gamers love a fishing minigame
but they couldn't care less about a fishing game
this has been thrown into stark relief by how very little the 8-/16-bit era of fishing games is documented even slightly accurately. So many of the sites specifically for cataloging games can't even seem to agree on the titles of the games.
i guess nerds just don't give enough of a shit, so nobody bothered.
i find lately, as i explore more oddball genres and corners, this effect starts to rear its head more and more.
it pops up a lot in sports games. I mentioned one of the Ken Griffey games the other day, and it's not even the only one in the series that's just been wildly neglected. the original Ken Griffey Presents for SNES was apparently considered one of the best baseball games ever made ... but here in 2024 I can't play season mode on an emulator because of a crash bug.
there are RPGs that only released in Japan to an audience of 4 people that have thousands of words written about them, full translations, custom code buried inside emulators just to make them run better ... but here's a successful, critically regarded Nintendo published title, and it doesn't even fucking emulate properly in 2024.
Just not the right kind of nerdbait, I guess.