Super Black Bass Review (SNES) (Retro WedNESday #18)
Developer: Hot-B
Publisher: Hot-B
Released: 1993 (North America)
Last week, we took a trip back to 1995, when my parents stopped at Sears, discovered four Super Nintendo games in a bargain bin, and brought them home for my brother and me. One of those games was Super Off Road: The Baja, which somehow inspired approximately 3,000 words about racing trucks, M. Bison, the PlayStation, and the financial consequences of running over pedestrians.
Naturally, the next logical step is to review another game from that very same shopping trip.
This time, we’re going fishing. And not the kind of fishing where you wake up at four in the morning, drive to a lake, spend three hours untangling your line, get eaten alive by mosquitoes, and return home with absolutely nothing to show for it. I’ve never been much of a fisherman. I know how to do it, I have caught fish before, and if I need to catch fish to eat in some survival situation, then I can certainly do so. But as for wasting a whole afternoon standing there waiting for some sign of a bite, well, I have better things to do. If I want to eat fish, there’s a store right down the road that sells it in a can or fillet.
But no, we’re not going to talk about what a waste of time real fishing can be. Instead, we’re going fishing from the comfort of our living room, courtesy of the Super Nintendo Entertainment System.
Today’s game is Super Black Bass.
I realize that might not sound particularly exciting. After all, the Super Nintendo was home to Super Mario World, The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past, Super Metroid, and a whole collection of games featuring heroic adventurers saving the world from unspeakable evil.
And here we are, throwing a plastic worm into a lake. Not even a real plastic worm, at that. It’s a pixelated one.
But hear me out.
A Fishing Game? Seriously?
Super Black Bass was developed and published by Hot-B, originally arriving in Japan in 1992 and making its way to North America during the early SNES years.
Hot-B was one of those companies that apparently looked at the video game market and decided what it really needed was more fishing.
And you know what? There was a market for it. People bought it. It’s somewhat highly regarded amongst those of us who enjoy fake fishing from the comfort of the couch, sandwiched between a refrigerator and a proper toilet.
Fishing games might seem like a strange choice when you consider the sorts of things video games allow us to do. We can fight dragons, travel through space, defeat armies, and rescue princesses. Lovely pixelated princesses. This was back in the good days when a proper lady was allowed to be a damsel in distress and no blue-haired males got their panties in a bunch about it.
Or we can sit in a boat and wait for a fish to bite.
Which, come to think of it, is a pretty good representation of how varied this hobby can be. Come to think of it, I fished in Harvest Moon 64. And Stardew Valley. I fished in Destiny 2 when they needlessly added that feature for a season just to remove it. What a waste of development time. And I fished in Diablo IV, because why the hell not? If there’s fishing in a game, I partake. I’m something of a pro angler at this point.
I suppose the appeal is fairly obvious. Not everybody wants to spend every gaming session fighting for their lives. Sometimes you want something quieter, something that rewards patience instead of reflexes.
Of course, that assumes you actually have patience.
And if you don’t, well, Super Black Bass might be about to teach you some. Which, for probably half of you, would be a virtue worth learning, considering we’re about to spend three thousand-plus words together.
Welcome to the Tournament
Rather than simply handing you a fishing rod and telling you to catch whatever happens to be swimming nearby, Super Black Bass organizes its gameplay around competitive bass fishing tournaments.
If this game were made today, you’d have to spend 10 minutes creating your character, trying to decipher the difference between Body Type A and Body Type B. Then you’d have to watch your character be born. Spend 30 minutes in a tutorial learning how to walk. Just to never walk once in the whole damn game because you’re always in a boat.
There are four lakes to conquer: Skywater Lake, Clear Lake, Murphy Lake, and Bluestone Lake.
You begin in the amateur ranks, working your way toward more prestigious competitions. Imagine that. You start at the bottom and work your way up. That’s proper character progression. Each tournament challenges you to catch enough bass, with the combined weight of your five biggest qualifying fish determining your standing.
That’s right. Five fish.
You could spend all day catching fish, but only your five best bass count toward your tournament total. So don’t waste your time on small fish when there are bigger ones in the sea—or lake, as it were. It’s the opposite of dating, where you want the smaller one.
It’s like a wrestling battle royal where only the five biggest guys are allowed to stay in the ring.
Actually, no, that doesn’t make any sense. Forget I said that. And yes, I know I could’ve edited it and you wouldn’t be asked to forget it, because you wouldn’t have seen it. But that’s not how we do things around here. All gas, no brakes, and I don’t think my back button works anyway. And yes, I know, I can copy and delete, but who wants to do that when there’s still stuff to be said?
The point is that quality matters just as much as quantity. Just ask Thalia, who has experienced her own woes in regard to fantastic quality being paired with a disappointing lack of quantity. Not fish, but boobs, as in Spook-n-Boobtacular. Anyway, the point was that catching a whole bunch of little bass isn’t necessarily going to win you anything if somebody else lands a few monsters.
And because you’re competing against other anglers, there’s a reason to keep improving rather than simply congratulating yourself every time something bites. Not real anglers. This is a video game, in case you have forgotten. And this was the early ’90s, so no online play where you’re fishing against BassSlapper42069.
There’s also a time limit, because apparently fishing wasn’t stressful enough already.
You have a certain amount of time to catch your fish and get them weighed. Spend too long wandering around the lake or waiting for something to bite, and your chances of winning start slipping away. You see, when it’s just you and BassSlapper42069, you would typically have a 50% chance of winning. But when you’re up against a professional fishing freak in the higher tournaments, now you have a 25% chance at best. But when you add the other anglers and the time limit, the chances of winning drastically go down.
Imagine going fishing to relax and discovering you’ve accidentally signed up for a competitive sporting event with deadlines. From the comfort of your couch, no less.
Sounds suspiciously like a job with no pay.
Getting Out on the Water
The game begins by putting you in control of a small fishing boat. Bold strategy. They must not have seen me driving a boat in GTA 5. They should’ve confined me to the docks.
You navigate around the lake—where else?—looking for promising spots and deciding where to cast your line. A fish finder helps you identify potentially productive areas, although knowing that fish are somewhere beneath the water and actually catching one are two very different accomplishments. And if you don’t see or hear a fish on the finder, then why are you even stopping? It’s called a fish finder. Fish appear? Stop and cast. No fish? Keep moving.
I can walk into a grocery store and identify exactly where the steaks are, too. Doesn’t mean they’re going to jump into my shopping cart. And if they do, well, maybe Jimbo isn’t the greatest butcher on the block.
The boating sections give Super Black Bass a little more freedom than a game that simply places you at one fishing spot and asks you to cast repeatedly. Even if some people should remain on the bank.
You can explore the lake, examine different locations, and try to figure out where the bigger fish might be hiding. Now, don’t expect some enormous open world filled with secrets, side quests, and interesting characters.
It’s a lake. There are fish in it. That’s pretty much the situation.
You’re not catching buried treasure, meeting Peg Leg Ed in a yellow raincoat and having to return to him 75 times to give him bottles with messages in them and a suspicious amount of bras.
But for an early-’90s fishing game, being able to navigate around the water and choose your fishing locations adds a welcome bit of strategy.
And I appreciate that the game doesn’t just hand you a giant fish every time you press a button. Well, I appreciate it in principle. Whether I’m still appreciating it after twenty unsuccessful casts is another question entirely.
The Fine Art of Throwing Things at Fish
Once you’ve found a spot that looks promising, it’s time to cast. You’ll know it’s promising if the fish finder is going off. If it isn’t, why are you preparing to cast? We have established this already.
This is where Super Black Bass becomes way more involved than somebody unfamiliar with fishing games might expect. Some might even say considerably more involved.
You don’t just press a button and magically produce a fish. It wouldn’t be much of a game if it did.
First, you need to select your lure. Tedious, just like real life.
The game includes eight different types, with choices such as worms, frogs, crankbaits, and other artificial creations designed to convince a fish that whatever you’re dragging through the water is something worth eating.
Think about that for a moment.
Somewhere along the line, humanity discovered that fish could be tricked into biting little pieces of plastic and metal.
And then we turned that discovery into an entire recreational industry. Then some other clever people said why stop with real recreation when we can do it virtually? Sometimes you want to fish and then go piss in a toilet, not piss in the wind from the side of a bank and hope a tick doesn’t attach itself to your dick in the process.
You’ve got to admire the entrepreneurial spirit.
Different lures behave differently (if they didn’t, well, then they wouldn’t be different), and choosing the right one can make a difference (of course, otherwise what would be the point of choosing one?). You also have color variations to consider, because apparently fish are particular about fashion. Some people are color-blind, but apparently not the fish in the muddy water.
Maybe that bass isn’t interested in your red lure. Maybe he’d prefer purple. Maybe he’s just having a bad day and doesn’t feel like eating anything.
I don’t know. I’m not a fish psychologist, and I’m guessing you aren’t either. If the fish doesn’t bite, try a different one. Not all fish are beggars; some are choosers.
Once you’ve selected your lure, you determine the distance and direction of your cast, send it flying into the water, and begin retrieving it. Hopefully with a fish on it. Rinse and repeat until you have to haul ass back to get your fish weighed before the time limit. You didn’t catch any? Why the hell were you fishing in the spot that the fish finder told you there weren’t any?
The viewpoint changes to show what’s happening beneath the surface, where you can see fish moving around and, hopefully, taking an interest in whatever you’ve thrown at them. Small black shadows, sometimes big black shadows. Is this fishing or a creature feature?
And that’s when the real game begins.
Come On, You Little Bastard. Bite!
One of the interesting things about Super Black Bass is that catching fish requires more than simply placing a lure near them.
You have to make it look appealing.
That means manipulating the lure as you retrieve it, experimenting with movement, and trying to convince a fish that this artificial meal is worth investigating.
Sometimes you’ll see a fish nearby and think you’ve got everything lined up perfectly.
The lure is right there. The fish is right there. All the fish has to do is open its stupid mouth. And it doesn’t. It just swims away.
Well, thank you very much. This is more embarrassing than real life. At least in real life, I can’t see that the fish is deliberately uninterested in my lure before it swims away. I don’t have a fish finder in real life to even know if it’s there, although it wouldn’t be much use sitting on the bank.
It’s almost enough to make you wonder whether the developers programmed the fish to be deliberately irritating. But who are we kidding? Of course they did. This was the SNES era, when games didn’t hold your hand. Today they’d be programmed to jump in the boat, lest someone be offended that they couldn’t catch one. They call it Games Journalist Mode.
To be fair, making this deliberately irritating probably makes this one of the more realistic fishing simulations ever created.
Eventually, though, something takes the bait. And suddenly the quiet little fishing game becomes a battle.
You have to set the hook and start reeling the fish in, carefully managing the tension on your line.
Pull too hard, and you risk snapping it. Let the fish do whatever it wants, and you might lose your catch. If you’ve ever fished in a game, then you know how it works. There are only so many ways you can do it. It’s like bitching that annual sports games aren’t different enough. How many ways can you reinvent baseball? It is what it is.
The tension meter becomes your best friend and your worst enemy, especially when you’re trying to land something large enough to make a difference in the tournament standings.
There’s a nice little element of risk and reward here.
You want to bring the fish in quickly, but getting impatient can cost you the entire catch.
And when that happens, you’re left staring at the screen wondering whether you should’ve been a little more careful.
Congratulations. You’ve just learned a valuable lesson about patience from a video game fish.
Not Every Fish Is a Winner
Although the title is Super Black Bass, bass aren’t the only creatures swimming around these lakes. They would be pathetic fishing lakes if that were the case.
You can encounter other species, including catfish, bluegill, trout, and northern pike.
Which is nice, I suppose, but there’s a problem.
You’re competing in a bass tournament. So why the hell are we wasting time catching little bream when BassSlapper42069 has found the cheat code to reeling in SUPER Black Bass like he brought the fish to the lake with him?
Catching something else doesn’t do much to help your standings.
And for the nerdy purists out there, I don’t know what all fish are in this game. Those were examples, not an under-oath portrayal of an accurate ledger.
Imagine spending several minutes fighting a particularly stubborn fish, finally hauling it out of the water, and discovering you’ve caught something that doesn’t count.
Wonderful. You just wasted time in an event where time matters. But at least you caught something. That’s probably more than you would have caught in real life.
You’ve successfully accomplished absolutely nothing toward your immediate objective. But you had fun. Or maybe you didn’t. How would I know?
On the bright side, at least the game acknowledges that lakes contain more than one species of fish. It would’ve been a little strange if every creature beneath the surface was a bass, as though the local wildlife had signed an exclusive contract with the tournament organizers.
And there’s something enjoyable about not knowing exactly what you’re going to catch every time something bites.
Even when it turns out to be the wrong damn fish.
There’s More Strategy Here Than You Might Expect
The more you play Super Black Bass, the more you begin to appreciate that it’s trying to simulate several different aspects of fishing rather than simply presenting a glorified button-mashing contest. Not necessarily easy to do in a 16-bit game, but then developers had passion and know-how back in these days.
You need to find productive locations (again, use your fish finder; that’s why you have it), choose appropriate lures, cast accurately, attract fish, and then actually land them. Easier said than done in the harder lakes.
You also have to consider how much time you’re spending in one place.
If the fish aren’t biting, do you keep trying? Are there fish on the finder? If not, then why the hell are you still there? How many times must we establish this rather basic principle of going where the fish are?
Do you change lures?
Do you move the boat somewhere else? Well, if you want to fish somewhere else, you’re going to have to. You can’t swim and fish.
Or do you sit there stubbornly refusing to admit defeat because you know perfectly well there’s a fish somewhere beneath you and you’re going to catch the little bastard if it takes all afternoon? Surely that damn finder isn’t lying to us? Plus, we’ve got a top-down view, and I see the big bastard sitting there like the creature from the Black Bass Lagoon! Just take the bait already! Now it’s personal, and we’re committed to catching this damn fish. Why can’t I just grab a net and go in after his ass?
That’s the kind of decision-making that gives the game its appeal.
There’s even a sense of progression as your angler’s technique and strength improve, and the password system allows you to continue your tournament career without starting everything over. Yes, passwords, beautiful passwords. Unlike today, when your save gets corrupted or deleted.
Which was important back when saving a game sometimes involved writing down a collection of letters and numbers on a piece of paper and praying you didn’t lose it.
Oh, what’s that? Mom saw a piece of paper on the couch with some half-legible gibberish written on it and tossed it in the trash? Well, back to the beginning!
Kids today complain about cloud saves.
We used to keep our progress in a notebook. Or just random paper.
And heaven help you if you didn’t put it somewhere safe. Unless the game had built-in universal passwords. Skip content as much as you like.
How Does It Look and Sound?
Graphically, Super Black Bass is an interesting little game.
It’s not going to compete with the SNES’s most visually impressive titles, but it doesn’t need to. Plus, it’s fishing. Who cares?
The boating sections give you a view of the lake and surrounding environment, while the fishing sequences focus on the water, your lure, and the fish themselves.
The underwater perspective is important because it allows you to watch fish approach your lure and react to what you’re doing. I know realism is important to gamers today, but it wasn’t back then. So you could see the fish underwater. If you want realism and to fish blind, go fish in real life.
It’s not exactly a nature documentary, but it communicates the information you need.
And that’s really the most important thing here.
If I’m playing a fishing game, I want to see where the fish are and whether they’re interested in my lure.
I don’t need every individual scale rendered in glorious detail.
Although I’m sure somebody at a modern publisher is already considering a premium fish-scale texture pack. And, of course, an extra lake that’s half the size and half the price of the full game.
As for the sound, this isn’t a game I’d play because I wanted to hear an incredible soundtrack.
The audio serves its purpose, providing atmosphere and feedback while you fish, but the experience is much more about watching the water and waiting for something to happen than listening to memorable music.
And perhaps that’s appropriate.
Real fishing generally doesn’t come with an orchestral score announcing that you’ve caught a six-pound bass. Although that would be pretty damn entertaining.
Read our Throwback Thursday movie review for Arsenic and Old Lace
The Biggest Problem With Super Black Bass
Now, there’s something we need to address.
Super Black Bass is a fishing game, in case you haven’t caught on to that. I know, you haven’t caught a fish all day, so why would you have caught that basic fact either?
And fishing, whether real or virtual, involves an awful lot of waiting. Next week, we’re reviewing Super Paint Drying Simulator 2000.
Now waiting isn’t necessarily a flaw. Patience is part of the experience, and the anticipation of finally getting a bite is one of the things that makes fishing enjoyable.
But there’s a difference between something being deliberately slow and something becoming tedious.
And Super Black Bass can certainly test that distinction.
You’re going to spend time moving around lakes, changing lures, casting repeatedly, and trying to convince digital fish to cooperate.
Sometimes you’ll catch something worthwhile. Most times you’ll catch something useless.
And sometimes you’ll wonder whether the fish have all gone home for the evening. And that can’t be. I see them on the finder. Are they in their cave? Do fish have homes? Are they sleeping? Why are they not hungry?
I’ll tell you why they aren’t hungry. BassSlapper42069 was out here fishing with real worms and no hook. They have a belly full now. If you’re going to smoke your pot, then stay out of the lake.
The tournament structure helps by giving you goals to pursue, but it doesn’t fundamentally change what you’re doing.
You’re fishing. Then you’re fishing some more.
And when you’re finished fishing, congratulations! You’ve maybe earned the opportunity to go fishing somewhere else.
But what do you expect? It is a fishing game. You don’t play Madden and then whine that you have to play another football game. Do you? Maybe you do. What the hell do I know?
If you enjoy that process, there’s a good chance you’ll find something worthwhile here.
If you don’t, the game probably isn’t going to change your mind.
And that’s okay. Not every video game needs to appeal to everybody. You either like fishing or you don’t. But don’t you dare dismiss this game and then turn around and start fishing in Stardew Valley.
Back to That Sears Bargain Bin
What makes Super Black Bass interesting to me isn’t simply that it’s an old fishing game.
It’s that it came from the same unexpected shopping trip that brought Super Off Road: The Baja into our house.
Four games. One random afternoon. No birthday, no Christmas, no special occasion.
Just my parents finding something they thought their boys would enjoy. And enjoy it we did. Hours were like corks, and I sank an ungodly amount of them with precious little to show for it.
And that’s the sort of thing that sticks with you.
I don’t want to pretend I remember every tournament, every fish, or every afternoon spent playing Super Black Bass. More than thirty years have passed, and memories aren’t nearly as reliable as we’d like them to be. I remember playing it. I remember having fun with it. That’s what matters.
Hell, I spent the previous review trying to remember whether the fourth game from that shopping trip was Family Feud, and I’m still not entirely prepared to testify under oath about that one.
But I remember the games being there. I remember that surprise. And I remember how exciting it was to have something new to play when I’d left for school that morning expecting an ordinary day.
That’s a pretty good memory to have attached to a fishing game.
And it reminds me of something I appreciate about those old bargain bins. They introduced us to games we might never have picked out for ourselves (and I know, I didn’t pick this one out, but the point remains… and had I seen it, I would’ve grabbed it).
If somebody had handed me a list of every SNES game available and told me to choose four, I doubt a fishing simulator would’ve been near the top.
There were too many other things competing for attention. But when a game simply appeared in your collection, you gave it a chance. Sometimes you discovered something wonderful. Sometimes you discovered something terrible.
And sometimes you discovered that a quiet little game about catching bass could provide a perfectly respectable afternoon of entertainment.
The Final Verdict
Super Black Bass is an unusual entry in the SNES library, at least compared to the action games, platformers, and RPGs that tend to dominate conversations about the console.
It takes an activity built around patience and observation and turns it into a surprisingly involved simulation, complete with tournaments, multiple lakes, different lures, fish behavior, and line-tension management.
There’s genuine thought behind its mechanics, and I appreciate that the developers tried to capture the process of fishing rather than reducing everything to pressing a button and watching a fish appear.
But there’s no escaping the fact that this is a specialized experience.
The slow pace and repetitive nature of fishing won’t appeal to everyone, and even somebody who enjoys the premise may find themselves wishing things would move along a little faster.
For players who enjoy fishing games, though, there’s enough substance here to make Super Black Bass worth investigating.
And for me, it’ll always have that connection to one of those wonderfully ordinary childhood afternoons that turned out to be anything but ordinary.
Super Black Bass gets a three out of five: WORTHY.
Did you ever play Super Black Bass, or was there another fishing game that kept you entertained back in the day? Share your memories in the comments, and join us next week for another Retro WedNESday adventure.
