Pocket Billiards: Funk the 9 Ball (Game Boy Color)

 The first thing that needs to be addressed in this review is the game's title: yes, it will make your dad laugh if he asks what you're playing and you answer "Pocket Billiards". Don't worry about it. The other thing is that GameFAQs lists this as being published by Tamsoft, which struck me as odd, since they're more of a developer, and the only games I know of that they published were also developed by them. My suspicions were correct, and this game was published by a completely unrelated company called TAM, Inc., and the people maintaining GameFAQs are incompetent buffoons.

 

Anyway, this is a billiards/snooker game, but not only should you cast out of your mind the image of boring men wearing tuxedos and chainsmoking, but it's been specifically designed with the intention of casting those men out of your mind! Instead of a traditional look, Funk the 9 Ball instead takes its aesthetic cues from vaguely contemporaneous rhythm games, like Parappa the Rapper, Beatmania, and so on. The devs must have had their fingers on the pulse, too, as the first game I was going to mention in that list was SNK's Cool Cool Toon, which didn't come out until six months later! But anyway, there's lots of cute/weird characters, the place in which you play isn't a smoky bar but some kind of brightly-coloured night club with a DJ, and not only can you collect cans of paint to recolour the club and the table, but you can collect Minidiscs to give the DJ more BGM selections to pick from!

 

The game itself, as far as I can tell (as someone who has never played snooker), is mostly a fairly normal game of nine ball, and controls in a fairly traditional manner, in which you aim the cue ball, and then use a timed power meter to shoot. I say "mostly", because while it uses the rules of that game, it's also in the now pretty much dead genre of silly sports games. While playing, various creatures will use their magic powers to effect the course of the game in various way. Some of the creatures live in the pockets, and their powers activate when a ball goes into the pocket they call home. Other creatures are put inside the balls somehow by the players pre-match, and their powers activate when you hit their ball after holding the button down for a few seconds.

 

The creatures in the pockets will have powers that equally help or hinder both players, like destroying one of the lower-numbered balls, or making all the balls invisible. The ones in the balls, obviously, use their powers to specifically help the player to whom they belong (because there is also a vague aspect of monster collection in here too!), and they do stuff like give you the ability to re-take a foul shot, make a ball jump into the nearest pocket, and that kind of thing. They also all cause a little animation to play when they're activated, and not only are these animations all weird, but the way they come into play is amusingly over-dramatic: just before the cueball hits its target, time will stop, and the screen will cut to a strange cutscene of like, a chorus of angels in heaven, or a little guy drinking tea, or something. I think it's meant to evoke a kind of sports anime-esque drama? It's silly and time-consuming, but I do like it.

 

Pocket Billiards: Funk the 9 Ball is a decent enough game. I don't think I would ever want to play it on a TV screen, but on a handheld, it's a fine way to keep your hands busy while watching TV. It also has an English translation patch, which you wouldn't really expect. If it appeals to you at all, you should give it a try! Definitely don't pay £400 for a real copy though. Four hundred entire pounds! Madness.