Pool Sharks is a fun risk/reward game with cool Brian Eddy software. I’ve seen it listed in tournament banks before and just wondering if there are suggested tournament settings or even a tournament ROM? I ask this for two reasons:
Two game modes - 8-ball or 9-ball. I assume this should be left up to the player rather than try to force them to play one way or the other. My high scores don’t seem to be much different from one rule set to the other. This could also be interesting in four player games because the player who goes first chooses the mode.
Carry over Jackpot - This is the one that concerns me more. You can have a jackpot grow to 8 million and then the next player gets one and it is only 1 million. On Radical! I was able to obtain a ROM patch that made the random jackpot the same value every time.
Any other comments on this game in a tournament? Remove the segmented flippers? By the way. I’m a new user here after a lot of lurking. This is my first post!
Being that the 9ball/8ball mode is for all players, it cannot be a choice of whoever is player 1. The way I see it. It has to be dictated by the tournament.
It can of course be set fixed by a software mod. Should be straight forward. A jackpot of fixed value too. The hard part is, which mode? And which jackpot value?
One mans preferred tournament setup may have the next man roll eyes, you know.
Thanks for the great replies. As for the 8ball/9ball, I would lean towards leaving that up to the player. It also adds to the picking game vs position proposition in tournaments. As for the Jackpot, I would set it at 3 million points because that seems like an average value of the jackpots on general play at my house. The hurry up is 3 million too, so that makes it in the same ballpark.
that seems fair, though i can’t recall if the JP is easier to get than hurry up which would make everyone just go for JP since hurry up requires a lot of shots?
Ehhm, well, I’d like to pick Lyman’s Lament then. Pardon the sarcasm. But I do not believe game configuration can be a players choice. Nor understand why TD’s would want that.
What if a player claims he was misinformed of the choice made? Bad situation.
Also, it may lead to a collusion conspiracy. That you choose against an opponent to the benefit a third player. Hypothetically.
As a TD, make life easy. Just disallow it.
By the way, the mod was nearly baked yesterday. Stay tuned.
I guess that makes sense about the mode. Would probably be best to lock it into 9ball or just require all games be started as 9ball.
Whoa! Awesome! It looks like my Pool Sharks will be going to the Pinball Asylum in south Florida. That being the case it will get used in many tournaments.
I have only played a handful of times so will defer to others, but I believe 9-ball requires the shots to be hit in a specific order (akin to Alien Poker or Genesis drops), whereas 8-ball has more shots but does not require order.
Yes, the 9 ball requires the drops to be hit in order and then two ramp shots instead of one to start the hurry up. It is more challenging than 8 ball, so I generally play it. The shark hole ups the jackpot by 250K I think. I’ll have to run through it tonight when I get home.
Shark hole is +50K on jackpot. And on basis of this, the nature of this shot and the value of it, I recommend that a (basic) mod is to reset the jackpot value at 1M at each start-of-ball. Still giving an oppotunity to raise the jackpot. But without the cross-players bady thing.
I like the risk of going for uping a jackpot before a collect. With the possible bust and zilch. And the reward for bravery and controlled play.
BTW. Found a hugh bug: The slings inc of the jackpot. It just rolls the thousands value without inc the million value. What a rob.
Well. The best solution for the shared jackpot games is of course, that they run on individual accounts per player. Reset at start-of-game and not -ball. The High Speed one is done this way. But the Big Guns and Pool Shark ones are of the lesser advanced solution for the time being.
Also, Pool Sharks should have the Contest game menu adjustement for the 9 Ball mode only. On this mod it is fixed.
