What’s better than watching a shark attack movie? Why playing a shark attack game of course! It’s been 43 years since the release of Jaws and since then plenty of Jaws games have surfaced! Yep, everyone wanted a BITE of the action… I’m sorry.
For the Love of Jaws
Jaws was a resounding success upon release. Evidently us humans have a sick obsession with watching people get mauled to death by sea predators. Steven Spielberg’s classic movie took the thriller genre off land and dunked it straight in the ocean. Sharks are scary, badass beings. The formula worked and of course it was only a matter of time before people would apply that same formula to other forms of entertainment.
The First Jaws Game by Ideal
Released the same year as the movie, Jaws “The Game” was a creation by toy company Ideal. The game includes a plastic shark, a small rod and a pile of plastic miscellaneous sea debris. It’s sort of similar to Operation in the sense that the game requires a steady hand to win.
The purpose of the game is to carefully remove junk from the shark’s mouth using a hooked rod. Firstly, why would you do that? If a shark wants to literally eat junk, let it do so. That’s none of your business, you’re not a marine veterinarian.
If the shark does catch you poking around in its mouth, the jaws go snap. Games like these are always fun no matter how old or tough you are. Knowing that the jaws could snap at any second is actually pretty scary.
Want to know more? See Youtuber John Wild’s in-depth look at the Ideal Jaws game above.
The LJN Jaws Game on the NES
If you’ve ever watched the Angry Video Game Nerd on Youtube, you’ll know how much he hates LJN games. LJN are notorious for their line of terrible move licensed games. In Jaws on the NES, you must go around collecting shells to power up enough to fight the shark. That’s pretty much it. If you want to fight the shark right away you can, but you’ll die. You’ll also probably die of boredom playing this game so best to avoid it.
Jaws Unleashed – The 6th Gen Jaws Game
Jaws Unleashed was released in 2006 on the Sony PlayStation 2, Microsoft Xbox and PC. This game lets you play as the shark which made a nice change. To be honest, it’s a pretty average Jaws game, but it’s worth a try if you can pick up a copy. It’s become somewhat of a cult classic and nowadays will cost you more than your average game on eBay. The PS2 version is much cheaper than the Xbox version, so if you have the choice try to pick it up on the PlayStation. A PS2 copy will cost you around £10 ($13), whereas an Xbox version costs around £30 ($39).
The Final Jaws Game
Jaws: Ultimate Predator was released in 2011 on the Nintendo 3DS and Wii. This game never received a European release and was only released in America. Oddly enough the 3DS version received a different ESRB rating to the Wii version. Whilst the Wii version received a T FOR “Teen” rating, the 3DS received an M due to containing more mature content. Basically, Jaws on the 3DS was more violent. It’s uncommon to see games censored differently across consoles, especially when said consoles are created by the same company. The game received a poor reception upon release and quickly faded away into obscurity.
Will There Ever Be Another Jaws Game?
It seems unlikely but never say never. We were surprised to see the classic Jurassic Park: Operation Genesis revived in the form of Jurassic World: Evolution. So with that in mind, anything could be possible. A truly solid contribution to the Jaws game series would be very much welcome by us.
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