NES #53: Jaws

 

Developer: Escape

Publisher: LJN

Release Date: December 1987

Jaws is one of the most important movies of all time. It solidified Stephen Spielberg's reputation as his generation's most popular filmmaker and practically invented the concept of the summer blockbuster. It's a character-based, claustrophobic movie that somehow spawned hundreds of generic explosion-fests. I am tempted to spend this review writing more about the movie than the game, but I have to be careful. Jaws the video game came out in 1987 instead of 1975 which means that it was meant as a tie-in for the abysmal sequel Jaws: The Revenge and not the original movie. Of course, LJN just called the game Jaws, so even they knew the more recent film was a stinker. There's not much plot in this early NES game, but it does have the later film's ending. I don't know if I've ever seen Jaws: The Revenge, but I doubt the rest of the movie resembles the game very much. This isn't necessarily a bad thing. An NES game doesn't have to exactly follow its source material. Jaws: The Revenge has a famously dumb plot anyway, so it was smart to strip it down. Unfortunately, they might have stripped it down a little too much.

I love a game with an overworld, so it was a bit exciting booting up Jaws and seeing all those islands to explore. Unfortunately, while the game does have an overworld, it doesn't really have a world. There are only two points of interest on the whole map. These are two anchor points that sell the items needed to take down the killer shark. The currency in Jaws is conch shells collected by shooting innocent sea life during random cutaway battles. It's very odd that almost the entire game is comprised of shooting mostly harmless stingrays, jellyfish, and snails. Did that happen in the movie? Did the characters have such an axe to grind that they wanted to take out all sea life? Were they weirdly obsessed with shells? Is that why they needed a bigger boat? Did they need room for more shells? Sorry, I started to reference the better original movie again. Either way it's an odd premise for a game.  

All this shell collecting really drags during the slow building first half. It's not a game with many choices. You don't get to pick out your own items and build your own shark killing strategy. The first item is always a completely useless shark finder. It's supposed to help you find Jaws, but since the map is tiny and he's always showing off that famous dorsal fin it is completely unnecessary. I hope you like annoying beeps. The other purchases are power upgrades that make killing Jaws easier. You can't buy two in a row at the same stop, so this drags things out even more. Somehow, I don't want to make more trips to the only place to go on the map. That's not a good sign. Jaws can appear randomly in a cutaway battle, and I do appreciate that you don't have to get every upgrade to be able to move on to the final battle. I think I would completely lose my patience with Jaws if I had to buy everything. 

The final confrontation with Jaws is one of those NES moments where if you don't know what to do it is impossibly confusing, and if you know what to do is ridiculously easy. It's the old "stab him with the boat" ending. Just line him up with the ship, use the strobe to make him jump out of the water, and then push B to make a Jaws-kabob. Sadly, he doesn't explode in this version. I will bump up a game a couple of points if it has an exploding shark. It does show his carcass sinking down into the water so that it at least something. 

Once the game gets going it does get a bit more fun. The cutaway levels get faster and somewhat more challenging, and the shells start dropping faster. I was worried that later upgrades would take longer to obtain, but this wasn't really the case. It doesn't save the overall experience, however. It took me four attempts to beat Jaws for this review, and I was certainly grinding my teeth during the first three. I hate only having two places to go, and the battles are boring. The only harm comes from being in the wrong place at the wrong time. I lost most of my lives from getting stung by a jellyfish while picking up a shell. I am sure this a more realistic death than dying in a shark battle, but it doesn't make for a very exciting game. Even Jaws doesn't put up much of a fight. He just passively swims back and forth while getting shot over and over. You'd think getting shot in the tailfin twenty-five times would get some reaction out him, but he just keeps on swimming. It's a bad sign when the game's boss doesn't even what to be there. And hey guess what, if you die at any point you get to buy that shark finder again. What fun!

Jaws is certainly one of the weakest games of the NES's 1987 lineup, but that's not to say it's a total disaster. My fourth and final attempt was entertaining enough to bump it up into the purple section. It's a little too short and easy to make that much of a negative impression, but it's long enough to not feel like a ripoff. The cutaway battles do get better, and sometimes the deaths were more from challenge than just bad luck. It's just too tiny and simple to be considered a good game. It certainly has the tossed-off feel of a cheap cash in. If you played this back in the day, it was almost certainly because of the name on the box, and I can't imagine too many Jaws fans being too enthusiastic about it. Still, I'm sure most people would rather play the game than watch Jaws: The Revenge. It comes in at 128 on the overall list, and 36 on the NES list. It's not great, but if they close the beaches and you have nothing else to do it might still help you get through the day. 

NES Quality Percentage: 25/53 or 47.16