Playing every PS1 game - Beyblade, Big Bass Fishing, Bishi Bashi Special, Black Dawn

A few short ones today. Only one is all that good, and there’s not much to say about any of them really.

Beyblade

Not growing up with satellite television meant that my exposure to Japanese and American anime-merchandise phenomena mostly passed me by, aside from the odd episode of Pokemon on SM-TV Live and Digimon on CITV afternoons. So I don’t know much about Beyblade, except knowing that just looking at the concept you sense Transformers-levels of shameless conditioning of kids to shake their parents down for expensive bits of plastic. Not just the one, either, as you need two of these edgy spinning tops to actually play the game, and of course the cheaply-made moulded plastic ‘stadium’ is basically a requirement to get the proper experience [OK, that’s all I know about Beyblade].

This first battle will be contested by, like, these two guys, or whatever.

The game manages to be worse than you imagined. It’s like they had an idea for a Beyblade game, started putting it together, then got bored a few weeks in and decided “Forget it, good enough” and pushed it to publishing.

Wow?

You create a character, choose a starter ‘blade’, embark on your journey to become the beyest blader in Beybladeville…and then that’s it. The game is over, there’s nothing more to it. Honestly, the actual gameplay is pressing a single button - to launch the spinning top into the arena. You then watch for a few seconds as it bips about, bouncing off its opponent once or twice, and then one of them randomly will fly out of the arena and lose. Well done, you’ve won/lost.

Yawn.

The game doesn’t get any more complicated than that. You just repeat those ‘battles’ over and over, slowly generating in-game cash with which you can buy new parts for your cheap plastic toy. But what’s the point? There is no game. Terrible.

Kept my attention for: An hour
Did I finish it?: No
Overall: 2/10

Big Bass Fishing

I’m sorry, we’re on the letter B and I’m already fed up of fishing games.

Awe-inspiring underwater scenes.

With Bass Landing, despite it not being all that fun, you could still see there was a sort of ‘by-fishermen-for-fishermen’, enthusiast vibe to things. All that seems rather absent here. There’s no lengthy ‘training’ game mode where a leggy anime woman playfully admonishes you for struggling with your tackle, no fiddling around with a choice of cast options, no funky music. No, it’s more like a cut-down version of Action Bass, where one has to wonder whether the only goal was to put this picture in front of you as often as possible:

A serious fishing game for serious anglers.

Yeah amazing, we’re lure fishing in a swamp as an attractive blonde woman. Just like in real life.

Kept my attention for: Half an hour
Did I finish it?: No
Overall: 2/10

Bishi Bashi Special

For one reason or another, I always thought this game was a lightgun game. Thinking harder on it, I was probably confusing it with Point Blank. I can sort of see why, as both games share the same overtly-and-unashamedly ‘whacky Japanese non sequitur’ tone.

Did you ever watch Banzai on late-night Channel 4?

Bishi Bashi Special isn’t a lightgun game; it’s a party game. Obviously, I’m playing on my lonesome so won’t get anything like the intended experience, but I can tell this would be a pretty fun game to play with a few beers in your university student digs.

Dodge cats, poultry and barrels to complete this minigame.

There are something close to 100 mini-games, and they’re all over in under a minute or so. They’re very, very ridiculous, and usually involve either quick-button-entry challenges, simple ‘skill shot’ tasks you might have found on old 2000s flash games, or simply just mashing all the buttons together as fast as you can.

Just bash the buttons to shake the soda can and send it into orbit when you open it (seriously).

It’s refreshingly simple and stupid. Each stage has a minimum score you need to make, otherwise you’re out of the game. You’d probably need the PS Multitap and four controllers to get the most out of the game, as even playing with just a single friend would probably get old pretty quickly. In the right situation though it would be very fun.

Kept my attention for: Half an hour
Did I finish it?: No
Overall: 7/10

Black Dawn

Don’t make me tap the sign again, but I dislike flying games.

Black Dawn is a flying game where you gun down the evil terrorists over land sea and air in a world where 9/11 was yet to happen and everyone still lived in the Pax Americana bubble, so it’s all a bit tongue in cheek.

The first-person view, while a bit of a novel idea, means you can hardly tell where you’re going.

The controls are a bit difficult to work with, and the combination of invincible foliage and the inability to properly change your ‘copter’s height means you spend half your time painfully bouncing off trees. You complete typical go-to-point-B-to-shoot-enemy-C objectives. It’s Army Men Air Attack, but not for kids this time.

Definitely not for kids, given you can turn hapless pedestrians into mincemeat with your minigun.

Despite the dodgy draw distance, it looks pretty sleek for its time, and the framerate manages to stay at a playable level. Not much else to say about it, though.

Just float in front of it and shoot; it doesn’t fire back.

Kept my attention for: An hour
Did I finish it?: No
Overall: 5/10