0 to Z of Playstation 1 Games - Aquanaut's Holiday

        

Aquanaut's Holiday is a slow paced diving exploration simulation developed by Japanese studio Artdink who also published the Japanese release of this game on the 30^th June 1995, the game released a year later on the 26 July 1996 in North America and a few months later in Europe with Sony Computer Entertainment America and Europe handling their respective releases.

The game is designed for the player to relax and explore there are no enemies, no time limits, no evil forces that must be stopped just a the player the deep sea and plenty of wildlife. During the course of the players exploration they will come across sunken ships, statues, and other oceanic treasures.

Players can also communicate with the various sea life using sonar weather it is a whale or one of the more bizarre creatures that swim in the darkest depths of the ocean. While traversing the deep sea players can lay down underwater stations to mark points of interest for later study, as well as build a coral reef which will attract the various creatures of the deep sea.

The player takes on the role of a world famous oceanographer who is unfortunately bombarded by the press, governments and environmentalists, seeing the stress this has put you under your boss sends you on a long term assignment to get away and recharge your batteries. You are tasked with exploring the last unexplored part of the ocean, map it, talk to the animals and build a coral reef.

Critically the game received at least one good review which can from IGN they gave this game an 80/100 and had the following positives to say You're plopped into the oceans of the world, with freedom of motion to go where ever you like. Along the way you establish underwater stations, build corral reefs, and pretty much just explore. Seen from a first person perspective, Aquanaut's Holiday exotic sea life and realistic landscapes soon have you believing you really are exploring the bottom of the ocean. Whether this will be enough to capture the attention of most gamers weaned on fast action remains to be seen. As it stands though, Aquanaut's Holiday is an engaging and very special game.

From here things generally go downhill for this game the next highest rated review for it comes from German publication Video Games who scored the game 65/100 who praised the atmosphere and sound as well as the easy to pick up controls however they concluded with. What I miss, however, is the motivation kick. Anyone who is not exactly ready to relax and has already seen the graphics, will hardly find a reason to throw on the cosy blubber. Aquanauts Holiday is more likely to appeal to the slightly older, stressed generation. If you're more into action, keep your hands off it.

All Game Guide who scored the game a 60/100 praised the game as one of the most interesting and relaxing saying this game won’t be for everyone with it having no weapons, no enemies, and no real objective. There's no puzzle elements and no score.

At the other end of the review scores we find Electric Playground who were harsh with their conclusion in their 30/100 review saying Aquanaut's Holiday ended up becoming another dead fish floating in an ocean of quality PSX titles. If you catch this one, be humane and throw it back in the water, while French publication Consoles News summed up the game in one sentence in their 55/100 review saying, More an experience than a game.

This is the part of 0 to Z where is visit four online retailers and see what the availability of the title is, and what price you would be looking at if you wanted to pick this title up, the sites that I will be using for this are Amazon.com, eStarland.com, retrogames.co.uk and Gamedude.com I know the last one is very location specific, but from a podcast I listen to, I’ve heard they have a huge stock of older games, Ebay has now been dropped unless the game is unavailable at other retailers.

So lets get down to business with Gamedude, who have this game listed if you are looking to trade in your copy to Gamedude they will give you $3 for it, if on the other hand you are looking for a copy of the game it will cost you $8 for a copy from Gamedude.

Now heading over the pond to Retrogames.co.uk where we find one copy of this game available, according to Retrogames the PAL version of this game is rare, the copy they have for sale is in excellent condition and is priced at £25.

Back over to the US now to eStarland.com who have one used copy available this is an incomplete copy of the game which is the disc only and is priced at $10.97, eStarland.com also off a trade in for this game and will pay $8.50 for your copy of the game.

Moving to Amazon.com we find very few copies of this game available, at the time of writing just 8 used and 1 new copy are on the market, starting with the used copies which start at $32 for a very good condition copy of the game this also comes with free shipping, no idea though if this is a complete copy though.

A like new copy of the game is currently up for sale at just over $55 once you have added in the shipping costs this pales in comparison to the new copy that is currently on the market which is priced at $99.99 which is £76.27 this is fulfilled by Amazon so comes with free shipping.

Written by

P J Gibbon