Some time ago I added the 'Olympic' game to the Wright! Magazine collection, which collects 3 arcade versions of olympic sports. Wright! Magazine includes the 'Almost' videogame sub-serie, that collects sports games. So why 'Olympic' isn't called 'Almost Olympics'?

There is a little secret behind the 'Almost' series: I mostly dislike sports but, while I've some kind of knowledge of olympic games, since I've watched them on TV few times and played Track & Fields (1983) on my Commodore 64, I never played or watched soccer or golf, which are part of the 'Almost' series. Long story short, 'Almost' games comes from nearly zero knowledge about that topic, which requires me to ask friends, study articles (mostly from Wikipedia) or other videogame conversions in order to put them together.

But this 'Almost Fishing' is a tiny bittersweet exception.

When I was a kid I used to stay with my father instead of the rest of the family during summer vacations. Sometimes we used to wake up pretty early in the morning, load my grandfather old Panda car with a fishing rod, some hooks, buckets and worms and then go fishing. Probably due to the sleepiness, probably due to my being introvert, I've some kind of mixed memories of me sitting in that car.

From one side, I was very sad of leaving my sisters and cousins, in order to stay with someone really older than me for the rest of the day - my father, grandfather and grandmother. From the other one, I was spending a full day my father, which used to come at home very late in the evening during workdays, and that was great. But I'm sure of how the landscape was out of the window: the terraced houses, the rough roads, the closed shops, highway, tunnels, then sun again, the bright sea, cliffs and finally the docks.

My father used to try to show me how to prepare the lure many times but I wasn't very good at hand works (and, most of the times, still I am), to teach me how to use the rod but I've never caught anything, to tell me how to appreciate the sea landscape but my thoughts were always far away. I was just counting the minutes to the end, thinking on what to do next and trying to say awake. And now I'm sitting here far from the sea, writing the code of a sketchy fishing videogame alone during my lunch break, making sprites of fish and rods I've never understood and thinking about how much time I've lost with my father.

But if I had known what to do, the true meaning of that moments and how I could have enjoy them, probably I'd know my father better. And this game name would be just 'Fishing'.

Plot!

Ready for the Califorina Seaside Fishing competition? You've 3 minutes for catching as much as you can! Use UP/DOWN/LEFT/RIGHT for moving the crosshair on the sea and the A BUTTON for casting the line. Use LEFT/RIGHT for moving the rod and the A BUTTON for spinning the reel. Keep the lure on the fish for a while and it will bite! Once the fish bitten, use LEFT/RIGHT for drawing the line and the A BUTTON for spinning the reel: try to contrast the fish strength while pulling it to the river but don't let it go or break your line! Good luck!

(Want to share something? You can find me on Twitter!)

Install / Add to home View game sources ...or play it online below!