Thoughts by Mr Creosote (17 00 2008) – Atari 2600
Being better than your opponent. It’s one of life’s basic struggles, repeating itself over and over again. The fight to be the best, to gain glory and have the loser hang his head in shame and admit bitter defeat.
Fishing Derby is a classic example of this struggle. You and your opponent (another human player or computer-controlled) are sitting face-to-face on a lake. Each is armed with a fishing rod, and the goal is to catch more fish than the other one.
Catching fish isn’t really hard, in fact. You’re watching the action from the side, including a ‘cut’ through the lake itself, so you can see where the fish are. Not only that, but the lake is swarming with them. All you have to do is get your hook near the mouth of one, and it’ll bite. Reel it up quickly, and your score goes up by its weight.
There are a few things to keep in mind. The real big ones (i.e. those which give most points) are swimming deep. On the other hand, the small ones right below the surface can be reeled in at a more rapid rate. And then, there’s the shark. It swims around, waiting for easy prey. Fish which are reeled in too slowly are just that, so it might just snatch your loot away.
Fishing Derby is notable not only for trying to convert a ‘sport’ into a computer game which is utterly unsuited for it (fishing is a ‘game’ of patience, not of action), but also for being one of Activision’s first four games ever. Nowadays, they’re one of the largest publishers of video games in the whole world. Back then, they had to hire a former Atari game designer to get anything done at all. Puts things into perspective somehow, showing that everybody started out small once. The result of this experiment, putting the high factor of bizarreness aside, isn’t too much fun, but only somewhat alright.
