Sonic Adventure DX – Big The Cat – Make Fish Reeling Process 3 Times Easier

Quick guide on how to make reeling fish WAY easier and make getting A rank on all stages relaxed.

Guide to Make Reeling Fish Way Easier

What is that secret that noone (I hope) covered yet?

Well, basically, the game runs cutscenes at 30fps. This fact made me think about some game mechanics being tied to your FPS value (which was common for game of that era). Then, when I started trying to get all A ranks in Big’s Stages, I felt that fishing line tension fills way too fast and decided to lock my fps to 30 for an experiment, and guess what – now reeling the fish was not filling tension bar as fast. After such a discovery I went even further and locked my FPS to 15, and now the reeling was just a breeze.

Look at the video comparsion of 15fps vs 60fps. At the 34 second mark I could easily stop reeling when line was inches away from breaking from tension because of 15fps, while at 60fps game gives you almost no reaction time.

Do I need to alt+tab every time I catch a fish to lock/unlock my FPS?

No, absolutely not. You can use MSI Afterburner with RivaTuner (they usually come together) to make a hotkey for limiting your FPS.

As soon as you see “HIT!” on your screen and fish is on your hook – just press whatever button you set for limiting your FPS and press it again when fish is in your hands (o-o-o-r if you broke the line and restarted the level…). 15FPS is optimal since the game… uh… the FISHING mini-game is still perfectly playable and also slows down the tension-bar fill speed drastically.

Are there any cons of doing that?

No, absolutely not!

SA1/SADX, unlike SA2, doesn’t slow down or speed up when your FPS is not exactly 60, so you will not experience any troubles during gameplay.

Is that cheating?

You have to answer that to yourself. This is a singleplayer game, play it in such way that gives you fun. Personally I got tired of this god forsaken fishing in game about high-speed platforming and just wanted to grab my emblems to get all the achievements.

Does low FPS affect anything else?

I don’t know, I haven’t tested anything besides fishing. It could, but It would probably be some minor things that dont affect the gameplay much. You can try and experiment.