Fish & Play Aquarium announced for Switch

There is a Japanese arcade game called fishing spirits which was ported to the Switch in 2019 and then released in the west as ace angler. It now has a sequel, and it’s not your average fishing game.

Don’t think about it, say Sega Bass Fishing here. This is not intended to be an accurate representation of the sport/pastime of fishing. Instead, here you have to imagine that Capcom’s monster hunter Series took over the leadership of animal crossing

Aquarium.

This is the debut trailer for Fishing Spirits: Fish & Play Aquariuma new game announced in today’s Japanese edition of the Nintendo Direct presentation. It was not mentioned in the western presentationSo maybe the game is only intended for Japan, but then it’s a given Ace Angler release who knows.

It sure looks like it some. Sometimes you just chill and fish for seemingly reasonable regular fish. Another time you pull adult great white sharks out of the water? And fight giant squid? And compete for your life against a giant cannibal in what appears to be a cartoonish blood sport?

Then there are mini-games and aquarium stuff (you can keep caught fish to inspect later) and all that animal crossing-style avatar thing that links to a story mode and some gacha machine elements and look I’m not sure what else is lurking in this code but the giant ice covered whale looks very cool.

I’ll say this now, I’ve never played a game in this series, and I don’t know if anyone else here has; I’ve searched our archives and couldn’t find a single mention of the arcade or switch version ever mentioned on the site. But I really want to play this, so I’m hoping it gets a Western release sometime in the future.