Minnesota Fats: Pool Legend (Saturn) Playthrough - NintendoComplete

A playthrough of Data East's 1995 billiards game for the Sega Saturn, Minnesota Fats: Pool Legend.

This video shows the entire story mode played through.

Minnesota Fats: Pool Legend is the direct sequel to Data East's well-loved 1986 video pool coin-op Side Pocket. However, unlike Side Pocket, MF:PL was a game designed specifically for consoles, namely the Sega Genesis and Sega Saturn. The two games play similarly to one another, though the story mode differed significantly between the two, but the presentation easily makes the Saturn title my preferred game of the pair.

As one of first Sega Saturn titles released in the US, Data East seemed to have spared no expense in making the game as flashy and impressive as possible. It's packed with FMV sequences, and these are mainly used to provide documentary-style background on Minnesota Fats himself, and to deliver the amazingly entertaining storyline in the game's featured story mode.

Things begin with the legend, Minnesota Fats, deciding that he wants to "to teach someone a lesson," but feels too old. He orders his derpy disciple to go do it on his behalf, and "10 days later" (seems a bit oddly specific) learns that his proxy has turned to the dark side. Thoroughly enraged, he storms out, ready to clean house. Clearly, Minnesota Fats is not to be f**ked with.

And so, as a sepitgenarian in dire need of anger management and acting lessons, you play Fats as he bounces from pool hall to pool hall competing against a plethora of over-acted 90s TV archetypes in some of the most entertaining FMV you'll ever see in a video game. The scenes are well produced and show some evidence of an actual budget, which was still something of a rarity in games in 1995. It's reasonably well written - well, for what it is - and it's clear that it took itself seriously. There really aren't any tongue-in-cheek hijinks going on, which makes it all the better. The hair, the makeup, the color schemes are all hilariously dated, and most of the actors play their roles with an admirably energetic over-zealousness.

The true star, though, is the guy playing Mr. Fats himself. He looks like he might have a heart attack during some of his more impassioned rants - he gets literally belly-to-belly with one guy, bending him backwards raving in the poor man's face. Seriously, it has to be seen to be believed.

Anyway, since it is a fancy sequel to Side Pocket, there's some pool in there too. The physics are solid, the controls are well done, and it plays just like Side Pocket. That's a good thing! The in-game graphics are really nice to look at, too. Its a top down 2D view of a pool table, so it's not going to wow anyone now, but in 1995, the amount of color on the screen at once here was impressive. Most of us were still on the 16-bit machines when this came out (and just look up the Genesis version of the game to see what a dramatic difference color makes!).

I love this game. 90s FMV is one of my favorite guilty pleasures in games, and this one is so thoroughly compelling that I can't help but adore it. The pool game is fun too.

It's too bad that the third game in the series never left Japan in any form!

Side note: There are a couple of spots in the video where the sound drops out. YouTube's scanner picked up a few random spots with copyrighted music and muted them. It only impacts a couple of scenes, but it annoyed me that I couldn't post it with the audio completely intact. Sorry about that!
__
No cheats were used during the recording of this video.

NintendoComplete (http://www.nintendocomplete.com/) punches you in the face with in-depth reviews, screenshot archives, and music from classic 8-bit NES games!

Visit for the latest updates!
  / 540091756006560  
  / nes_complete