Now you can play all the popular pub games without having to impress the bouncers or waste the big bucks. Pool, Darts and Shuffleboard is three games in one package developed by InterActive Vision and published by Global Star Software. All three games have good graphics, easy controls and a very decent resemblance to the real games. I find this pack a very good value for people who enjoy pub games.

Cool Pool
It's a basic Eight Ball pool game that can be played by one or two players. If you're not familiar with Eight Ball pool rules, Cool Pool comes with a 30-page rulebook. The pool table takes up about 2/3 of the m515 screen. On top of the table screen, you will see the game progress and scores for both players. At the bottom of the screen, you will see the buttons to control the cues, the Shoot button, Replay button and a power adjustment button that lets you change the force with which the cue hits the ball.

The controls are very easy to get used to and this makes the game fun to play. You really can't see the numbers on the balls, but you can see the colors very well. The physics of the ball speed and spins are pretty realistic, though on the more forgiving side. I could play much better pool with this game than on a real pool table. All in all, this is a good billiard choice on Palm.

Darts
If you're a half serious darts player, you'll like this game. You can choose one of three types of games: 301, Cricket or Around the Clock, at one of three difficulty levels. If you play the Easy level, you will see a dotted line going across the dartboard vertically and horizontally. All you have to do is to hit the button when the line is crossing the spot on the board you wish to hit. In the Medium and Hard level, you will see two bars outside of the dartboard; the horizontal bar is underneath the dartboard and the vertical bar is on the right hand side of the board. You will need to line up the traveling bars outside of the board with the spot on the dartboard you wish to hit, which is harder than to hit the spot while the lines are actually traveling on the board. The bars moving faster in the Hard level than in the Medium level.

If you are not familiar with the rules of these three Darts games, you can read the rules that come with the game. With good graphics, I find the Easy and Medium modes are quite easy to master. But the Hard mode was too hard to bet my money on.

Shuffleboard
Of all three games in this package, Shuffleboard took me the longest time to master, but was the most fun to play. In the beginning of the game, you should read how to control the game as well as the rules if you don't know them. You can play 5, 10 or 15 Rounds depending on how long you want to play the game. There are 3 parallel areas in the game window; one shows the top-view picture of the shuffleboard, one for you to move your weights, and another one for aiming and zoom-in view.

It took a bit of time for me to get used to the control of shuffling the weights. It's pretty easy to line up where you want to move your weights. I must say that the aiming part is easier than real life as the computer doesn't make the mistakes that our hands do. It is a bit tricky to control the speed with which you shuffle the weights. You must use the middle window to indicate the speed, and then see the weights actually moving in another window. This is a little confusing, but once I got used to this set up, I found this game was the most challenging of the three, and I kept at it for a much longer time.

Cool Pool, Darts and Shuffleboard all come with color and grayscale support and run nicely from my m515. So what are you waiting for? Get yourself a pint, sit down and play a game.

Playing Hints and Tips

Practice makes perfect.