Snooker is a classic English game similar to pool but much more complicated as the table is a lot bigger and the balls are a lot smaller. To score points you have to pot the balls in any of the six pockets on the sides of the field. You must first pot one of the red balls worth one point after which you can select one of the six other colors worth two to seven points, unlike the red ones there is only one of each color and they are put back onto the table while there are still red balls present. Ofcourse the aim is to go for the black one which will give you seven points but you won’t always be able to get proper position. The maximum score if you are able to pot all balls in one go is 147 points which is so rarely seen that on some competitions the price for reaching that is 147.000 English pounds!
Who’s Jimmy White you say? Well if you know anything about snooker you’ve probably heard of him because he’s a former world champion and one of only four people who got the 147 score during a world championship. Other than lending his name to this game he doesn’t have much to do with the game or anything but the game doesn’t need it because as far as snooker sims go you won’t get much better than this. The game is played entirely in 3D and you can rotate, pan and zoom around the playing table to get a proper view and to take your shot. To help you out you can also enable a line which displays the exact route the white cueball is going to follow, purists would probably not want to use that but for beginners it is an excellent option. You can also control the power used to hit the ball and the position where you hit it to control the amount and direction of spin. The types of games you can play are tournament and single play and the players have four difficulty levels the highest one representing Jimmy and I can tell you he’s almost impossible to beat in this game.
There are very few snooker games simply because many of the people who play it are from England, something that has changed the last years with many good players from different parts of the world. Jimmy White’s wirlwind snooker however is an excellent simulation of the game and to my knowledge is hasn’t been much improved upon by other games. This is because you simply don’t need more options or better graphics, I mean how much computing power do you need to display a table and a set of balls. I played snooker a lot when I was younger and this game is an excellent simulation so snooker fans should definately check it out and other might give it a go as well.
Overal rating: 8/10
This game was released for several different systems here are some notes:
| Amiga | Released in 1991. Game has been tested but not completed with winUAE v0.9.91. All the versions here are pretty mich the same. |
| Atari ST | Released in 1991. Game has been tested but not completed with Steem v3.2. |
| DOS | Released in 1991. Game has been tested but not completed on a DOS PC. Doesn’t work properly in windows machines. |
| Others | This version is not available. Sega Genesis/megadrive released in 1994. |
| Date added | Jan-29-2005 22:12 |
| Name | Jimmy White’s wirlwind snooker |
| Developer | Virgin |
| Publisher | Virgin |
| First released | 1991 |
| Genre | Simulation |
