Billiard Hustlers

Billiard Hustlers is a pool game with an arcade timer bolted onto it, and the combination works better than it has any right to. The physics are the realistic kind: the cue ball carries momentum, cut angles behave the way they do on a real table, and a thin edge contact sends the object ball somewhere you did not intend. What is not realistic is the pressure. A clock is always running, and potting balls is how you keep it from reaching zero. So the careful, deliberate game that pool normally rewards is in constant tension with the need to just take the shot. The neon-lit eighties pool hall setting is decoration, but the tension between accuracy and speed is the actual design.

Aim by moving the pointer to set the direction of the cue, then set your power and strike. Pot balls to score and to add time back to the clock. Missing costs you nothing directly except the seconds it took — which, with a timer running down, is the whole penalty. The run ends when the clock does, so your score is a function of how many balls you sank before that happened.

Hitting hard is almost always the wrong instinct under time pressure. A softly struck ball that drops is worth more than a hard one that rattles out, and the hard shot also scatters the table into a position you have to solve next. Think one ball ahead: where does the cue ball finish? A pot that leaves you snookered has cost you the next twenty seconds. Take the easy ball over the spectacular one every single time, because the clock does not award style points. And when the table is open early, clear the balls nearest the pockets first — they are the cheapest seconds you will ever buy.