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For a game as immensely popular as snooker, there have
been surprisingly few attempts at bringing it to the
64. To date there is only one other snooker simulation
on the 64 and that was released over a year ago by Visions.
When Steve Davis Snooker first made its appearance
on the Spectrum and Amstrad in February, it was widely
acclaimed as the best of the genre. Now Commodore owners
have the chance to see why for themselves.
The
game follows all the rules of snooker closely, with
fouls, free balls and so on. The table is viewed from
above, with room for scores, comments etc below, but
unlike other simulations of this ilk, Steve Davis
makes use of icon driven commands. By moving the
cursor off the side of the screen, the player can access
three sets of options, depicted in pictorial form. The
first is the Main menu from where you can select
either a one or two player game, Steve Davis, alias
the computer, filling the role of the second player
if required. There is also a demo mode where Steve plays
none other than . . . Steve Davis! Steve (sorry, the
computer) has nine skill levels ranging from 'beginner'
to 'expert', the latter allowing no room for error,
as even a small slip can result in a complete clearance
of the table!
Edit
Mode allows you to change the colour of the table
and cushions, and set up the table for trick shots etc.
The balls can be moved about and placed anywhere on
the table with the aid of a small hand, and can even
be 'deleted' permanently.
If
at any point you should become confused as to what an
icon does, you can always access a 'help' screen. This
gives a brief summary of any commands available in the
mode. Finally, Play Mode gets the ball rolling,
literally!
To
play a shot you simply indicate where the ball is to
go and determine its spin and power. When going for
a colour though, one needs to be nominated before going
through this routine. Should you attain a sufficiently
high break when playing, then you can enter your name
in the high break table.
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Preferring to watch snooker
rather than play it on a computer, I didn't really take
to this program but I can see that to a true fan of
snooker this is the best. The graphics are pretty good,
with everything moving smoothly, and the sound isn't
too bad either (apart from the
tune). Cue ball control is excellent and there's a load
of options like variable spin and power, so you can
gauge your shots to the finest degree. The computer
is very challenging and on top level is practically
unbeatable, providing a brilliant opponent to even the
most seasoned of video snooker players.
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