SEGA Saturn Longplay #7: Side Pocket 2

Ever wanted a to play a pool game with American-Italian actors speaking in Japanese ? Well, The search is over.

Minnesota Fats: Pool Legend (released in Japan as Side Pocket 2 (Japanese: サイドポケット2 Hepburn: Saido Poketto 2)) is a pocket billiards video game for the Sega Genesis and Sega Saturn, featuring famed billiards player Minnesota Fats (as portrayed in "real-life" form by Rudolf Wanderone). It was released as a sequel to Data East's earlier success, Side Pocket. The objective in the game is to defeat AI-controlled competitors. The player can also take on another human player in order to prove his worthiness at the pool table.

The Saturn version of the game largely plays the same as the Genesis version, but includes a training mode, a short documentary on Minnesota Fats, and a completely different plot in the story mode. In the Genesis version the player takes the role of an unnamed rookie pool player seeking to challenge Minnesota Fats, while in the Saturn version the player takes the role of Minnesota Fats himself, and live action full motion videos (FMVs) are used for the cutscenes.

As was typical of live action FMV in video games, the cutscenes in the Saturn version were shot on a minimal budget. Some of the opponents were portrayed by staff from Data East's marketing department.

On release, Famicom Tsūshin scored the Sega Saturn version of the game at 28 out of 40. GamePro's Captain Squideo panned the game, calling it "a slow, plodding CD with clumsy controls." He particularly criticized that shots which would be easy to make in real life often don't come off in the game, and that the graphics are restricted to a single view with no close-ups or switchable camera points. The review made some odd errors: it refers to the original Side Pocket as a Sega CD game, and states that the story mode climaxes in a duel with Minnesota Fats (true of the Genesis version, but not the Saturn version). Next Generation also panned this version in a brief review published over a year after the game, summarizing it as "some poorly written and acted FMV clips of Minnesota Fats around what is nothing more than a top-down, 16-bit pool game". The reviewer scored it 1 out of 5 stars.