Big Game Fishing

Year 1991. A glass of kidney tea sits on the table next to the monitor, it's raining outside, and instead of going to the water for real, I'm booting up DOS and waiting for a fishing simulator from Italian studio Simulmondo to load. At the time, it seemed like a reasonable substitute.

Big Game Fishing is exactly what the title promises — a game about fishing, specifically the bigger, sportier kind. No cozy carp fishing sessions by a pond with a thermos. This is about landing bigger catches, earning money for the next expedition, and gradually funding your hobby. Simulmondo was an Italian studio that was putting out various sports and simulation titles for PC back then, and this one fits perfectly into their output at the time — modest, without grand ambitions, but functional.

Gameplay is built on a simple principle: you catch fish, use the money from your catches to keep going and possibly upgrade your equipment. Controls are keyboard-based, as was standard in 1991, and don't make any special demands. The mechanics are basic — you wait, react to a bite, fight the fish. Nothing that would get on your nerves, but also nothing that would keep you glued to the monitor for hours. By the standards of the time, it was a decent relaxation experience; today it feels like a very stripped-down affair.

What I remember about this game, or rather what stuck with me as a feeling — it was one of the few places where a DOS game actually offered intentional slowdown. Most games back then wanted stress, reflexes, speed. Here it was about patience. That was an unusual approach at the time, and Simulmondo sold it pretty convincingly. The graphics match the release year — EGA or VGA palette, nothing dazzling, but functional. Sound effects from the Sound Blaster added the right atmosphere of water and silence. Today the game has aged mainly in its one-dimensionality — it lacks depth, variety in locations, or challenge that would keep pulling you forward.

Today Big Game Fishing will appeal mainly to those who want to spend a quarter hour with something authentically old and undemanding. It's not a gem you wait all year for, but as a short trip back to 1991 it works. You can run it in the browser via DOSBox without any problems — and if you don't mind that modern fishing games are orders of magnitude deeper, this simple piece of Italian software might surprise you with its directness for a moment.