Real Pool Mac Review (1998)

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From the archive: this review first ran on the Mac Gaming Alliance (MGA), the Mac games site that lived here on DimensionZ in the late 1990s. It was published August 1998 and is reproduced as originally written, with the original screenshots (click to enlarge). More in the Mac Gaming Alliance archive.

Real Pool is one of MacSoft’s product that isn’t just aimed at the hard-core gamer. Real Pool contains all the elements that should make it a very fun game to play, but instead I found it average and at time mediocre. Real Pool does offer enjoyable variety and a lot of bang for your buck at it’s cheap suggested price tag of $29.99

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Gameplay

Real Pool offers you 6 different Pool games to test your skills at: 8-Ball, 9-Ball, Straight, Rotation, Carom (Spanish) Billiards, and Bumper Pool. When I sat down to play the only Pool Game I really knew how to play was 8-Ball, now I know how to play all 6 different games.

• 8-Ball: You must pocket all of your balls either solids or stripes. After you have pocketed all of your balls you must then pocket the 8-ball to win the game.
• 9-Ball: The cue ball must always strike the lowest-numbered ball on the table before striking any other balls, but you may use the lowest ball to pocket any other ball on the table. You win by pocketing the nine ball with a legal shot.
• Straight: Pocket Balls, one at a time, in any order to score points. The first player to reach 150 points wins.
• Rotation: Pocket Balls to score more points than your opponent. Each ball’s value in terms of points corresponds to it’s number. The first player to reach 61 points wins.
• Carom Billiards: Score points by striking both the red ball and the other player’s cue ball with your own cure ball. First player to 30 points wins.
• Bumper Pool: Pocket your 5 balls before your opponent pockets their’s.

Real Pool advertises “realistic physics”, I found the physics of the game to be on the most part realistic until it came to the actual sinking of the ball, I found that the pockets were rather “loose” in letting shots in, about half the shots sunk wouldn’t have gone in in real life.

Real Pool also supports the obligatory Multiplayer option, allowing people to play against each other on the same computer or over the internet. I tried the multiplayer option a few times but found that I preferred the variety of different computer opponents.

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Graphics and Sound

Real Pool does live up to it’s claim of 3D photo-realistic graphics. As you can see in the screen shots, in graphical terms this is the most realistic pool game I’ve ever seen. One word of warning, on slower Power Macs the graphics can really slow down the game requiring you to switch to the lower graphics setting which makes the balls look very blocky and pixilated.

I had some problem’s with the music in RP. At times the music became very annoying and often distracting, but turning off the music made the game seem sort of eerie and weird.

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Difficulty

Real Pool has great variety in it’s difficulty by allowing you to choose from many different opponents. Each opponent has different skills and favors different shots. No two opponents are alike. You have never truly mastered a game until you have played and beaten all of the opponents.

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Conclusion

In Conclusion, Real Pool is the best pool simulator available for the Macintosh, although that’s not saying much because it’s only competitors are MacPlay’s Virtual Pool and a few shareware games.

If want to play pool on your computer this game is for you because nothing else out there can match it in terms of variety and features.

Find a copy

Real Pool has been out of print for years, but used copies of the original Mac release still turn up, and some classics have been re-released for modern systems. Search for Real Pool on Amazon.

Ratings use the MGA’s original 1–5 apple scale. Prices, system requirements and web links in this review are from the time it was written.