Retro Game of the Day! Fish Dude

Retro Game of the Day! Fish Dude

Fish Dude by Sofel, for GameBoy, released 1991. I love this game!


Yes.. Fish Dude, we are actually at the point on Retro Game of the Day where it is necessary to review games of the likes of what you see before you now. Hey, they can't all be Casltevania's, you know?


Jokes, aside, Fish Dude was an early release for the GameBoy. It was one of those games that you saw advertised in the ass-end of GamePro magazine and thought "oh come on. Who is gonna buy this." The name was ridiculous, the screenshots didn't look the least bit compelling, and the box art was abominable to say the least. And yet - when you had a choice between Fish Dude, Daedalian Opus (that was the rename for America!), and Cyraid, otherwise... Kwirk the Chilled Tomato (or.. Boxxle!) I guess your options were pretty limited already.

So that all being said, what's a fish dude to do then? I am not just featuring it today to make fun of it - the game involves you controlling a fish, and you can swim in any direction (which actually feels really nice). Your action button lets you eat, and this is the entire goal really. You just eat stuff, particularly other fish who are smaller than you. The catch, if you will, is that larger fish will try to eat you.. so watch out!

And that's pretty much all there is to this game. Eat, survive, grow. Eventually you grow to the size of the fish who tried to eat you, and you are eating fish who are the size that you started out at, when the game begun. Turnabout is fair play! It's a small pickup-and-play affair, one which never made any kind of mark (for reasons which should not be surprising) but the way it turns these normal conventions of gaming on their head (in such a bone-simple way) is actually quite interesting.


Not much else to say about Fish Dude - I laughed when I heard of it, then a good 10 years later I randomly downloaded the thing and it somehow found its way onto my original GameBoy flashcart. I booted it up for kicks during a tour through Europe to kill time waiting for the rail, and then.. oh.. what's this? I couldn't put it down, I played the whole thing clean through 'till the end! FD is a good little game, unique, despite it's name I completely enjoyed it and would rank it up there with any other simple but good diversion the early GameBoy stock has on offer.