0 to Z of Playstation 1 Games - American Pool

         

American Pool know as Billiard King in Japan is a budget pool based sport simulation developed by Mud Duck Productions, the game was published by ZeniMax in North America, while Digicube published the game in Japan, Midas Interactive Entertainment handled the European release of the game.

The game first released in Japan on the 31^st of January 2002, with the European and North American games having to wait over a year for the release first coming out in North America in the June of 2003, and two months late in August in Europe.

Players have the choice of three games modes the first is a training mode where the player learns the basics, with the player being presented with 18 stages where they are shown a shot, technique or task by the computer which they must complete the majority are trick shot based.

The second mode is Pocket Game which is basically the exhibition mode with the player able to choose from various game modes including 8-Ball, 9-Ball, Rotation and 14-1 Ball. The player is also able to set the number of frames for the match as well as the difficulty if playing against the AI.

The Pool Contest is the main mode in the game and is a tournament of 31 other players, with each of the players put into a draw and a total of five rounds, win all five and you win the tournament. During the course of the tournament the player will gain experience and level up.

As the player levels up they gain additional skills such as seeing the line the shot will take as well as more cueing accuracy, sadly the tournament mode can only be played using the 9-Ball rule set.

Budget pool based sports game no story or story mode present

This late release in the Playstation 1s life cycle and the fact it was a budget title mean reviews are impossible to find, so we head to GameFAQs for their user data. Where we find the game currently sitting on an average user rating of 3.00/5 from a total of 10 user ratings.

Taking a close look at the user ratings breakdown we find a large spread of user ratings with the high of a 5/5 from one user, with an additional user rating the game a 4/5. A couple of users rated the game a pretty good 3.5/5 with another user scoring the game a 3/5.

The most users gave the game an as average as you can get 2.5/5, while one user could only give the game a 2/5, the final user and really the only truly bad rating for the game gave it a 1.5/5. Moving on to the games difficulty next.

With just 5 users rating the games difficulty with a 60/40 split in favour of easy to just right, with the average difficulty of the game easy/just right. The games lifespan is up next with again just 5 users rating this category, with their ratings spread between 4 hours, 8 hours and 12 hours. The majority spending 12 hours with the game, with one user each spending 4 or 8 hours with the game, averaging out at a 9.6 hours lifespan.

This is the part of 0 to Z where is visit five online retailers and see what the availability of the title is, and what price you would be looking at if you wanted to pick this title up, the sites that I will be using for this are Amazon.com,  eStarland.com, retrogames.co.uk and Gamedude.com I know the last one is very location specific, but from a podcast I listen to I’ve heard they have a huge stock of older games, I will also be including Ebay.com as well

So lets get down to business with Gamedude, if you are looking to trade in your copy of American Pool then Gamedude will pay you $3, if on the other hand you are in the market for a copy of the game it will set you back $8.

Moving on to Retrogames.co.uk who have a copy of the game available, this is a used copy in excellent condition they have rated the game disc as a 9.5/10, and this copy is priced up at just £3. eStarland.com also have a copy of the game available, it is a used complete copy of the game and can be picked up for $4.75, they also offer a trade in with eStarland playing up to $1.25 for a copy.

Amazon.com has a decent supply of the game available and pretty cheaply priced as well with a very good condition complete used copy available for $0.99 + $3.99 for shipping so a total of $4.98. A like new copy can also be picked up for around the $10 mark.

A few new copies of the game are available as well with the cheapest being available for a few cents over $9, a similarly priced fulfilled by Amazon copy is for sale however the free shipping for that item is pointless unless you are spending over $25, a few more are decently priced with the remainder on the expensive side, with prices reaching a high of just short of $40 for a new copy.

Heading to Ebay.com and once again setting out shipping location to the UK where a PAL complete copy of the game in very good condition can be picked up for $4.96 which converts to £3.84 in the UK, this copy also comes with free shipping as do several other copies on sale with prices not going beyond $6.

Switching to a US shipping code we like the UK shipping code find plenty of cheaply priced copies available and again a fair few coming with free shipping, the majority however are disc only copies of the game. If you are looking for a complete copy you will have to pay slightly more with the price for a complete copy sitting at around $14 once the shipping has been added in.

Written by

P J Gibbon