Published in Gamest Issue 211 (December 15, 1997). Discussion between several members of the Gamest staff and the planner of Sega Bass Fishing at Sega.
Sega AM4 Development Division
Planning Section
The #1 hottest game!
Sega Bass Fishing Developer Interview
Suzuki: So, we got to play the game at Sega Private Show. What are our impressions?
SHO: It’s crazy fun. The idea of making a specialty cabinet sports fishing game is nothing new, I’ve done stories on other ones in the past. But the sensation of actual fishing is so much stronger here, and it’s so fun.
Yamanaka: It’s realistic fishing at a level we haven’t seen before.
SHO: Yeah, I’m not sure if it was luck or what, but that’s what it’s like. Stuff like how you won’t attract any fish if you don’t take any action yourself… Those kind of more realistic aspects left a really good impression.
Gouji: I feel very lucky as a developer (laughs). I’ve actually been in charge of fishing games at Sega this whole time, but I feel like this time, I was finally able to create the kind of interactivity I had been wanting to do.
C・LAN: Was it tough putting together the cabinet?
Gouji: It was, and there was a lot that was pretty challenging from a mechanical standpoint. Other than that would be the sensors… the sensors to detect the rod’s movement in all directions. We tried a number of different methods, and ended up with what we have now.
SHO: There’s lots of lures in the game too. I don’t know the full details, but under certain conditions special lures will appear. Things like that give it a real game-y fun factor. It’s honestly not just your average simulation-esque game, you’ve incorporated lots of fun game-y elements in a really good way.
C・LAN: Lures also have ranks, so if you choose a hard one and just try to tug the rod as usual, fish won’t bite at all, so you have to give it a few light tugs… that really gave me the feel of the real thing.
Gouji: So you noticed (laughs).
Suzuki: And if you use an easy lure you’ll often get nothing but small fish, and using a harder rod increases the odds of getting bigger ones, right?
Gouji: That’s right. It’s probabilities, all of it. So it’s not like it’s designed so you’ll always get big ones or small ones. It’s probabilities through and through.
C・LAN: What are the conditions for special lures?
Gouji: It’s actually pretty simple, catching four bass (laughs). So even if you catch small ones you won’t get dejected, because even if you catch four small fish, you get the special lure. Then when you get the special lure, you can aim for some huge bass.
Real, yet fun
Suzuki: Did you have any actual bass fishers play the game at location tests or test plays?
Gouji: Over half of our team are bass fishing obsessives (laughs). We did actually have some bass pros play the games hoping to get some feedback on the game’s feel, but they would just go “This is so fun! This is so fun!” (laughs). They ended up getting hooked on it and just kept playing, so they didn’t really end up being much of a reference (laughs). They just sorta played and enjoyed themselves.
Suzuki: Was the direction for this game something that people who actually fish would consider realistic, or something game-like?
Gouji: Fundamentally we aimed for realism. But in a way, I feel like it’s unrealistic. If we decided to go fishing right now, and went to a lake in Japan, we probably wouldn’t be able to so casually fish for bass. The whole setting and mood of the game are something of a bygone era, in which bass weren’t actually native to Japan.
Suzuki: But the feel, and the other simulated components, feel pretty realistic.
Gouji: Yeah, that was what we were going for. Though people who have never actually fished before can’t really judge it on those grounds. So, we played up the rod shake a bit compared to how it is in real life, to give it a sense of liveliness.
The target was America!?
Suzuki: Are there actually fish that big (over 8 kilograms) in real life?
Gouji: There really are (laughs). None have been caught in Japan yet, but overseas (in America), they have been. The world record for bass is 22 pounds and 4 ounces, or about 10 kilograms.
Suzuki: Were you targeting the foreign market with this game?
Gouji: Yup, we were. America is the home of bass fishing, so the idea of making something that got a “what the heck is this?” sort of response there was the worst-case scenario. So we considered that quite a bit during development. Bass fishing seems to be getting more popular in Asia recently, and it seems like it’s caught on with Europeans as well. So we had all this on our minds…
How realism was born
Sue: Stuff like the reflections on the lake’s surface are gorgeous. And the ripples from the lure, and the bass… is the bass motion captured? (laughs) I’ve always wondered how you managed to do all that.
SHO: I heard at AM Show that they had a tank with bass in it. I wanted to cover it at the time, but I also wanted to cover it in more detail while the fish were still there…
Yamanaka: Thank you. The tank was about 2 meters deep and 10 meters long.
Suzuki: There were 50 fish in it.
SHO: Are they not there anymore?
Gouji: They’re gone now. We put them back where we got them from (laughs). It was about two and a half months or so? We would actually toss lures in, and set up a camera underwater. I think we were able to make pretty good use of the work we did there.
C・LAN: Lakes have all sorts of creatures in them, right? So normally you’re not just catching bass, right? Though I guess that’s pretty obvious.
Gouji: At first you could catch buckets as a joke (laughs). And we also wondered if we should let people catch eels. But in the end, we focused on getting the bass fishing right, so it was just bass…
C・LAN: The game seems to have a lot more going on now than when we saw it at the show. The lake has crayfish, frogs, small fish, and turtles. It feels like it’s totally changed.
C・LAN: How big do the fish get in the game?
Gouji: Hm, I can’t say for sure right now, but around 9000 grams.
C・LAN: That makes it sound like there’s some special guardian spirit type fish in there…
Suzuki: It does sound like that (laughs). We’ll have to thoroughly investigate it in Gamest. And with that, thank you for your time.