Fishing games are weird. They’re not exactly fun, because there’s only so many ways to catch a virtual fish, and most of them involve sitting in a virtual boat or standing on a virtual pier. Outdoors Unlimited, an upcoming “outdoors RPG,” hopes to change all that, mainly by taking that idea to its most ridiculous extreme: you don’t just hunt and fish, you basically live in the woods and cook what you kill.

It’s all very Emersonian, but it makes us recall Fishing With John, a show that ran in the early nineties starring Stranger Than Paradise star John Lurie, whose take on the fishing show was almost existential and zen-like. He’d invite his famous friends on the show too, which resulted in patently bizarre episodes like the tale of Tom Waits that Open Culture relays:

Tom Waits doesn’t believe his ears when a Jamaican fishing guide tells him what time to get up in the morning: “Five o’clock?” Waits reportedly didn’t speak to Lurie for two years afterward. “I dunno why I ever let you talk me into this,” he grumbles. “It’s the most absurd thing I’ve ever done in my life.”

Crazily enough, the series was released as part of the Criterion Collection as well, which leads us to ask: If someone’s willing to put a fishing show in the Criterion Collection, when will they be willing to include a game?

-Drew Millard

[via Open Culture]