As bad games go, this is something of a classic. Certainly it is one of the many "filler" games found on the Cascade Cassette 50 compilation. Fishing games are never popular at the best of times, as evidenced by the ceiling-high stack of unsold Dreamcast Fishing Rods I saw in "Poundland" a few years back. Of course, it's not that fishing itself is boring in real life, just that it never seems to translate well into computer games. And so, this title starts by "tackling" an unpopular, dreary genre and somehow sucks out any tiny remnant of fun that could have possibly been present given the scope of such a game.
The first part consists of a text based shopping trip where you must use multiple numbered selections to purchase an assortment of equipment including rod, line, reel, bait, hooks etc. This is really quite drawn out and cumbersome and you wonder how much the combination of the various items can seriously affect the outcome of the game.
After you eventually leave the shop you may well be very happy that you made some good purchasing choices but you will invariablly "fall over" and randomly drop some of your equipment (namely some fishing hooks).
On my first attempt, I bought 20 fishing hooks, left the shop, tripped over and dropped exactly 20 fishing hooks. As I'd instantly ran out of hooks, the game immediately quit even before I'd had a chance to cast off. So I'd failed the game, presumably right on the pavement just outside the fishing shop door, at no fault of my own.
Second attempt, I was more fortunate (only dropped 3 hooks this time), actually getting into the fishing part of the game which consists of the player initially having to type in the full exact name of the bait you want to use (oops I forgot the name of the bait I just bought - must start again). Why doesn't the game just use the number of the bait here, after all I had at least managed to remember that I had bought "bait number 1".
Third attempt, finally I did some "fishing", yippee. There are no fish graphics at all and it looks like you are some long-armed midget who casts his rod into the high sky above rather than into a lake. It appears that the only thing you would likely catch is a 400kV power transmission line.
The main game loop consists of a countdown clock with erratic BEEP sounds continually playing whilst the occasional "bite" will appear, flagged by your fishing reel twitching for a split second. You have to be very quick on the '0' key to catch the bite, i.e. considerably quicker than if it was a real fish actually stuck on a baited hook.
I did eventually get a reasonable score which resulted in quite bizzare inappropriate almost sci-fi sounding sound effects, but in summary this game is pretty dreadful in all departments and I can't honestly see how anyone could extract any genuine enjoyment out of it.
P.S. I think this one also breaks the record for the most "PAUSE 0" statements in a single BASIC listing.
