Is Virtual Fishing on Steam?

No. Virtual Fishing is not distributed on Steam, so there is no Steam Charts or SteamDB player count for it. Its live popularity is tracked here via Twitch viewership instead.

What platforms is Virtual Fishing on?

Virtual Fishing is available on Virtual Boy.

When did Virtual Fishing release?

Virtual Fishing was first released on November 6, 1995.

Virtual Fishing

Nov 6, 1995SportVirtual Boy

Virtual Fishing — frequently asked questions

Is Virtual Fishing on Steam?: No. Virtual Fishing is not distributed on Steam, so there is no Steam Charts or SteamDB player count for it. Its live popularity is tracked here via Twitch viewership instead.
What platforms is Virtual Fishing on?: Virtual Fishing is available on Virtual Boy.
When did Virtual Fishing release?: Virtual Fishing was first released on November 6, 1995.

About Virtual Fishing

Virtual Fishing is a Sports game, developed by Locomotive Corporation and published by Pack-In-Video, which was released in Japan in 1995.

Summary via IGDB.

Virtual Fishing on Wikipedia

Virtual Fishing is a 1995 fishing video game developed by Locomotive Corporation and published by Pack-In-Video in Japan for the Virtual Boy. The player participates in a series of fishing tournaments at various different locations by catching a large number of fishes with a high average weight under a time limit. Its gameplay consists of two segments and features two additional modes of play.

Source: Wikipedia (text under CC BY-SA 4.0).

Game details

Platforms: Virtual Boy
Developer: Locomotive Corporation
Publisher: Pack-In-Video
Game modes: Single player
Themes: Non-fiction
Official site: Visit

Details via IGDB.

Collector value & authenticity

Virtual Boy · PriceCharting sold data · Verified 2026-08-22

Loose

$91

Complete

$129

Sealed

$170

Release record

Territory	Date	Serial	Barcode	MSRP
Japan Pack-In-Video Co., Ltd	6 Oct 1995	VUE-VVFJ-JPN	4988110700019	¥5,800
North Americacancelled THQ Inc.	Fall 1996 (planned)	—	—	—

North America (cancelled): THQ had this scheduled for autumn 1996 — the same window as Bound High!, Zero Racers and Dragon Hopper, and the quarter Nintendo discontinued the platform in North America.

Community score: 48/100
Region: JP
Released: 1995
Authenticity: Med

On Nintendo Switch Online (Japanese service only) since May 14, 2026 — the cartridge is now a collectibleMedium counterfeit risk

Virtual Boy prices, all games & how to spot a fake

A fishing game you experience through a headset that tires your eyes in twenty minutes. On Nintendo Classics in Japan only, so for a Western player the cartridge is still it.

It rates among the lowest on the platform, and the score is defensible: a fishing sim is long stretches of nothing punctuated by a reeling minigame, experienced through a device actively hostile to long sessions. The genre and the hardware fight each other. It sits in the middle tier of Japan-exclusive prices: a required purchase for a complete set that will not hurt too much.

It stopped being a holdout on 14 May 2026 — but only in one hemisphere. Nintendo added it to the Japanese Nintendo Classics lineup in the same update that brought Jack Bros., V-Tetris, Space Invaders, Virtual Bowling and Vertical Force to both regions, and left this one off the Western service. Whether that is a rights question or a translation question, Nintendo has not said. The practical consequence for a North American or European buyer is unchanged: short of a Japanese account, the cartridge is still the only way to play it, and it is the only Virtual Boy title where that is true because of a regional decision rather than a licensing dead end.

How it was made

Developed by Locomotive for Pack-In-Video, by most of the staff who had just finished V-Tetris. Locomotive — Kyoto, founded May 1987, headed by Hiroshi Okamoto — made three of the Virtual Boy’s twenty-two games: V-Tetris, this, and SD Gundam: Dimension War, plus an unreleased Virtual Gunman for Victor. That makes it the most prolific third-party developer on the platform, ahead of T&E Soft’s two (Red Alarm and Golf).

All three Locomotive titles share a display-palette behaviour distinctive enough that Virtual Boy emulator projects track it as one bug class, filed against “Locomotive games” by name — a studio fingerprint visible thirty years later in how the games render.

What the press said at the time

Weekly Famicom Tsūshin #356	1995	19/40
VB Memorial Guidebook	1997	67.5/100

Famitsu's 19/40 is 47.5 on a 100-point scale, so the two Japanese sources sit 20 points apart. A real split, though not the library's widest — V-Tetris's 21/40 (52.5) against 12.5/100 is a 40-point gap.

Cartridge & preservation record

Cartridge ROM capacity 8 megabit (1 MB), measured from the preserved cartridge image.

Cartridge data from the No-Intro preservation database (metadata only — names, sizes and checksums, no game data).

Worth knowing

THQ had this scheduled for America. A North American release was planned for autumn 1996 and cancelled — the same window as Bound High!, Zero Racers and Dragon Hopper, and the season Nintendo discontinued the platform in North America.

Before you buy

Medium risk — priced high enough to be worth faking, obscure enough that few buyers know the reference. Check the label against Planet Virtual Boy's scans. This cart saves to battery-backed SRAM on a soldered CR1616 cell that is now over thirty years old; if saves vanish at power-off that is the battery, not the game.