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Saturday, January 22, 2011

Jaws (1987)

Jaws
Oh why hello there audience! So how was everyone's Christmas and New Years? Yeah mine was awesome too! Oh, how did you hear I had my birthday over break? That's kinda stalker-ish of you... What?! You think I'm trying to be funny to avoid the fact that I haven't posted in over a month? How absurd of you audience, why would I ever do that? Anyways, let's get on to the game.

So Jaws is just one of those movies that everyone sees, one of those prominent horror movies that will scare kids out of the water for months at a time. Now I don't know about you audience, but I've noticed a trend in video games made after movies... they are terrible. So I went into this game not expecting a whole lot, but I kept hope thinking, "It's Jaws, it can't be that bad."
Really? That is Jaws? The biggest great white ever?

Game Commentary: So when you start the game, you begin on a boat in a port. You sail around until you "hit something" and decide to dive down and check it out, but when you go down, there's nothing there except jellyfish and stingrays which kill you instantly if you touch them. This is the game's way of getting you to collect the shells, which are then used to upgrade your boat. After a while, Jaws appears; this means that the game can be beaten within 10 minutes. After you shoot him until his health is down, you have to spear his heart. After that, you fly away on a plane and the game is over. And that's the game.

The sequences where you're underwater can get pretty intense (there can be 6 sharks coming after you while jellyfish are floating up at you). On top of that, you have to collect the conch shells. Then after that, you get to play a "Bonus Scene" which is impossibly hard for me. I don't know if I just had awful timing or if the jellyfish were just exceptional at dodging my bombs... wait why was I dropping bombs on jellyfish in the first place? Oh yeah, I've been playing so many current gen games that I forgot NES games don't have to sense! Oh I'm only joking, but seriously though, bombs are a little overboard...
The traders in the ports apparently accept shells as payment


What I Loved: This game was really entertaining. The scenes underwater were really fun and would occasionally get extremely intense leaving me with the "How in the world did I manage to get out of that without dying" feeling I've felt so often playing these games. I wouldn't say the gameplay was awesome, but it was definitely entertaining.


What I Hated: It was really short (I've heard of people beating it in under 5 minutes). Now I know why developers made games (like Contra) so hard! If they didn't, the games would be over in a ridiculously short amount of time. Also, it may just be a small personal gripe, but shouldn't Jaws be more... I don't know... menacing looking? In the game, Jaws is barely double the size of your diver, when in the movie he is ginormous (only made up words can describe his size).
I can never get these bombs to kill those jellyfish

General Impression: I actually enjoyed this game a lot as a break from the more intense games I've been playing lately (Fable, Black Ops, Burnout 3, Super Smash Bros, etc). But that being said, it only lasted me about 20 minutes before I beat the game, and once I beat it, I had no real interest in replaying the game. I could barely imagine paying full price for a game nowadays and only having 30 minutes of gametime tops. I'd say that it wasn't necessarily a terrible game as most made after movies tend to be, but it was by no means a very good game.

17 comments:

Bryan White said...

Yes, games based on movies, especially on the old NES, are usually terrible. Mostly this is because they made the game to tie in with the marketing of a movie, or they expected it to sell because it was based on a famous movie. Think about it. If you make a game called Legend of Zelda, no one knows what the heck that is, and the game actually has to be good for people to buy it. But when Dick Tracy was the big blockbuster of the summer, all they had to do was take a big digital dump in a box and kids would still be whining to their parents to buy it.

Con Queso said...

What? Movie/show-licensed games on NES were MUCH more likely to be fun compared to most movie-licensed games today! Duck Tales, Chip and Dale, Batman (Awesome music to boot), Tiny Toons Adventures, and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles just off the top of my head. Of course there will always be the quick and dirty cash-ins like Karate Kid and Dick Tracy, but the ratio of good to bad was WAY higher.

shaurz said...

You see that rainbow logo? LJN is infamous for bad games.

Ryan said...

Cheddar, I will definitely make sure to check out one or two of those games next. The only really good video-game-from-a-movie adaptation that I've played was Goldeneye 007 and all the other ones were pretty terrible

Kev D. said...

Seaquest on the Atari 2600 is/was WAY cooler.

Christine said...

Chip and Dale was a fun game...despite the fact that my brother and I can beat it in about an hour.

Unknown said...

I think one of my favorite NES games was Friday the 13th even though no one in my family could figure out how to beat it.

Sick Daddy said...

I remember this game quite vividly. I was crazy short. I beat it several times before taking it back to Toys R' Us two days later.

Unknown said...

i love old games but this is a little to old for me lol but much love for the original

Unknown said...
This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
About a game said...

jaws is a nice game to play. Many time i play this game in my friend's house. We both enjoy to play this game.

Unknown said...

Haha, loving this blog. A lesson in gaming history!

Wszystka alkoholowa Poznań - Esperal Poznań said...

Its so cool game, i install emu and always play. windows live should sell legal this game, whill be so cool

Unknown said...

It reminds me about xbox live gold prijs

Unknown said...

I remember playing this several times as a kid. It was one of the only games I owned for NES at the time, and I enjoyed it thoroughly~

Unknown said...

Wow... I was handed a Minecraft Upgrade Code and it redeemed! You get it completely free from http://minecraft.cardcodes.net
Read more at http://minecraft.cardcodes.net/#dWOJ8Zw3JR7UqHAX.99

nata said...

interesting game
dragon ball

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