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Ahh… the classic tale of a girl and her fishing pole. And bipedal fish.
…I’m guessing that says Umihara Kawase by the way. I actually have no idea. I can’t read Kanji.
The SNES era was a realm of trying out cute and simple ideas. Finally, we could display more than 12 different colors at once for our sprites, and likewise our levels could be quite a bit more dynamic. There were armfuls of stinkers, but there was also a wealth of really interesting designs that made absolutely no sense–but they never had to. (Ninja Baseball Bat Man is a perfect example of this, and yes I know it came out as an arcade machine, but it was still the same era.) Umihara Kawase is exactly that kind of game. It makes no sense when you think about it, is filled with images and ideas that you would relate with a stoner’s dream but works in such a snappy cute and fun way that you can’t help but enjoy it.
Each level of Umihara has an exit door (or sometimes multiple exit doors that lead to different levels) that you need to find in order to progress. In between you and the door is a slew of traps, pits, lakes, platforms and mutant aquatic life that have adapted for locomotion on land. How do you handle all of this? Why, your trusty fishing rod complete with angler lure and hook of course!
Think of it kind of like Spiderman and Dig Dug put together. You use the fishing rod to latch onto surfaces and swing around, lengthening or shortening the slack appropriately, while the fish are “caught” by hooking onto them and reeling them in. If you think it sounds fun, it is. If you think it sounds easy, it’s not.
For starters Kawase (or Umihara-chan if we are to be familiar with her) can’t jump very high or far at all, so you’ll need to rely heavily on the fishing rod for transportation. Secondly, the reel/slack mechanic has been purposefully designed to not be intuitive, so as to add a level of difficulty (and at times frustration) to the gameplay. Basically, if you want to real the line in you push down on the d-pad and if you want to let out the slack you push up. It may not sound like a big deal, but this means that while swinging over a death pit and you want to move up, you have to remember to push down, and vice versa.
Physics are fun but wacky at times as well. Sometimes you’ll try to make a jump, only to accidentally hook onto a walking fish, who then shoots over your head as your weight and momentum drag him off of his platform. It’s then possible that the line will go up and over another platform behind you, leaving you in an awkward position of being stuck in a sort of sea-saw balancing act. Of course other times you just shoot yourself off an edge. That’s probably the more likely scenario. Luckily the game gives you 10 lives because you’ll need them.
Overall, this game is pretty great. The controls are solid, the concept is fun and original and the difficulty is well-placed. At Tier 2 It’s maybe not something I’m dying to play, but for an old platformer you could certainly stand to do a lot worse. The animations on Umihara-chan are frankly adorable, the way she toddles around, pulling herself up edges and bouncing around on her fishing line. The music is equally cheerful; it makes me wish we had gotten a stateside release on the actual SNES; but hey, at least we have a Steam-side release now.
