Game Review: On Cue (Commodore 64, Mastertronic)

On Cue has both the main cue sports games on one cassette – with each side having pool first, and then snooker afterwards.  The title screens for each show Pool 87 and Snooker 87 respectively, with potentially the game being touted to other software companies and being re-titled by Mastertronic on the cassette cover.  It did make me wonder, considering the fast-loading time of each game, why both were not just in one load with an option to choose either.  In either game’s case, the game has various options from the title screen – either to change the players with F1, being player 1 or 2 against the computer, or a two-player game.  F3 also allows you to set up the table whichever way you wish, which is handy if you wanted to start a game from a certain point, and F5 starts the game. If playing the computer, you can at this point move the joystick up or down to change the skill level before starting.

Pool Shark

In pool, there are the fifteen balls, represented by seven blue (the solids) and seven which are balls with blue crosses (the stripes).  Whoever pots a ball first then goes with that chosen colour, and then pots the black once all seven are potted.  At the start, you position the cue ball inside the D, and then the shots are taken from there.  For both pool and snooker, involves three main phases – positioning the cross on the screen where you wish to hit the ball, then pressing fire, and then pushing the joystick in the direction you wish to have any spin – so for example down for backspin.  The direction must be held and then fire pressed to carry on, which is then moving left or right to adjust the power meter for you shot, and pressing fire then takes the shot.

With A Load Of Balls and a Snooker Cue

When you take the shot, the cue ball heads off in the direction you specified the cross, and then contacts the balls and hits them, hopefully in the right direction.  However, this is where you also see the major flaw in the gameplay.  When a lot of balls are moving at once, it is like swimming through treacle watching them go by, and then when less balls have moved, the remaining ones speed up at a huge rate before finally coming to a standstill.  Many similar games have the same issue, but really does detract from the gameplay here.  Once the balls have come to rest, if you have potted a ball, it is still your go, but if not, the opponent has their go.  Thankfully, the computer opponent on lower levels plays their shots quickly, but on difficult levels the thinking time can go on a bit and does slow the flow.

Solids and Stripes

As you play the game of pool, and going for the solids or stripes respectively, you do find that when striking the ball, on occasion the angle is not always what you would expect.  In fact, on one occasion, I hit straight on to a solid, and the cue ball decided to run through in an odd direction.  That to me felt like a bug of some sort.  The computer opponent would sometimes fluke a ball into the corner pocket, or effectively just hammer the balls anywhere with the cue ball being pocketed.  The fouls seemed to be the two shot carry rule, in that if you pot a ball on your first shot after the foul, you still had two shots to miss left.  If you are not used to that in pool, that may take some getting used to.

Pot The Reds and Screw Back

Moving on to snooker, this at least did have all the balls (the fifteen reds, yellow, green, brown, blue, pink, and black) represented, although black was darker grey.  As the table was light green, the main dark green could be used which made sense.  You break off into the reds, and then when playing your shots it is hit a red in, and then nominate a colour.  For that, the shot has four phases with the first being to select the colour with your cross as to which ball to nominate, then play the shot with the cross positioning, spin, and power.  If you do foul on the colour, four or the higher colour value is the foul – so if I went for the pink and the cue ball went in, that is a six-point foul.   The free ball rule does not seem to have been implemented here either, so if you miss and the opponent cannot see both sides of the object ball, instead you must get out of a snooker when not your fault.

For the Yellow, Green, Brown, Blue, Pink, and Black

Once you start to pot some balls, the computer opponent ends up hitting balls all over the place, leaving to a messy table where big breaks will be hard to come by.  The difficulty mainly is that because the balls are small on screen, as it the cross, it is quite finicky to get the angle just right.  Even then sometimes the ball flies off at a different angle, which can lead to some confusion.  Once all the reds have been potted with any respective colours afterwards, it is down to the final six colours, sunk in turn to complete the frame.  There is also no automatic win when the pink is potted and the opponent is more than seven points behind either, the black gets potted no matter what which again does seem somewhat confusing.

Party For Two

At least when playing in two player mode, whether it be snooker or pool, the fact that the aiming is finicky to get accurate and the balls can fly all over the place at varying speeds means it can at least be a leveller for those playing this way.  Both players do have to use the same joystick though, and a shame that it could not have had assigned controls so you could choose on which method for each player, for example player one in port 1 and player two in port 2.   The game does flow a little better without having to wait for the computer opponent, although the crosshair positioning difficulty can mean it takes time to line up a shot.

Graphics and Sound

The graphics in On Cue are functional but not very good.  The screen is in high resolution mode with the balls of various colours in snooker depicted okay, and the blue solids and stripes in pool relatively easy to spot.  The animation, or lack of, is very clear when you play a shot with the balls going off at all angles and the speed up and slow downs off-putting.  The sound is almost non-existent apart from a few white noise sound effects when a ball is striking another ball, which turns into a clatter when breaking off for example.  A tune, even on the title screen, might have been a marked improvement here.

Final Thoughts

On Cue falls into the same trap that many snooker and pool games do on the Commodore 64 – in that when hitting a shot, the balls slow down if there is a lot of activity on the screen at once.  Couple that with a lack of accuracy when positioning the cross for the direction, as well as some of the flukiest computer opponent shots that you will see, and it adds up to a missed opportunity to produce something which would be more playable.  Both are reasonably recognisable, although having some of the rules missing in snooker such as the free ball and the concession when the final pink is potted does also detract from the gameplay, and bear in mind the modern-day version of the miss rule was not around back then, which is why it does not feature.  One for real diehard fans of the sport only, and there are better conversions of these games out there.

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