The Blue Marlin (NES) Playthrough - NintendoComplete

A playthrough of Hot B's 1992 fishing simulation game for the NES, The Blue Marlin.

This video shows each of the tournament's four days:

Day 1 1:14
Day 2 23:17
Day 3 39:07
Day 4 1:11:47

The Blue Marlin was the follow-up to one of my favorite NES games as a kid, Hot B's 1989 game The Black Bass (   • The Black Bass (NES) Playthrough - Ni...   ). I didn't play The Blue Marlin when it was a contemporary release, but that didn't stop me from playing it to death.

The game takes place over four days, and to move on to the next leg of the tournament, you'll need to catch the biggest billfish each day as you troll the waters of southern Florida and Hawaii for the prize catch.

There are plenty of other fish hanging about - tuna, barracuda, or even sharks can appear on your hook, and even though they won't help you at the end of day weigh-in, they are great for honing your skills. Your fisherman has three stats (strength, endurance, and skill) that improve with experience, and improving these can make the bigger catches a bit easier to make.

The game plays a lot like The Black Bass, but the fresh coat of paint and the somewhat deeper mechanics make it feel more "modern," at least as far as NES games go. The fights are more dynamic and make you feel as you have a bit more control (and I love that animation of the fisherman doing his panicked swivel!), random events can occur (a shark eats your catch, the line gets caught in a propeller, etc.), and the overhead boating scenes are way more engaging than The Black Bass's power gauge was for casting.

The graphics have seen a huge upgrade, too. The choppy water looks great in the close-up view, and there's even some parallax scrolling in the backgrounds! The cutscenes feature some great (and sometimes comically dramatic) close-ups during important moments, and the fisherman sprite's animation is smooth. The top-down boating scenes are somewhat less impressive, but they do feature some neat little animated touches, like airplanes taxiing down runways, or little stick people playing ball on a beach.

I think I still prefer The Black Bass by just a smidgen because it feels a little less casual, but I thoroughly enjoyed The Blue Marlin. Even if you have no interest in fishing whatsoever, there's a lot of fun to be had in this unexpectedly charming cart.

I just wish that my buddy would stop saying that he feels a bite on my rod. It's a little awkward.
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No cheats were used during the recording of this video.

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