0 to Z of Playstation 1 Games - Archer Mclean's 3D Pool

         

Archer Mclean's 3D Pool is a pool simulation game released for the Playstation, it was released late in the Playstation life cycle coming out exclusively in Europe on October the 17^th 2003. The game was developed and published by Ignition Entertainment, who also developed and published the 2004 Game Boy Advance port of the game. In addition to these early 2000s releases Archer Mclean's 3D Pool originated back in 1992 with its Amiga, Atari ST and DOS releases

No story to this game it is just a pool game so on to the gameplay, the game uses the same 3D game engine as the 1991 release Jimmy White's Whirlwind Snooker with its aim to recreate pool in the minutest of detail using realistic physics and countless permutations in shots when you add in shot direction, speed and spin.

The game offers the player three different types of pool the first is 8 ball both UK and US versions, in this mode the objective is to pot the seven balls of a certain colour before finishing on the eight ball which is usually the black ball, the first ball that a player pots is the colour they are assigned to potting the opposite colour will result in a foul.

The other type of pool on offer is 9 ball with the player needing to pocked the balls in number order from one to nine and like 8 ball finishing on the black to win the game. The game offers two main game modes the first is a single match mode against either another human player of against one of twenty AI controlled opponents. The second game mode available is a tournament mode with the player taking one of the eight places in the tournament.

This is a pool game so no story or story elements present

Very little to cover in this section, there are reviews out there for Archer Maclean's 3D Pool however they are for the 1992 version of the game on the Amiga, Atari ST and DOS, The game was critically well received for those systems.

This is normally the part where we would go to GameFAQs for their user rating however even GameFAQs are dry on date for this game with not a single user rating the overall quality of the game, the difficulty or the lifespan of the game.

This is the part of 0 to Z where is visit four 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, Ebay has now been dropped unless the game is unavailable at other retailers.

So lets get down to business with Gamedude who unsurprisingly don’t stock this European only release, likewise eStarland.com don’t stock this title either while Amazon.com only stock the 2004 Game Boy Advance version of the game.

Somewhat more surprising is Retrogames.co.uk who don’t stock this European only title or even the earlier Amiga or Atari ST versions. So we switch to the co.uk version of Amazon where we finally find some copies of the game.

Only a limited stock of the game is available at the time of writing this, but even with the small number of copies available prices are pretty reasonable, with a used good quality complete copy of the game available for £2.99. This copy is shipped by Amazon so the free shipping only applies to orders over £20 so will probably be slight more expensive if you are only buying this item and nothing else. A better quality used copy of the game can be picked up for just a little more a like new copy is currently on the market for £7.04 once shipping has been added in.

Prices for a used copy of the game are generally around this price point however there is the obligatory overpriced used copy available for £26.13, especially when the single new copy of the game that is available can be picked up for £24.

Written by

P J Gibbon