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| Released on October 19, 2000 for the Sega Dreamcast, Sega Marine Fishing is an arcade-style, saltwater fishing game. |
For some reason, after my kid was born in late 2009, I decided to pull my Sega Dreamcast out of storage. Maybe it was because most of the games, excluding some rarities, had starting selling for under $10 on eBay. Whatever the case, in about three months, I doubled the size of my original Dreamcast collection. I only tested most of the games out for a few minutes, but for some reason, I decided to play
Ecco the Dolphin: Defender of the Future all the way through. Maybe it was the incredible graphics and all-time great soundtrack. Whatever the case (a theme is appearing here), when I was about 3/4 of the way through the game, my almost one year-old son started sitting on my lap and watching me play. It should have been no surprise that a few months after we completed
Ecco, my son yanked a tub full of toy sea creatures into the buggy at Toys "R" Us. This turned into a full-blown sea creature obsession, and I hope you can see where this is going...
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Hopefully, for time's sake, to a review of Sega Marine Fishing!
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After hours of sea creature based entertainment, including a trip to Sea World, we started playing
Sega Marine Fishing for the Sega Dreamcast together...and soon enough, the kid was playing the game himself. He even started sleeping with the manual for "fishing game," like it was a stuffed animal.
Over the last decade, even with non-20-year-old video game systems in our house,
Sega Marine Fishing, which I got eBay for $5, has been omnipresent. Though my son's sea creature fixation has faded,
Sega Marine Fishing has hung around It's just a great game.
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Wow, the review is actually starting!
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Sega Marine Fishing started out as a Sega arcade game. As a sunny, optimistic, high-energy experience, it was tailor-made to come to Dreamcast...in fact, this, along with
Crazy Taxi, might as well be called
Dreamcast: The Game.
There's so much synergy involved with the individual elements of
Sega Marine Fishing, its tough to pull them apart. The graphics are bright and pleasant, and the fish models still look fresh almost 19-years later. They move realistically, and every one of the vast assortment of catch-able species is fairly faithfully designed on their real-life counterparts: blue marlins, tarpons, yellow-fin tunas, they all look and swim great. The environments, from a shallow bay, to a coral reef, to a deep sea oil rig, all have a distinctly different design, with fish swimming everywhere, non-catchable sea turtles, dolphins, and even a whale swimming about. Seeing it all in motion is beautiful, though very arcade-like, as no area of the real ocean is as vastly populated as these. The game also features an insanely large assortment of eye-poppingly colorful lures.
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The only bait named after the dance they do at Irish metal clubs. Also, after all these years, I just noticed they spelled "quickly" wrong. It's alright, Sega, I forgive you.
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As for sound, you've got a classic, techno-based, turn-of-the-century Sega Arcade soundtrack, all high energy, sometimes dancey, sometimes more ambient. Generally, fishing games have either no music in the background, or something relaxing, but
Sega Marine Fishing is, in a good way, loud and in-your-face, and quiet just wouldn't suit...though you can earn a music-free option a little way into the game. There's also an announcer on his 500th cup of coffee, and his ridiculous excitement when you hook a fish is contagious. Also, is "oh no!" when you lose one sounds like a fantastic Arnold Schwarzenegger imitation.
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Looks like this Blue Marlin's trying to "GET TO THE CHOPPA!"
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Speaking of earn, in
Sega Marine Fishing, you can earn a seemingly infinite amount of things. Sega could have just ported over the arcade experience, where the player has to catch 3000 points worth of fish in under two minutes across three stages, to earn access to one final, difficult stage, and a chance at a huge fish. That experience is here, and as you can't put a quarter in a Dreamcast,
Sega Marine Fishing just assumes you have an infinite supply, and lets you continue as much as you want. A lazy developer would have programmed only that experience onto this disc, but Sega AM1, at this point called WOW Entertainment, went more than the extra mile. They filled out
Sega Marine Fishing into a full-blown, addictive, hours-eating experience.
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This Picture: starring "The Fish" as Sega Marine Fishing, and "The Bait" as your free time.
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Sega Marine Fishing includes a mode called "Original." In this mode, you play your choice of five mini-games to earn points. There's anything from a casting training involving moving targets, to a spin-the-wheel and catch whatever fish it lands on in 90-seconds challenge. You can then take whatever points you've earned into the fishing stage of your choice.These are the stages from the arcade mode (plus an additional bonus stage you can unlock), but with no time limit attached, so that you can fish at your own pace. When you catch fish in the stages, you then unlock items, with each costing one of your points. There are 266 items to collect in all, from new lures and rods, to new, selectable background music for the stages, to new boats, to new dogs to hang out on your boats, to new clothes and accessories for the player character, the boat captain, or the first mate (which also makes them player characters!), to special assist items, to marine creatures and decorations to fill your massive, personal aquarium. Yes, you get your own customizable, building-sized aquarium, and filling it up with every possible applicable item is addictive.
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It's not an aquarium without a whale and a submarine.
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As you get closer to collecting all 266 items, the items grow harder and harder to come by. You've got to use every bait you unlock to catch whatever fish they're best geared toward, experimenting with different rods and string, poking and prodding at the game until you've got all 266. It is a supremely enjoyable and addictive experience, and my son and I deleted our save file multiple times, just so we could collect all 266 items again.
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The captain is even more excited than I am that I've earned a scuba diver for a lifetime enslavement in my aquarium.
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Of course, all of this would be for naught if the actual experience of catching the fish wasn't pleasant. Thankfully, it is extremely fun, and as addictive as the item collecting. First, you go to the bait selection screen, and choose the cadre of baits best-geared to catch the fish you are looking for (you're told which baits attract which fish). Then you pick your stage and go to work.
Casting aiming is intuitive and simple. You then find a rhythm in reeling in, while jerking your bait from side-to-side to attract fish. Once your finned friends bite, you've got to jerk the joystick up and hit the reel button.This hooks the fish, and the battle begins.
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Wait, aren't hammerhead sharks endangered?
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A meter appears on screen that shows the slack in your line. Reel too quickly, and the meter goes to the right (and turns red), keep reeling, and your string breaks. Reel too slowly, and you get too much slack, and the fish swims away. You've got to figure out which way to angle the joystick (you get periodic hints on screen), and balance that with the right reeling speed. It all happens quickly, and becomes a glorious, chaotic, yet easily learned dance.
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And you've got friends to help you who will wear whatever your kid tell them to!
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Thankfully, the package this is all wrapped up in fits the gameplay to a T. The menu, mode selection, and loading screens all give the impression that you're on an endless vacation at a fishing paradise, hanging out with your two greatest buddies, the captain and Masala, the first mate. It's the perfect balance of chill, relaxation, and high energy thrills, just brimming with positivity. Really, that sunny, optimistic, uniquely early 00's, yet pre-9/11 Sega vibe goes for this entire game.
I'm glad my kid got me into
Sega Marine Fishing. I'm looking forward to playing it on my surely still operational Dreamcast with my future grandkids.
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