0 to Z of Playstation 1 Games - Big Ol’ Bass 2

       

Big Ol’ Bass 2 is the North American title for the third entry in the more commonly known Fishermans Bait series of fishing games. The game is known by Fishermans Bait 3 in Europe, while the Japanese release of the game was titled Excited Bass 3.

The game released first in North America on the 10^th of November 2000, and was developed by Konami Computer Entertainment Nagoya and published by Konami, who also published the Japanese and European releases of the game on the 25^th January 2001 and the 9^th of March 2001 respectively.

 

Notable people who worked on this game, Yasuhiro Masuoka who worked as the games Chief Programmer, also worked on the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles games from 2003-2004, working as a System Programmer and Technical Director.

In 2005 Masuoka worked on the third entry in the Mutant Ninja Turtles series, the subtitled Mutant Nightmare, he worked as a Level System Progammer. Since then Masuoka has worked on Nintendo IP’s with Kirby’s Epic Yarn in 2010, Mii Foce for the 3DS in 2013 and most recently Yoshi's Woolly World in 2015, working as a programmer on all three titles.

Akihiro Shimizu who worked as a Programmer on Big Ol’ Bass 2, worked as a Menu Programmer on the 2008 DS port of Chrono Trigger, the following year he worked as a Programmer for Street Fighter IV. A role he has held for games such as Super Street Fighter IV, Super Street Fighter IV Arcade Edition an Street Fighter X Tekken. His most recent credit is being a part of the Resident Evil 7 Biohazard engine staff.

 

Akio Sakamoto who was also a Programmer on Big Ol’ Bass 2, as well as working on the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles games from the early to mid 2000s, following that series he worked on Elebits in 2006 and Time Hollow in 2008.

From 2010 to 2015 Sakamoto worked on the Metal Gear Solid series, first as Lead Programmer on Metal Gear Solid Peace Walker in 2010, before taking up the role as Technical Director for Metal Gear Solid V, both Ground Zeroes and The Phantom Pain.

The game also features voice work from two video game voice acting veterans in Lenne Hardt and Bianca Allen. Starting with the former Hardt is credited with working on Fatal Frame, Shenmue II, Silent Hill 3, Rumble Roses, Tekken 5 and most recent credit for Yakuza 0 as the Ring Announcer.

Bianca Allen has been a video game voice actor for a similar length of time to Hardt, starting back in 1999 with the Shenmue, as well as working on Fatal Frame and Shenmue II and Rumble Roses. She is the voice of Lita in the Boktai games from 2003 and 2004 and has worked on the Gitaroo Man games. Her most recent credits are for King of Fighters XIV where to voiced the role of the Female Announcer.

Controls for Big Ol’ Bass 2 are very simple, the D-Pad is used to choose and item or one of the various options available on the menu, as well as your movement of your rod. When casting the X or circle button is used the same buttons are used to reel in your line as well, to release you can use either the L1 or R1 shoulder buttons or the triangle button.

When fishing the game has a first person view before you cast your line in the top left of the screen are the current conditions, with the date, weather, time and temperature shown before casting red arrows on the water show your casting direction, once you have casted the camera view changes to an underwater camera view.

 

Once under water the left of the screen as a depth gauge for your lure, below this is the distance that your cast travelled, on the right of the screen is another gauge that shows the interest in your bait, this fills with more red when a fish is really interested.

Once a fish takes your bait the right side of the screen will show a tension gauge, as the fish struggles and the player reels in the fish the gauge will fill from the bottom up to the top with green signifying low tension levels on the line, with red signifying a large amount of tension and to ease off on your reeling in of the fish.

The game offers the player five different modes to choose from, the first is the beginners mode, this mode acts as a tutorial, where you are taught how to play the game. The second mode is the free fishing mode, this mode allows the player to head out to any of the available fishing holes and allows them to fish at their own pace and leisure.

The games tournament mode has the player competing to qualify for the final tournament, to do so they must qualify are three lakes in order to be able to compete in the main event. Prior to starting the tournament the player has the option of choosing between eight characters.

Each of the eight available characters have their own stats, these stats include power, speed, accuracy, luck, hook, line and rod. These are displayed using a bar chart going from left to right with a green bar representing the fisherman’s skill levels. The game also offers a versus mode to two players can face off and test their fishing skills against each other.

The game features 60 different species of fish along with several fictional species as well including the likes of the Yin-Yang Bass and the Stealth Ray, in additional to the world wide fishing locations several fictitious ones are included, like the submerged statue of liberty lake and the submerged European renaissance Europe location.

Lake locations usually have a few fishing locations to choose from, scrolling through locations is done by pressing left or right on the D-Pad while fishing spots are scrolled through by pressing up or down on the D-Pad, two small maps are also displayed as well one showing the world location, the other showing the local fishing spot locations.

The game has an additional mode which is a loose story mode, the player takes on the role of an unnamed character, who is hired by the editor for the magazine World Monster Graphic. The players job with the magazine simply catch fish in various locations around the world.

The player will travel around the world and fish on the North America, African and Asian continents, each of the locations you travel to will offer varying if straightforward challenges such as catch a varying number of fish and catch an accumulated weight of fish. Once you have finished an assignment a small visual novel style dialogue will play out.

  

Critic reviews for Big Ol’ Bass 2 are extremely limited with just the two reviews available on the sites I use, this comes from Dutch publication Power Unlimited. So for additional data in this section I will also be including the GameFAQs user ratings and stats as well.

 

But first off we return to the Netherlands and Power Unlimited who rated Big Ol’ Bass 2 at a decent 73, the reviewer commenting on Konami again bravely trying to give angling a little more sense. But conclude with, come on people, it is and remains fishing that we talk about. The second and final review comes from gaming magazine EGM, sadly we only have a score for this, with the EGM reviewer giving the game and 8 out of 10.

Heading over to GameFAQs we also find the game was pretty well received, with it currently sitting at an average user rating of 3.89/5 from a total of 22 user ratings. Taking a closer look at these ratings we find a good number rated this game at a 4/5 of higher, with a total of 14 of the 22 users rating it in this range.

We find 4 users rated the game at a solid 3.5/5, with another user rating the game at a 3/5. Another couple of users thought the game was average at best and awarded the game a 2.5/5, of the 22 users who rated this game only one rated it lower than a 2.5/5, this single user rated the game at a lowly 0.5/5.

Moving on to the games difficulty level, we find a drop in user ratings down to just 11 users rating this category. We find just over half of these rate the game as having just the right difficulty level, following this there is an even split between the game being either simple or easy, with the final user rating the game as being on the tough side. Averaging out this comes to an average difficulty rating of easy/just right.

Lastly we have the game lifespan, here we find 8 users have rated this category, with a wide range of play lengths for this users. Starting with the least we find one user each spending either 8, 12 or 40 hours with the game. Another two users spend a massive 60 hours playing the game, while the final three users spent around 80 hours playing Big Ol’ Bass 2. Averaging out this comes to an average lifespan for the game at around the 56 hour mark.

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, where we find that they will offer $5 when your trade in your copy of the game, if on the other hand you are in the market for a copy of Big Ol’ Bass 2 from Gamedude, you will be looking at an outlay of $14

 

Heading over to Retrogames.co.uk we sadly don’t find the game available or even listed, the same goes for the alternative titles as well. So we will quickly move on to eStarland.com, where we do find the game listed, but sadly at the time of writing the game is currently out of stock.

The game when in stock has a usual price range of between $8.70 and $14.50 for a used copy of the game. Also on offer at eStarland.com is a trade in for the game, with up to $6 being paid for a complete copy of Big Ol’ Bass 2, this price will reduce for an incomplete copy of the game, with a disc only copy worth up to $2.10 at trade in.

Lastly we head over to Amazon.com where we find a modest supply of the game available, the first copy on offer is a good condition and complete copy of the game, this copy will set you back $19.98 once you have added in the shipping costs. Another complete copy, this time in very good condition is also available for $20.82.

Another good condition copy is available for a few cents more at $20.90, with a couple more very good condition copies available for $23.99 and $24 respectively, these two copies however are shipped by Amazon, so free shipping only applies to Price users and those spending over $25. An additional very good condition is available with free shipping and is priced at $22.18.

If you are looking for a like new used copy of the game, there are currently two copies on offer. The first is a Black Label version of the game, the seller notes this is not a greatest hits reprint, this copy will set you back £33.96 once the shipping costs have been added in. The second like new copy is priced even higher than this coming in at $47.98.

If you are looking for a new copy of Big Ol’ Bass 2, there are currently two of them available on Amazon, the first of these will set you back $54.64 once the shipping costs have been added in. The second new copy that is currently on the market is significantly more expensive, with an asking price of $86.09 once the shipping fee Is added.

Written by

P J Gibbon