April 22, 1999
How many of you play fishing games? Not many, right? Lately I've been playing Get Bass on my Dreamcast and I have to admit that it is a great way to kill some time! For comparison's sake, I picked up Bass Rise for the PSX with the Bandai fishing controller to see how it compares. The result is that Sega is the hands down winner.
Bass Rise suffers from incredible "pop down" (the reverse of pop up) with the fish and underwater features as you reel in your lure. I guess the attraction of Bass Rise is that it uses models of real lures (ooh, ahh) by Megabass. It promises "3D Real Water" and "The Gods Dimension" and features sort of a "Bass-agotchi" Pocketstation mini game. After a great water rippling title page and some FMV of a guy fishing with Megabass lures (accompanies by a heavy metal soundtrack), I was really dissapointed with the simple polygon models and not very entertaining game play. This seems to be more of a simulator so you get false strikes (the bass bites the lure but is not hooked), any you are not subject to a time limit when fishing. The reall killer for me is that the Bandai fishing controller (which looks better than the DC fishing controller) is too sensitive to movement so you often end up casting before you have picked your spot.
Get Bass is an arcade conversion so it is not really meant to be realistic. It is much easier to catch fish and you even get bonus lures such as one shaped like Sega executive Yukawa Semu. All the voice overs are in English so there is no real problem about the Japanese screen text. The consumer mode gives you more time and locations, but the timer can be really annoying, especially if you are reeling in a big one when the time runs out. The graphics are very good with no real camera problems or polygon errors. Get Bass requires more than 50 slots on your VMS to save your progress, but does not have a mini-game that I know of. The DC fishing controller is rather bland looking, but feels sturdy and has decent action.
Both controllers vibrate when you hook a fish or while you are reeling one in. If I could improve on either controller, it would be nice if the reel crank had more tention when you were reeling in a fish. I want to actually feel the struggle of landing a 9 kilo bass!
April 20, 1999
Fans of the Front Mission series have probably read that the basis for the upcoming FM3 is the conflict between the forces of the OCU and the USN in the year 2112. The OCU represents the nations of Oceana including Japan, Australia, New Zeland, Indonesia, etc. USN includes all the nations of North and South America and the Caribbean islands.
Based on previews in Famitsu PS, it would seem that the "hero" characters of the game are from the OCU while the "enemy" is the USN forces. Could it be that FM3 actually represents Japanese right wing nationalist sentiments? Is Square suggesting the possibility of a another war in the not too distant future between the US and Japan?
Perhaps I just need to stop playing so many games and get more sleep.
April 14, 1999
Long time no update! No real news except for adding an MSX page and updating the Playdia page. To all those of you in the US, happy Tax Day. Since I am an American citizen, even though I live abroad I have to pay taxes as well. I hope you all get great refunds.
April 1, 1999
"The Japanese Diet (parliament) unanimously voted to replace the national anthem "kimigaiyo" with the Super Mario theme song. Prime Minister Obuchi commented "It's about time!" as he boarded the shinansen bound for Kyoto to meet with NCL chairman Hiroshi Yamauchi. Even the firebrand oposition leader Naoto Kan seemed pleased with the news, commenting "Just like Luigi, we will turn off the lights on Mario". While most reporters were mystified by this comment, die hard gamers could clearly see the reference to the Famicom Disk System start up screen and Kan's own ambitions at the Prime Minister's seat."
--Nihon Jodan Shimbun News Wire
We don't have April Fool's day here in Japan, but April1 is the start of a new fiscal year for almost every company in Japan. In the next few days we should see the year end profit/loss statements for companies through out the nation. Just how much of Sony's operating profit came from Playstation related business (37% at last count). How did the Dreamcast launch affect Sega Enterprises? Will Compile live to release more versions of Puyo Puyo? We'll see in the coming weeks.
The US$/JPY situation is improving.
This will brighten the balance books of Nintendo and Sony since both are
deriving large ammounts of their operating profits from business in the
US.