Jaws: What The Fuck Did He Ever Do To You?

UPDATE (2/12/2010): This post was originally on another blog of mine called Level 8-4 that I started with my roommate. When he left, I kinda stopped doing these posts. I'm proud of the two video game nostalgic reviews that I did for the site, so I'm putting it up here because it's probably better than all of the posts I've done so far for this blog, and so that I can delete the other blog. I haven't really gone through and touched it up so there might be one or two or many errors, but whatever. Here it goes. Enjoy.

Seriously. Oh, he ate a bunch of people while they were swimming around. That's what animals do when they're hungry. They eat whatever they can get their hands or paws or mouths around. You can't blame them for attacking humans when they're on THEIR turf. "OH no, I can't swim in the beach because the sharks are hungry, making my life so inconvenient. We MUST kill them for being so uncivilized."

I should digress... and I shall. I'm not a crazy PETA activist or anything of the sort, but I just never got the whole "killer shark" gimmick. You're hating on a shark for being a shark. It's like going to the Savannah and blaming the lions for eating your sorry ass when you were definitely on its home turf, being their new lunch. It's like what Chris Rock says: "That tiger ain't go crazy. That tiger went tiger!"

Such is the story of Jaws... especially the first movie, because we all know the REAL villains in that movie wasn't the shark, but the town council who was greedy for tourist money and the police chief ordering the hit on the shark.
But I'm not here to talk about the franchise... I'm here to talk about the 1987, LJN classic game: Jaws.


According to its Wikipedia page (because, you know, you can totally trust Wikipedia on its accuracy), this game is loosely based on Jaws 4, which is supposedly the least popular one out of the four movies. I've never seen Jaws 4, or if the main character kills innocent stingray and jellyfish with harpoons, but I'll take their word for it.
And unless there's supposedly a storyline for this game in the instruction booklet, there's nothing in this game that totally explains what you're doing, or who you are, other than an avid scubadiver who likes killing anything in sight.
Let me back up. You start off with the title screen, with an 8-bit version of the haunting Jaws theme. Once you start the game up, you're on a boat in the water near a symbol of an anchor, representing the pier or harbor. When you're out at sea, you randomly "hit something," much like in Final Fantasy when you go into random battles with enemies. Once "you hit something," you go down below, wearing your not-so-trendy scuba gear, and this is the first piece of evidence that you play a total jerk.
Basically, the ONLY "enemies" you encounter are jellyfish, stingrays, and baby sharks, with the occasional battles with the huge shark itself. Most of the time, you'll just encounter the jellyfish and stingrays. So what do you do? You GUT THEM WITH YOUR HARPOON!!! Or small white arrow representing a harpoon... whatever.

Why do you kill these innocent jellyfish and stingray? Well, one, for the high score, of course. But the real reason is for their treasure... in particular three items: the starfish (which gives you bonus points), a crab (which makes you go faster), and the conch shell (which is the currency in this game.) You'll need these shells so you can trade them in for a shark radar device and more POWER for your HARPOONS!

In the second or third screen of going underwater, you'll encounter a baby shark. If you kill it, it will most likely drop a conch shell, and you will most likely go into the BONUS STAGE where you... get this... drop cannonballs from a plane onto happy schools of jellyfish. The more you hit, the more bonus shells you pick up at the end of the bonus stage. This is the second piece of evidence that points out how you play a total dickwad in this game.


Seriously, this must be like dropping dynamite into a lake, killing all the fish and everything in the lake in the process. Fucking cannonball-dropping jerk.

Now, this idea came to me while in the shower, because all of my fantastic ideas come to me when I'm naked, soaped up, with warm-to-hot water rinsing me down... I guess. But it hit me... why ARE we attacking these jellyfish and stingray for the items they hold? Human greed? Sadistic pleasures? My answer: all of the above.

Anyways, you wonder why the sharks are coming after you? It's not because they know you're after them. No, it's because you're FUCKING UP THEIR ENVIRONMENT! You're killing off their food supply with no regard for the ecological food chain within those waters. And the baby shark's all... "Mama... where's my jellyfish?" And he's hungry... so he goes after you because he needs nourishment to become as big as Momma Jaws. But you KILL that poor baby shark with no remorse, you fucking bastard.

So mother Jaws goes out for revenge for your shark tooth necklace-wearing, douchebag ass. She doesn't do it JUST for revenge... she does it to save the ocean from your poaching ways. And what do you do?

You STAB IT with your boat!

You fucking asshole. And for what? A shitty ending with the cannonball-dropping plane flying off into the sunset? That's brilliant.

And as the only remaining hero of the sea dies, you can go on and continue to destroy the ecosystem by killing off those helpless jellyfish and stingrays. Great job, Dick. Great. Job.

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Okay, so honestly, my original idea for this post wasn't to go on an argument about ecology and disrupting the food chain and Man's 'sense of entitlement' to the sea or any garbage like that. Basically, I was going to name this post "I Beat Jaws In 10 Minutes... And You Can, Too" and give hints on how to beat the game in that time. But basically, the only REAL crucial advice I can give you are these three words said to me from my roommate that likes to say stupid shit:

DON'T GET DEAD!

If I remembered the HTML code to make that flash over and over again, I would, but I'm pretty lazy to do the research, so I won't. I'm pretty sure you can say that for any game you play, but this one is no exception. If you die, you will come back with half the shells and supposedly half the power as well... so if you wanna beat it in a timely fashion, don't die. So let me start from the beginning, shall we?
The stingrays move horizontally while the jellyfish, for the most part, move vertically. There's faster stingrays and jellyfish that move diagonally in a bobbing fashion. They're more threatening because it seems like they go in your direction as well. So watch out for those.

Collect as many conch shells as you can... don't even worry about the high score, unless you plan on getting one-ups and taking your time. If you're trying to beat it quick, forget it. I never really noticed much of a difference in speed from no crabs to catching one. There is a difference with two crabs, but it doesn't really matter. If you have quick reflexes, you can dodge pretty much anything in this game.

Don't stand TOO close to the bottom of the screen because you may get hit with a jellyfish if you're not use to their pattern and where they generate. And with the same philosophy, don't steer to close to the edges because you'll never know when a stingray will pop up suddenly. If you're feeling dangerous, go for it.
So you're basically going from one port to the next, alternating between the two to get the receiver and the power-ups. Here's a list of how many shells you need in order to get said power-ups.

The transmitter costs 5 shells.
The first power-up costs 3 shells.
The second power-up costs 5 shells.
The price for more power-ups continue to increase from there on.

If you see a submarine in the ocean, get it, because it'll prevent you from dying right away if you somehow get hit. I never really needed the submarine, probably because I never saw one when I did finally beat the game, but it definitely doesn't hurt getting it.

When you finally encounter Jaws, hit it as many times as you can. When it gets about two body lengths of the character away, immediately swim up or down, avoiding any stingrays that may be floating above you, and shoot it up from behind whenever you can. Wait for it to come back and repeat. I find it pretty easy to dodge Jaws... it's the other enemies in the sea that you have to worry about.

Once you get to the final scene, BE PATIENT! Don't be a little eight-year-old with ADD and use up your harpoons. Wait for it to come up RIGHT NEAR YOUR ship, following it to make sure it comes your way when it finally comes back in your direction. Wait until you see the white of his belly and THRUST! You want to be in the middle while you're stabbing. If you're a little too far to the left or right, you'll miss. So be patient... if you know you're gonna miss, don't attack. And if you are patient enough, you'll defeat him and win the game.

Of course, you don't have to follow MY advice. This guy did it under four minutes with Power 3 and a submarine... so you know, whatever.



I might not be good enough to beat it in under 4 minutes, but a patient gamer will be able to beat the game in under 10 minutes, if you care.

The graphics in this game are subpar, but it could be worse. The music's repetitive, but it's not totally bad... it's not good, either, but it's not really bad. The controls aren't too bad... unless you're maxed out on speed... then you can be a little hard to control. It is what it is... can't really expect much from LJN, to be honest. But with that said, if you wanna kill 10 minutes at work, play it. It won't hurt that bad. It's better than a lot of other shitty games out there. If you're a collector and see it for under a dollar, you can get it, but don't buy it for anything more than that, because if you can beat a game in less than ten minutes, it really isn't worth any more money, at least in my opinion. The only thing I can really complain about is the end, but, it has such short gameplay, so I guess it makes sense. That and the fact you're killing an underwater ecosystem. Murderer.

DIE, POACHER, DIE!