171. Side Pocket (Data East, Famicom, 1987)

Side Pocket is a 1986 billiards arcade game that was ported to the Famicom by Namco the following year. You play as someone working their way up through various city, national, and world pool championships. The main story mode is all just you and the table, there are no opponents outside of the 2-player mode, so gameplay is about sinking the balls in as few shots as possible and sinking them in number order to get higher bonuses.

I initially found it very difficult to get the balls in number order, but I eventually figured out you can press B to have the balls change between color and number. Controlling your shot is pretty similar to most golf games: you select where you are hitting the ball as well as the angle of your host, then you press A to start the power meter and A again to stop it. The power meter is nice and slow, and the indicator is a spinning coin, which gives it a nice bit of pizzazz.

On top of the rules for standard billiards, Side Pocket also recognizes that it is a video game, and introduces some extra weird stuff to keep the game interesting. Balls can start to flash and become super balls, which have extreme momentum that throws the relatively realistic physics of the game out the window. Certain pockets will light up, giving you a bonus if you can make it. After each level there is a nice palate cleanser in the form of a bonus shot challenge wher eyou have one shot (one opportunity) to sink one or more balls.

There is a guide line that will show you where your ball is going (which helps), but it's hard to get the exact angle you want since the balls are actually 5x5 pixel representations of a ball.At the end of the day, I'm about as good at this as I am at real pool. Despite a host of modes, it's still a pretty dry game that requires close-to-mastery (or access to save states) to progress, but I had a good time playing through several levels with and without save states.

3/5, probably the most interesting billiards game I've played, though that's not saying a whole lot