NES Games I Beat #45: Jaws

                Jaws on NES is a game that has been critically bashed by the AVGN and several other people within the gaming community but the funny thing about it is this is one of the more beloved LJN titles that a lot of people say catches too much slack and I tend to agree with that to some degree.

                Obviously it was a movie tie in to the 1975 classic of the same name released several years later in 1987. A common misconception that LJN is responsible for creating a slew of horrible games but the trick to it is LJN was only ever a publisher and never actually developed a single game. For example Jaws was actually developed by Westone Bit Entertainment, which was most well known for the Wonder Boy series in the arcades, under contract by Atlus. That’s right, Atlus cut their teeth on early “duds” like this, Friday the 13^th, and Karate Kid, more titles for a later time.

                In terms of an objective, it’s very simple: KILL JAWS! The over world is a small ocean where you control a boat. Much like in an RPG you’ll hit random battles which will bring you to a deep underwater area where you fight sting rays, annoying jellyfish, baby sharks, and occasionally Jaws. Jaws will only show up if he was somewhere visible on the over world when the battle commenced. There’s also a shallow water segment that can be accessed by running into an enemy or Jaws near a cost. These are much harder to maneuver in and take a lot more precision. Being careful is the name of the game. You only have one hit and three lives to accomplish the kill or its game over.

                The battle segments consist of dodging enemies and taking down any you can manage to. Sometimes enemies will drop seashells which are the currency for leveling up your power bar. The other way to get these is in a plane bonus stage where you shoot jellyfish that occurs every now and then after a battle where 3 hits is equal to a shell. See, Jaws is super strong and you start at level 1. He’ll retreat after a certain amount of hits so you have to level up to around level 6-9 to be able to dispatch him efficiently.

                As you may have guessed this means a whole lot of grinding. There are two ports that you travel between to level up. At first it only costs a few shells but it increase in price every time. With every level up the enemies get a lot tougher and more devilish with their movements so the dominant strategy is have a really good run your first time around and gain about 40 shells so all you have to do is go from port to port. This is a lot harder than it sounds as spaces in the underwater segments are super tight and tricky to maneuver. If you die, you lose a power level and half your shells so it’s very critical not to. The extra lives you rack up from points barely matter until late game when you’re trying fight Jaws and even then they’re basically a cushion.

                The control takes a moment to adjust to but it’s pretty fluid once you understand the feel of how your character moves. There’s a submarine that is a Godsend and seems to show up if you’re doing well and killing a lot of enemies and this thing is nearly essential to making this game beatable. This is the only way to have an extra hit and it not only moves faster but shoots faster as well. This is good game design to reward you with an extra hit for your hard word as without it, the game would be just that much harder.

                There are only a few grips I have with the difficulty so I wanted to offer some solutions to this. First, have three hits and scrap the lives system. This would make the relentless enemies like the jellyfish so much less annoying. Second, I want continues. It’s a short game so a password or save feature would be overkill. This would allow for an easier experience, put the challenge more on you skill as a player.

                A perfect run consists of focusing long enough to grind the shells, obtain the submarine, go from port to port, and finally take on Jaws without dying and this game is tricky in this regard. It is a fair criticism of the Nerd that the game feels repetitive and it very much is. It’s essentially a strange derivative of an action RPG without a story and where 98% of what you do is battling. In this regard, it’s so easy to slip up and get hit and there’s a huge frustration curve for me in this regard. But the thing is every time I died I still hit reset and wanted to try again. There’s definitely something fun to the combat that kept me coming back.

                Once your powered up enough to fight Jaws, you can basically kill every other enemy with ease and there’s a definite feeling of power to it, much similar to being fully powered up in a side scrolling ship shooter, it feels epic until you take that one hit and get completely powered down. If you manage to knock Jaws down, the game switches to a third person segment with the boat where you have to stab him one more time with the front. Lining this up is a pain but once you do, you have 3 strobe lights to freeze him a moment. If you fail, you go back to the overworld and must fight him again. I distinctly remember getting to this segment on two separate occasions and after numerous tries dying on all my lives and having to start all over. Once you line that thing up and pierce that son of bitch though it’s a great feeling.

                As far a graphics go, it looks ok. For its time of 1987 it’s not bad, a decent amount of animation and a variety of enemies as well as solid looking backgrounds make it a bit of a washed out experience visually but it’s serviceable. The music definitely fits the tone of each section and its ok, nothing to write home about. The track for the bonus level was pretty good though.

                Overall, Jaws isn’t one of the worst LJN published titles and it actually pretty decent. The gameplay is unique and if you can get into, it’s actually a bit of fun to play a sort of action RPG shooter game like this. It’s pretty hard due to one hit deaths so there is a frustration factor at points but I never stopped playing so that says something. It’s not going to be on anyone’s top 10 NES games list but it’s a decent distraction for the price it’s worth. My friend the LJN Defender said it best “I consider the cheap LJN games like fast food, there are definitely better options to play but when you’re in the mood for 15-20 minutes of fun, Jaws is a good choice to go with.”

                Jaws for the NES earns a 6.5/10 for being a decent game with a short, unique experience.