LJN went through some movie licenses, and with this being October, I'd cover one of the horror titles. But where to choose? From Nightmare on Elm Street, Friday the 13th, Jaws and maybe Beetlejuice?  Most of their games were pretty bad, but Jaws is quite playable, if dull and reptitive. This is not the Jaws movie storyboard here. You are not Quint, or any of the crew. The shark is still Jaws, and its still terrorizing a coastal area.  You are just an unnamed diver, who travels out with a boat and a wetsuit to finish the giant great white shark off once and for all. Your weapon of choice is a spear gun, although you also get rare opportunities to use depth charges from your plane or boat, and command a TINY submarine (it is yellow though, but tough to live in).

You start on a small shoreline map, piloting your boat around the atolls and sandbars.  You will randomly get a message you have hit something, and then go into an underwater screen where you control your diver. There are jellyfish that swim up, and stingrays that move calmly by, but there is never an actual obstruction to your ship - so its really just an excuse to shoot the marine life to get power ups. You can get three things, listed by importance. The conch shells, which act as currency, the crab, which makes your diver's speed increase -be careful not to get too many, and stars, which are just for points, but enough can unlock the submarine and bonus scenes

Jaws does infrequently interfere with your seaside scavenging. He is pretty easy to avoid, like the stingrays, but will always take off before you put more than a dent in his giant life bar, so you need to upgrade your gun.  He usually swims with smaller sharks, which are a good source of conch shells.  Only by powering up and finally removing Jaws' health meter can you play the final game mode with you in your boat, to end the threat once and for all.


Graphics: 6
The graphics are not bad, and animation is decent, but suffer from variety. You will see the same jellyfish and stingrays the entire game, no variation in color or type. You do get a slight variation in diving locations, and two identical ports to pull into (one is daytime, one is evening visual). The boat, the diver, they look pretty good. The small coastal map you troll around is tiny, and limiting in there are narrow sections your boat will not fit through.  Jaws itself can be seen when it gets close on the map, the giant fin is as big as your boat!! What the heck!? If Jaws hits your boat you start in the boat, dropping charges on it, but a single hit from jaws will force your diver into the water. Despite the damage of Jaws, you never need to make boat repairs.


Sound: 4
A very small soundtrack, and fairly boring. The Jaws theme is not well used, despite the visitations of the great white shark. The title music and the very last end of the game use the theme the most, but both versions are off.  You do get a sonar device early on, and its beeping is often heard interrupting over the nice, adventurous track that plays over the coastal map. Once into the water, you will hear a tense music, and the bonus game has its own merry jingle. The sound of your weapons sounds rather cartoony.


Addictiveness: 4
Jaws is pretty boring, both to play and to face head on. The lack of decent enemy threats to challenge you is a main culprit. When you do die, likely from a impatient decision, you lose half your shells and take a power decrease, making you have to grind even more. As is the running back and forth between the two ports and getting shells. I would score it lower, but in fact, if you know what you're doing, this game can be beaten very quickly.


Story: 2
You are a mysterious masked diver, and you apparently want to kill this shark that makes people scared to go in the water, because it tries to chew on them. The ports sell you spear gun upgrades and a sonar kit for sea shells. Commerce has devolved into barter in this beach resort. And your ending will not give you much closure either.


Depth: 4
Travelling between ports will allow you to get the sonar, which can be used to crudely track Jaws. You can continue to upgrade your spear gun by traveling between ports after that, at the cost of more shells each time.  After you get a certain number of points, you can scan the crevices along the map and sometimes find a little yellow submersible to acquire. The sub affords you an extra bit of damage resistance, it also moves very fast but also has better stopping power. The bonus stage is much like an old-school arcade game, with enemy dancing in patterns while you drop bombs on them from a passing airplane - the prize for this is more shells.


Difficulty: 3
The tedious nature of moving back and forth on the map screen, then running circles around the simple threats of the underwater section can often make you prone to sloppy mistakes, such as grabbing items that are on the sea floor or near an edge, where a jellyfish or shark can easily hit you. One hit is all it takes to lose a life, unless you have the submarine powerup, then its two. Jaws and the small sharks are not really much of a threat. The jellyfish tend to be the most problem, especially in shallow water, and sometimes take a diamond pattern, and that often provides more challenge than any other foe. Also grabbing too many of the speedy crab items can make you skate all over the place, and the controls are a bit slippery when trying to stop - causing you to wreck into something.  Probably the most difficult part of the game is the final stage, where you must attack jaws with your boat prow. This is very tricky, and requires precise coordination. If you lose this -you do not get a game over or even lose a life, you just go back to the map screen and have to whittle jaw's life down to try the final scene again. A turbo controller would be helpful, but not at all necessary to beat this game.


Overall: 4.5
This is not a bad game, but it has very little to offer. It can be beaten extremely fast, and is a good choice for speedfreaks. The lack of enemy intelligence and variety probably hurts this game the most.