Sullivan falling over whilst trying
to play Pool Nation VR. That's alright if you like pool, but this video is about snooker,
so let's move on.
So, what do we have today? Well, Snooker 19 has recently been released, and on the face
of it, looks pretty nice. The question is, how does it play? Well, as I was finishing
up this script I noticed that Kim Justice had just released a video about that very
thing, so I suggest you pop over there for a more detailed overview. As for me, I'm still
gonna hold out for VR Snooker before I commit £30 to the cause.
Thanks for watching, have a great evening.