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What is it with the Wii and ports? Two of Sega’s latest releases have been ports: this and House of the Dead. Not to mention the myriad of titles that previously were PS2 games. But, nevertheless, if the game in question was good before, then surely with a bit of fine tuning it could reach a similar stature to the one it reached originally. Sega Bass Fishing was released (for the first time) in 1999 for Sega’s Dreamcast and sat nicely in and around the 8/10 score in most reviews. Times have changed, and expectations are much higher, so how does it fare now?

Unlike in most games, the first thing you do in SBF isn’t create a character, it isn’t start a career, and it isn’t a tutorial. You’re given the freedom of choice. Fancy a quick fish in the park? No problem. Feeling lucky? Enter a tournament. While for some this may seem like a step back, it just makes you focus on the more important thing: having fun.

In most reviews we’d talk about the story and then waffle on about the graphics, et cetera. But Sega Bass Fishing throws the rule books out of the window. There is no story to speak of at all. You don’t even have a character; only a name on an ID card. And there isn’t any point in talking about the graphics, because we’re pretty sure that no work has been done to try to improve them. Just like no time has been spent incorporating online multiplayer, or in fact, plain party games. This would usually be the part of the review where we say how incompetent the gameplay is and finish with a short and snappy, “don’t buy this game.” But this isn’t a normal review.

Sega Bass Fishing is fun to play. No matter how much it pains us to admit it, this is the best fishing game ever. Something that even the box didn’t claim. It all stems from the control system. First you pick your lure, choosing from either, deep, middle, shallow or top, and then you’re ready to fish. To fling your rod you, well, fling the Wiimote and the lure goes soaring through the air before landing in its destination. Then, depending on which lure you opted for, it sinks. When this happens the camera zooms in so you can see what’s happening underwater, and so you can shake, rattle or flick the rod. (read: Wiimote) This isn’t a boring ordeal like in real fishing, the fish often come close, and with good skill you can make the Bass bite your bait. Now the reel (sorry, you knew it was coming, at least we didn’t leave it ‘til the end and say it was ‘reely’ good) fun part comes into play. To reel the rod back, you have to hold the Nunchuk sideways so it acts as a handle and then turn it to simulate the winding of a real rod. How fast and accurate you do it calculates how fast the rod comes in and how hard you pull the fish. When you have caught one, either, small, average, big or huge, it’s time to repeat the process.

This knackers your arm to the point where you literally have to take a break. But that’s not a bad thing, if anything it’s a good thing. Getting a work out but still having fun is a hard combination to find!

The only other thing we can talk about is the modes, or lack there of. You have your standard arcade mode, where you play a couple of areas, trying to reach a certain accumulative weight before moving on. There’s nature trip where it’s just for fun, and there’s tournament, which is pretty self explanatory. The tournament mode is definitely the best, probably because it’s the closest thing the game offers to an actual career mode. If Sega release a SBF2 – a high possibility considering, as there was a Dreamcast version – with a fully fledged career mode, multiplayer – online and offline – and better graphics then it could get a really high score. As it stands there isn’t enough included to warrant a purchase unless you were a fan of the original, and therefore we can only award it a 6. Don’t get us wrong, Sega Bass Fishing was the most fun we’d had on the Wii in a long time, but that’s not enough these days.

Score: 6/10

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