Jaws - NES Game Review



Jaws - Nintendo Entertainment System
LJN Toys LTD
November 1987
Review originally published March 3rd, 2017

*My video review for Jaws
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-Note; If screenshots look odd (interlace effect), try zooming in/out.

Jaws is a game where I feel most reviewers are guilty of being lazy, taking the easy way out. It’s from LJN, need we say more? Of course it deserves to be crapped on, to hell with giving the game a fair look. There’s amusement to be had! Who cares if Computer Gaming World said the graphics, animations, and gameplay are all first rate! Real reviews from real magazines don’t matter in the age of the YouTube comedian reviewer!
^ Starting off, main gameplay screens

Of course I don’t share those thoughts. I like the game; I always have. I never even owned it back in the day! It was a game I would play at my friends house quite often however. This friend had an NES collection we would all be envious of. There were no shortage of games with which I could have chosen to play. Yet many times I would come to this very game. You can’t say it’s about a kid with nothing better to do. Over a hundred games were at my disposal and I kept coming back to this one. Because it’s good.

There’s really not too much to discuss in terms of gameplay. It’s quite self explanatory really. It’s a simple game, and there’s nothing wrong with that. You go from port to port in your ship, occasionally getting stopped randomly or by hitting Jaws himself. You are then in a side view shooter type of stage underwater. Shooting the various enemies of the sea may garner you shells which you’ll need to get an upgrade or increase your power. From time to time a bonus scene comes your way, featuring fantastic music. Shooting jellyfish from an airplane for points that will be traded for more shells at the end of the stage. This will be your primary way to get shells at the beginning of the game.
^Bonus scene, the other port, upgrading ourselves

It’s your basic addictive shooter type game. You remember Defender? I doubt many are stupid enough to discount a game like Defender as anything but good regardless of their personal opinion on the game. There are certain things that are empirically correct; ones opinion on the matter can’t really change this. Is the game not close enough to the movie for you? It’s a horror movie with a killer shark that eats humans, you chase it across the ocean and beaches? Pretty damn faithful to the source material as far as I’m concerned. Not advanced enough for the Nintendo Entertainment System? You mean the Japanese Famicom that came out in 1984 with not the most up to date technology at the time? The game is more than pretty enough for 1987.
^We’ve hit something! Smaller sharks and the big man himself! Raising our power in port

You realize Pacman was released on the NES, right? An arcade game from 1980 that had long ago seen home releases on various consoles and computers. It was released on the NES… and it was good… Just because a game is simple or of a certain type does not make it bad. I constantly see terrible reviews for great games based on the simple ignorance of the reviewer within a specific genre of games. These are usually more advanced genres like role playing or strategy games. When a game requires a manual, you can expect terrible reviewers to make terrible reviews of these games.
^Upgrading to a submarine, ready for our final showdown with Jaws

But it’s always baffled my mind why the same people also wish to target this game. This should be the type of game they like. It’s very simple for their simple minds… Or perhaps any game that is not a platformer is automatically bad? They all act like they hate it, but there’s nothing to hate. Their emotion is fake, their words are scripted, and they are poor reviewers.
^Killing Jaws, greeted with a beautiful end screen with great music

This is a perfect game to go to when you can’t think of what else to play. If there’s not enough time to play a bigger game, then go to this one. Nobody has ever regretted time spent with Pacman, Centipede, Asteroids, Defender, and nobody shall ever regret time spent with Jaws. It’s also a fairly cheap game to get a hold of these days, so I’d consider it a must own. It’s not bad; think for yourselves and try it yourself.

My video review is quite transformative in nature; digging deeper into contemporary reviewers. It also features me on screen trying and failing over and over again to get the timing right to kill jaws. I had to speed it up I sucked so bad. But I got him! It also features dramatic reading from the games manual. Hope you’ll check it out.

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