Fishing Bonanza! – The Three Best Fishing Games Ever – #2

Posted in Gaming, Opinions, Reviews by Judas, October 20, 2010 at 4:10 pm | 667 views, 12 comments

can still remember renting this Bass Masters Classic: Pro Edition for the first time when I was almost ten, and being absolutely amazed by it. The new graphics! My God, those fish looked like real fish! The lures, my god the lures! Etc. It was truly a step forward and was sadly mostly forgotten in the age of the PlayStation, Saturn (heh) and N64.

This is a shame because Bass Master Classic (hereafter referred to as BMC) is a really, really fine specimen when it comes to fishing games. It had a really unique viewpoint, down in the water with the fish in a 3d view, which as far as I know was a first for console fishing games.

For you armchair technophiles, this was one of the last SNES games to make use of Mode 7 scaling, and it did really good things for this game. Identifying fish was even easier with this, and also showed off the sheer size of the really big mothers in the final lakes – the largest fish in the game (found at a secret lake) is positively massive, taking up a huge portion of the screen and inciting a little bit of that flesh-crawling feeling I’ve retained since my Super Black Bass days. He is truly the Omega Bass, king of all bass.

The game is pretty simple, as most fishing games are: get some lures, get in a boat, catch some motherfucking bass. It’s even easier in this game than in most other fishing games I’ve played, since you’re visually so close to the action, meaning that, for example, if a fish starts pulling to the left, you can see and move with it instantly, removing a lot of the guesswork found in the other games. Man I fucking love commas.

Sadly, there is no experience system to speak of, although this entry in a fine history of bass fishin’ games does almost as well. There is a pro shop, for you to spend your prize money at, buying anything from stronger fishing line to better lures, reels, fish-finders (essentially a fish radar) and even boat engines.

The strategy involved in this game, as such, is slightly deeper than most other SNES fishing games I’ve played. The lower-strength lines may snap at the slightest pressure, for example, but it’s damn near invisible and as such the smaller fish won’t shy away from your lure. The much stronger lines are thicker and as such more visible, thereby scaring off the little fuckers and leaving your lure only for the bigger, bolder ones – and that’s what you wanna catch anyway, right?

Level design is top notch for a fishing game, in that each lake has several different spots to catch different types of fish in. Most lakes have five or six really hot spots where the big bass lie dormant, deep in the earthen sands, waiting for the right lure before they choose to rise up and give you one motherfucker of a fight.

Of course the standard fishing game logic applies here – fish in lily pads with frog lures, etc. I think part of the reason fishing games appeal to me so strongly is that they employ real-life logic available to even the non-fisherman, and as a general rule how well you do depends on how smart you are, not how good you are at hitting buttons. This game is no different, but I digress.

The game isn’t hard by any means, which is a nice change of pace from a lot of other fishing games that kinda kick your ass from the get-go. Some of the bigger fish are tough fights, to be sure, but the reward for catching those giant bastards is well worth it. I guess what I’m trying to say is this game kicks ass, and is totally worth dredging up (ha!) on eBay or even – gasp – emulating if you’re of lesser moral fiber.