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There have been more pool/snooker/billiards simulations written for home micros than you could count on the fingers of two sloths' paws, so why are Infogrames releasing yet another?

Billiards 2 Simulator offers three form of billiards: French, American and Futuristic. French billiards uses one white, one yellow and one red ball. Player one has to strike the white ball so as to hit the other two balls to score a point; player two uses the yellow ball to do the same. The red ball is never hit except by the other balls. A player's turn continues as long as he is scoring points, and the winner is the first to reach 20 points. There are two forms of American billiards: 15-ball and eight-ball. In the 15-ball version, each player simply has to pot a numbered ball to gain its number of points; fail and you lose three. The winner is the first to reach 61. Eight-ball pool is the more common variant, played with eight red and eight yellow balls. Each player takes a colour determined by his first shot, and aims to pot every ball of that colour, then the black ball. Pocket the black ball before the end and you lose. The weirdest version is Futuristic. This is played on an octagonal table. Each player has a cue ball and three object balls, which must be pocketed to win. Pocket an opponent's ball and he scores a point.

Stroke strength, cushion friction, rebound, spinning and table friction coefficients can all be changed, and you can play in 2D and 3D modes. There's also a tutorial mode which shows you the path the ball is going to take when hit.

Infogrames seem to have taken longer on the graphics for the intro screens than those for the games themselves. There are some pleasant pics of women languishing around a billiard table, but when you reach the table itself the graphics are very sparse. The balls don't move very well, jerking slightly, and the 3D mode is nowhere near as good as that in Mirror Image's 3D Pool. Sound is nothing to speak of. It's a pity because with all the configurable parts graphics is the only thing that prevents this from being a first class game.