Ex-Sonic The Hedgehog Creator Now Has His Own Fishing Game

Yuji Naka, former head of Sonic Team where he was responsible for many Sonic the Hedgehog games, hasn’t given up on the Wii. He has a new fishing game, Family Fishing, in the works, complete with its own unique controller.

In development at Naka’s new studio Prope, Family Fishing is more than just a fishing game (and an excuse to sell a plastic shell for one’s Wii Remote and Nunchuk). It’s something of an island adventure, letting players explore a tropical resort while snatching things from the sea, then trading them for goods and upgrades, according to a translation from Andriasang.

Naka’s more recent games include Wii games like Let’s Tap, Let’s Catch and Ivy the Kiwi?, titles you may remember a bit less fondly than Sonic the Hedgehog, NiGHTs and Burning Rangers.

Prope and publisher Namco Bandai are promising hundreds of fish, hundreds of items and a big island full of unlockable stuff, combining elements of Animal Crossing and Endless Ocean with time-tested video game fishing mechanics. At its core, this is still a fishing game, one coming late in the life of the Wii. It’s expected to hit Japan this August.

This is Family Fishing‘s fishing controller shell, which is optional, of course, but often the kind of peripheral that helps Wii games find an audience.

Family Fishing‘s debut trailer is above. Head to 4gamer for a slew of screenshots and things one might see dangling at the end of a virtual fishing pole.