The Black Bass

Developer: Hot B
Year: 1989

I guess the question is, "What part of my hatred for this game is actually the fact that I hate fishing, and what part is the fact that the game itself sucks?" And the answer, when you think about it, is, "Stop it. Shut up. Black Bass is a piece of crap, and I refuse to get stuck in some discussion about what it means for a game to suck over this garbage."

So, yeah. The Black Bass is bad. You won't like it. The graphics are terrible -- I mean, we're talking about SMB3 era, and the majority of the time your screen will be filled with nothing but this light blue and a featureless blob on a string. The noises, I mean, that's what they are -- noises. There's no music (except at the title screen, where the song is actually pretty good).

And the gameplay? I mean, have you ever played Waiting for the Bus that Might Not Come for the Sega Saturn? No, you haven't, because that's a shitty premise for a game, but it's exactly how you play Black Bass. Except you can sometimes make a black blob show up, or not, by wiggling, or not wiggling, your lure back and forth or up and down, and then it will swim away, except when it doesn't, and there's no way to guess when or if any of this stupid crap will happen, and the best part is that WHO CARES, YOU JUST CAUGHT A STUPID FISH. Go to hell.

Rating: 2/10 Phoenix Wright made me like lawyering. Black Bass sucks at fishing-like-making.
Best Moment: The song is really, genuinely good.
Advice: Don't use the silver pencil lure. It doesn't work. I don't know if the other lures work, and I don't care. But stay away from the silver pencil.