081 · JAWS

• Introductions
• The Movie
• First Impressions
• Tales from the Manual
  • Fierce introduction
• Gameplay
  • MAP
    • Navigation
      • Reminds me of Pokemon Encounters
      • Not much to see
      • Where you are is how deep the water is
  • ACTION SCENE
    • Very repetitive
    • Stingrays and jellyfish. Sometimes baby sharks
    • Jaws can show up if you’re close
  • BONUS SCENE
    • Sometimes awarded
    • Timing the bombs is very strange
    • Can you actually knock out every jellyfish?
    • Remember Balloon Fight bonus scene
  • PORT
    • Buy upgrades
  • Progressing
    • Power and Strobe Lights
  • FINAL
    • First person Boat vs Jaws destruction
    • This is not as easy as it looks
• EGL (Mike, Sean, Joe, Sam)

Auto-generated transcript. Each paragraph starts with its timestamp. Speakers are not identified.

00:00 This can't be! There has never been a great white in these warm tropical waters before! Never! This is more than a coincidence. This shark appears to be possessed, as if it's hunting you down, like it's personal.

00:15 Jaws. And welcome to NEStalgia, a chronological exploration of every NES game released in North America. I'm Mike. I'm Joe. I'm Sean. And I'm Sam. Guys, today we're talking about Jaws. Wow. Has anybody seen the movie? I've seen the movie. I joke, I joke. Not in a very long time, actually. I really don't remember much about it. I have not seen the movie. Ever. No. What about anything from Steven Spielberg? I've seen a lot of scenes from the movie. Okay. Yeah. What was the movie that Steven Spielberg made before this one that was like a truck chasing a car?

01:07 Uh, Cars. Yeah, before Pixar remade it. No, no, no, no. There was a movie. Duel. Duel? Yes, you've got to check this out. Never seen Duel. Yeah, uninformed people who don't know what Duel is, you will not believe that Steven Spielberg made a movie like that and then went on to make movies like this. Interesting. It's literally just a truck chasing a car for like two hours. So Duel was really good. Jaws was really bad.

01:34 Jaws is, well they're both essentially things chasing people. Yeah, that's true. Jaws is a spiritual sequel. But then people chase things at the end of Jaws. Yes, that's true. Oh, sorry. Spoiler alert. It's amazing how much of like the movie Jaws people associate with the beach. When like that's just one scene in the movie pretty much. But it's also like that they want the, it's basically just the mayor saying we want the beach to stay open.

02:00 That's the entire like crux of the movie. Yeah, I guess. My thing with Jaws in general is that this movie, not that scary to me growing up like 20 years later than the movie. What was the, no. It scared the hell out of the movie, right? Yeah, it's the 80s. Okay, I just wasn't sure. Or 70s I think. It was 80s. No, I think it was. You're right. This is 76 or something. Yeah. I don't know why I think. Yeah, but I'm saying like 20 years later it wasn't that scary to me. But then I finally went to Universal Studios and went on the, no, yeah, and went on the Jaws ride.

02:34 I went on the Jaws ride where you're like in the boat. Yeah. And then all of a sudden the water goes on fire. And that was the first time in my life that I learned that like water can turn on fire. And I was like, what? There's oil in it or something? I was like water is supposed to protect us. Water cannot turn on fire. There can be oil on water. That's what you thought though. Yes, but you get what I'm saying is like I always thought water was the great protector of fire. And then I was like, wait, fire can set water? Yeah, I was like that's dangerous. It just changed your world view. It really did. I just remember that sticking with me. More than anything else in Universal Studios. If water is not safe. Yeah, exactly.

03:09 What is? Turns out the fire wasn't even the worst part of the ride though. Because then there's that mechanical Jaws that like comes out and bites the ship up and stuff like that. That's the sound he made. Did you do the voice acting? Yeah, it's actually more of like, it's like a quack. It's like, mwah. It's like a Waluigi thing. Yeah, it's a Waluigi voice. And then of course, Jaws 3D in Back to the Future 2. That was great. That's like the first, it's sad. That's like the thing I think of first. Wow. The Back to the Future reference. The 2015 film. I mean I saw Jaws when I was like a kid. I really don't remember it. Okay. You remember the music. Oh, of course. How does it go?

03:45 Over and over again. Okay, cool. That's good. I thought you were going to keep going. Since we're sharing like moments from our childhood and stuff, I will say that for me the Jaws theme and the James Bond theme can work into one. It kind of goes like...

04:05 Oh, what if Jaws was a secret agent? Well, Jaws is like a bad guy in the James Bond universe. But if we're going into things from our childhood, I do know that there was a time in my house that I thought that there was a guy in my basement that was like a monster and that he was going to eat me. His name was Kilio. Okay. Wait a minute, but this has nothing to do with Jaws. We're talking about Jaws. He's getting there. Oh, I thought you were just talking about things from our childhood. No, no, no, no. It's fine. Any other thoughts about the movie before we go into the game?

04:46 My basement growing up. No, no, no. It's fine. You didn't even see the movie. You can't have thoughts. I had a basement, though. You don't have to speak until we talk about the game. There were lots of spiders in the basement, so I didn't really go there. Okay. Anyway, long story short, the movie is still worth watching today. I'll uphold to that. I will say that this is a movie that's going to be good for a long time. As long as there are sharks in our ocean, which could be maybe another 10, 15 years tops. By the time this airs, they may not be. Yeah. So as long as there are sharks in our ocean, Jaws is a very relatable story.

05:13 I think that's why you're asking about why everyone thinks of the beach scene. Because that's like what everyone else, like everyone goes to the beach. Not everyone hunts sharks. Well, yeah, exactly. I don't. That was Steven Spielberg's acceptance speech for the movie when it was just, you know, like the award for anything goes to Jaws. He would just get them and be like, that was one of the motifs of the movie was that this could happen to anyone. Yeah. None of that was true. Jaws didn't even win awards. One of the motifs of the movie was sharks.

05:45 It's time to talk about gameplay. It's specifically time to talk about first impressions. I would like to say that this is our first time playing the Jaws game, correct? Yes. Any of us? This is a pretty popular NES game. A lot of people played this because they loved the movie so much that they figured, oh, I should probably get the great video game that goes alongside it. Anyway, Sam, first impressions? So my first impression was that I thought it was cool how there was an overworld,

06:09 and I kind of wanted to see how that would play out. I didn't really understand why the boat would just kind of stop sometimes and then toss me out of it and make me have to swim. But, you know, I thought it was pretty cool, and I really liked the overworld song. I thought it really gave a nice vibe. My first impression was also I was interested by all the different stages

06:30 that you would find yourself in. But then I was quickly, I wasn't as impressed when it turns out that the overworld is literally just two screens wide, and you just sort of float back and forth between two little towns. So I was just very confused by the whole thing, and that would continue on into deeper impressions.

06:54 So my first thought originally was the way that the art style looked. I thought it was a pretty polished-looking game. And the other big thing that kind of caught my attention once I kind of got to figure out what I was going to be doing in this game was that it's kind of cool, at least a cool idea,

07:13 that you're trying to, we haven't got into this yet, but the way you're playing is trying to level up to be strong enough to take on Jaws. So I thought that was cool and different. We haven't really done anything like that too much yet, or at all. And my first impression, after we got through the whole overworld and everything like that, is just when did the Jaws franchise become about collecting seashells to get stronger? And also, when did anybody in Jaws ever fight Stingrays?

07:45 That's true. Yeah. I feel like that's just the gamified part of it. I know. I'm sorry, but it's taken me out of it because you kill so many Stingrays and so many jellyfish and only like maybe four to five sharks that aren't even named Jaws. And then you kill one Jaws. Yeah, it seems like we're the monsters here, really. One Jaws. You know, when you think about, I mean, what, Jaws killed two people or three people in the movie? This is just about wrecking havoc on an ecosystem.

08:15 Yeah, and that's kind of what I want to get at, but we're going to work our way through that. But I think that was just the most surprising thing to me was like, this is the gameplay loop they came up with? It is funny. You literally bomb like jellyfish. Like you're flying over in the sky.

08:28 With deep sea charges. We're a little overkill there. They barely have like any kind of system of living, you know? And also like apparently this is just that one town that all they eat ever is Stingray and jellyfish because they couldn't think of one other, like where is anything else, right? You wouldn't kill dolphin. You would. But they would be in that ocean. Well, there's crabs.

08:50 No, but the crabs are like a bone. Oh, because you can eat crabs. Yeah, but they... You wonder why. You just swim down on the bottom and just bite into a crab. Well, yeah. You should have had to at least pull out like a crab cage. You just walk up to these crabs and collect them. That's unrealistic. Maybe they should have just turned into crab cage. I hadn't thought of the fact that this is unrealistic. This game couldn't happen anymore.

09:10 I just want to know where everybody else is. How is the ocean so blank? You could pick up a crab for sure. With your hands? Yeah. Easy. And then he bites your nose. Oh, you don't know that. No. You wouldn't call it a bite of each other. Just hold his arms. He clamps. Yeah. I just want to talk about the manual for a second because the manual had a pretty fierce introduction to Jaws that I think I wound up also reading as part of our Back to the Box. You guys decide because I read both openings. But it has like this whole thing of like, you know, the introduction. Similar to how the Goonies do it a really nice setup. So it has that whole, this can't be. There's never been a great white in these warm tropical waters before.

09:56 And then it's like, will you use the mini sub, seaplane, sailboat, or just scuba gear? It's like, you don't get a choice. You always turn the boat. Yeah. And you also have to use all of those things. And then they say, perhaps it won't even matter. It's got to matter, right? Like, it matters what you use. No, that's like a fatalist idea. Like, it won't matter because he's always going to best you. Yeah, I guess. Yeah, because then that follows up with, remember, this is some kind of unbelievably powerful eating machine you're dealing with.

10:27 Quick, grab your weapons, pack your explosives, and check your maps. Maps. I guess that's the overworld. Yeah, there's like one. That's two screens. There's no map. You could get lost, though.

10:41 It's just it. This is the ultimate Jaws challenge because this time it's not over until the only one of you is left alive. Until the only one of you? Until only one of you. Oh, I thought it was. Sorry. No, no, that's my mistake.

10:56 I don't know. I think that it's setting up a game that's much more exciting than what we're about to get into. But that's just me. Maybe I'm projecting. Can we talk? Like, were you guys excited playing this game? Were you like, oh, I'm hunting for Jaws? I wouldn't say that I was excited because I'm never very excited about tie-in games, even though this isn't so much a tie-in because it came out almost a decade before the game came out.

11:22 But when it comes to games made based on movies, I'm never too excited of what to expect because they're either going to be like sort of cookie cutter games that are based off a very basic premise. Like, they'll be just a regular shooter or just a beat-em-up or something. Or they can go into weird directions like this one kind of did. So I wasn't excited, but I guess I enjoyed the amount of weirdness that it sort of introduced.

11:57 I was kind of excited, like I said, in my initial impression. Once I realized what you were going to be doing, I thought there was a lot of really cool ideas that we hadn't had before. And just the idea of kind of building yourself up and going through this world map and doing different, almost like making yourself stronger by collecting different things and whatnot sounded very cool to me and kind of satisfying. And unfortunately, I feel like it just never got quite to what I was hoping it was going to be. No, kind of going off what Sean was saying, I think that whenever we get like a movie title

12:34 as a game, there's kind of like the cynic in me is thinking they just have a movie because they know that people will buy it. And so it can just be empty content. But at the same time, I'm also curious. I was curious just to know how they would have like an extreme fishing game, you know, how they could make that into something based on a movie. So I was curious. And sharks are cool. So I, you know, I thought maybe there could be some cool stuff in there. The best part of this game is Jaws himself.

13:00 Like they made him into a pretty like badass character with a creative way of like running into him, you know, like Jaws appeared frequently throughout the movie. Why wouldn't he show up a lot during your gameplay? Like, uh-huh. But before we jump into all of that, let's just, let's just start right at the beginning with the map, the overworld.

13:17 You're on your, what looks to me like a pirate boat, you know? Yeah. You're on like the- A sailboat. Yeah. You know what I'm saying? I'm just saying like, it has like this whole, wherever this game takes place, it almost looks like you're just cruising through the Caribbean. You know? Like you're just, there's a couple of small little islands. It doesn't look like Florida or wherever it's supposed to be. Yeah. You have like one port and then there's another port on the other side. There's only two screens for the map and that takes, that takes a few random encounters to find out. Yeah. And it's disappointing when you find that out.

13:46 But the map is, the map is what it is. There's, there's not like a ton to see. I would have liked to see more places to stop, more, more items to buy, upgrades to like your, your weapons, cause you only ever have that one weapon to shoot. What do you, what do you shoot in this game? Harpoons. Yeah. So you know, you only ever have that weapon, even if it was something cheesy, like stumble on an island that has like the golden harpoon.

14:11 Right. Yeah. That was a big thing that I feel like at first, I feel like everything we talk about during this episode, I'm going to be saying, this is something I was excited about until I realized this. Yeah. Where I was excited about, you know, when, when I first pull up somewhere and you get, you pull into like a port and you power up and I was like, oh cool. I'm going to, at one point you get like a radar detector or whatever.

14:34 And I'm like, oh, we're going to go through and like have to collect all these items that are going to, that are going to like, you know, pump us up to make us stronger. And then it's like, no, that was it. Those are the only things to collect. There's like one other thing to collect. And it's on this tiny little map. It just randomly shows up. Yeah. I feel like the map was, was just so underwhelming. The map would have been cool if there was more to discover, if there were more places to access. I will say though, that it was really cool how where you are when a random encounter or a Jaws battle takes place to, will like, will change the action scene.

15:07 I thought that was really cool. How like, if you're actually like in the ocean, it's a very deep water that you can swim all the way to the bottom and back up. But if you're in the shallows, it's a small, narrow thing. So if like Jaws happens to pop up or another shark, you have a tight corner and you're really going to struggle to, to dodge them. Yeah. And it's a one hit KO system. So every, every hit counts.

15:32 But I also want to talk about the random encounters thing. Cause I mean like, this is just a JRPG thing in general, but like, have we had a game with random encounters yet? I don't think so.

15:42 That's interesting. Yeah. And I just thought that it was very strange because the first time that it happens, it's like, Oh cool. Random encounter. What's going on? Is it a shark? Is it a thing? And then there's these stingrays that you have to shoot and jellyfish and stuff. And then the next random encounter, I'm like, Oh, what's it going to be this time? Oh, it's the same thing. Oh, this is all random encounters. Like this is what random encounters means. Yeah. You will just be running into stingrays, jellyfish, and sometimes sharks. Yes. And that's just disappointing.

16:13 You know, there was a huge opportunity there to maybe even have like some mini games, like trying to dodge all fish. Like there's like seas of fish that swim by and you have to try to navigate through them to get the treasure at the bottom or something like just for high score. Or even just having different kinds of fish in different areas.

16:29 You know? Yeah. Something as simple as that. Yeah. Instead of just having jellyfish. And that would have helped the whole map thing too. If you have like, you know, where you're in the shallows, the map is different than the ocean. Why not include different types of fish too? It just seems like a, and they could be silly fish too, like seahorses or, you know, they don't have to be like things that would actually hunt you down. Not that stingrays would. Yeah. Not that they would. You're right. I think that when it comes to like back when we were talking about just video game movie tie-ins in general, there's a, there's probably a different, there's probably another universe where the Jaws game was just the action sequences.

17:07 Yeah. And it was just that on a loop until you finally found Jaws and there was no sailing around and there was no bonus game. It was just this. Well, that's totally what the Atari 2600 version would have been. Yeah. You know, like, but I don't think that you would have needed to wait for the Super Nintendo for the upgrades we're talking about. Yeah. You know, like these upgrades could have been in this version of the game. Yeah. Similar to last week when we talked about Gotcha. Like we're not coming up with like crazy solutions. We're just coming up with practical things that would have made the games more engaging. And I think even though LJN hasn't like necessarily, I wouldn't consider this a stinker.

17:44 I would think that like LJN is definitely showing that they're not necessarily like putting all of their effort into making these games. Right. And I think even just taking, even taking the already flawed system of just fighting the same things over and over again and just making the map way bigger and having the things you need spread out across the map as like tedious as that sounds. Then it's just more satisfying to have to go through these random encounters because you're on your way somewhere.

18:09 This is, it's almost hard to like, I know we've said it's like two screens wide, but like just to, just get in your head how exactly how small this map is. That's like the strangest thing to me that they included this overworld map and there's almost absolutely nothing to it. There's, there's two ports. You can see almost the whole thing at once. Exactly. It's very strange to me. I thought that I was missing something that there must be some way to, you know, get out of this area and into the next area or something.

18:49 And then the last thing we should talk about with the map is that you can see jaws on the map and there's, there's two cool things about this. You can choose to avoid jaws if you feel like you're not powerful enough. And I do like that. It's just his little fin and stuff. So I don't like the movie, but then also if you get a random encounter in a scene that's relatively close to where jaws was, there is a random chance that he might show up in your random encounter battle. Oh, I didn't know that. I didn't touch. That happened to me. They're almost kind of like following the proximity of, or at least like some kind of spatial, spatial, spatial awareness.

19:28 Yeah. That they're, that they're focusing on that. I thought that was cool. So that's a nice touch. The one thing I liked about the way they handled jaws in general was that it sort of has this Mr. X from resident evil two or, or nemesis, uh, feel to it where you always got the, the big bad that just following you and can, and can, uh, interact with you at any time. Uh, where it, if this were a better game, I think it would actually add to a lot of tense moments. It's if you're very near to jaws and, or you, or you just hear the, uh, the pinging and Oh, maybe my next random encounter will have him. I think that it's, it's a really neat idea that I don't remember seeing again until PlayStation with resident evil two. Huh? Okay. Yeah.

20:16 No, that is, that is a good point. Before we talk about battling jaws at all, though, I would like to just like talk about the action scene and just set up how that gameplay works. Does anybody feel like they can take me through that? Yeah. I mean, it's, you know, you know what? Joe, Joe, Joe, you do it. Yeah. So it becomes a side view.

20:31 You're in, you start out in your scuba diving suit and you're really just kind of shooting at the jellyfish and the stingrays. It's really not much more to it. And I guess you go is I don't, I'm still not sure if you go for a certain amount of time or if you go until you kill a certain amount of enemies, it just eventually stops and goes away. It's all, it's all random because at low levels, if you defeat a shark, that would usually mark the end of the stage for me at least. But then also if you just don't do anything and let time continue to pass, that's a thing too, that like it allows you to, to end the level there as well.

21:06 But then there's this whole like the stingrays come from the side, jellyfish come from the top. But I didn't really feel like I needed to like watch where I was going ever. It's not difficult. Yeah. They just populate the field like a shmup. No. I do think that in this mode though, that you at least control pretty well. It sort of has that semi sluggish feeling of water.

21:27 Yeah. Um, where you can, you can do some pretty acrobatic stuff if you, if you, if you're doing it for long enough. But again, it doesn't seem like you need to. Right. But that's a good point. Actually, the fact that I didn't notice the way it's controlling means it controls pretty well. Yeah. It means that it just feels intuitive. I didn't realize this, but apparently if you press the A button, you like turn on a dime. And so it gets rid of that, like, you know, the, um, like the inertia of moving in one direction. Huh.

21:54 I don't think I realized that either. Yeah. Cause I remember I was hitting A just to see what it would do and I felt like nothing was happening. So, um, but yeah, in the manual, that's what it says anyway. Yeah. And also the crabs collecting them makes you faster. Right. Which it took me a while to figure that out. But only up to like three. Yeah. It's like, do you really need to be that much faster? You can have that in one to two random encounters and it'll be as fast as that game would possibly allow you. And that does carry over.

22:17 Oh, that's a good question. I don't know. I guess I, I guess I didn't keep track of that. The one thing I didn't like about, I mean, I didn't like a lot of things about random encounters, but I, I don't really have a good reason for why they happen at all. In the manual, they just say that random encounters happen when you hit something that's small, that's too small to be seen on the screen. But what are you hitting and why does it matter? Because you're in a boat. Uh, they're not jaws. So they're not going to hurt you. So I don't know. Yeah. In fact, none of the stingrays go out of their way to attack you. Yeah. Nothing in this game other than the sharks.

22:50 Yeah. Um, one thing we should mention too about these is you can also be in the, going back to the map on the map, you can get a little submarine power. What do you call it? The submarine? Yeah. It's called the mini sub. Yeah. The mini submarine. And then you're in your random encounters. Now you're in this mini sub, which has like bombs that kind of go in an arc. Yeah. Which is nice when you're above something or you're trying to dodge something. I think I actually found it really useful when fighting jaws. And then it also has the harpoon. I didn't think they're harpoons. They're just bullets. And they're just faster. Like a harpoon. Yeah. That's funny. Bullets. Like, yeah. Whatever they are. It also acts as like a second hit.

23:28 Because then once you are hit in the mini sub, then you go back to just scuba gear. Right. Pretty weak mini sub. Yeah. You get touched by a jellyfish and it's gone. Forget about it. Speaking of like any kind of weakness, when you run into jaws in your action scenes, you think like, this is my chance. I'm going to take down jaws like, you know, early in the game or something like that. You can't do anything to this guy. I think, yeah. When I was level one and I was fighting jaws, I think I was able to get him down.

23:58 Uh, by two little slivers of health. Okay. Before just time expired. Gotcha. Um, so I guess like, yeah, the, the power level thing needs to happen. Right. Which would explain why the random encounters need to happen in, in your game story. Yeah. You need to have those random encounters because obviously people cash in shells for power in this universe. So you would just be hunting for shells all the time. Yeah. Shells for power.

24:24 Cash for gold, shells for power. A deal with Poseidon or something. Yeah. Is this the jaws movie or an adaptation of the Pearl novel? You know, like you decide, but a baby does not get shot at the end of this one. Oof. I, that happens in the Pearl. I don't know what we're talking about. You lost me. In many schools, it was assigned to read. Yeah. Okay. So that's the action scene in a nutshell. And sometimes if you do well in the action scene, you'll get a bonus scene, which is now just more jellyfish. Yeah. But you don't control.

24:56 Sorry to break down that the bonus scene isn't really much of a bonus. But you don't get to control the ship. Okay. And the jellyfish come up in like waves of five, similar to how like a shmup might be, but they don't damage you. You can barely damage them. Right. They're actually just minding their own business. Yeah. They're minding their own business. But then you bomb them. You carpet bomb them with death charges. Yeah. From the airplane.

25:19 And like the way that the bombs drop too though, it's, it's, it is kind of weird. It's like, it's challenging. Yeah. It's very challenging. I'm actually not certain. So for those of you that can't picture it, if you've ever played balloon fight, you know, like the balloons just kind of come up and you're trying to pop them all.

25:34 That's, that's achievable. It can be done on any difficulty. It does get harder to do it. In this one, the jellyfish come up in rows of five and you would think like, oh, just drop five bombs in a row right where they are. And that'll take care of them. And I don't think it's possible to knock out all five. I do this very, very, like timing. You can change the, the rate at which you move. Yeah. No. Yes. Wow. It makes it. Did you learn that in the manual? No. Okay. I watched the speed run of it. I also watched the speed run. I was like, oh, I could have done that. Yeah. So that's how you knocked them out. That's why my, my question no longer has any bearing. I had no idea. I was on your same wrong page up until I watched that video.

26:13 Yeah. All right. That's the bonus scene. Yeah. Who, who thought of that? I don't know. Was that in Jaws? Was that happening in the movie? They bombed Jaws in the movie? Oh, that was, that was half of Jaws 2. Oh, okay. I just want to know, like, why couldn't the bonus scene be the treasure chest thing I described earlier? You know? How is there no treasure in this game? Because the movie, I mean, okay. I mean, there's a lot of things in this game are not about, are not about the movie, but definitely not treasure.

26:41 Yeah. Like, it's Goonies. Goonies. Yeah. I do like the idea, though, that Jaws is just protecting his treasure and these sailors have come out. I mean, Goonies 2 introduced a fucking mermaid that we've never heard of before, so if Jaws was guarding treasure, at least that explains him being there. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It adds some dimensionality to his character. That's not even though he's not even though he's not even though he's not even though he's not even though he's not even though he's not even though he's not even though he's not even though he's not even though he's not even though he's not even though he's not even

27:33 Thank you. Yeah. But these ports are just like these little blue circles with the anchor on the screen and they're very clearly to dock into them and then you just pull up. Right? It shows the ship pulling up into the dock. I don't know if it pulls up or if it's just there. I think it pulls up.

28:47 Oh, okay. These are the details that you need to know. This is like what's left to talk about. Right, right. But it gives you basically you cash in a certain amount of shells for a power upgrade and then you can go up to power nine and then anything after that you get strobe lights. And I know that sounds weird. But you start the game with three and it's very important to have as many strobe lights as possible because strobe lights are what give you your chance to win the game. Yes. Strobe lights are essential in this game. Essential strobe lights list.

29:16 So let's just before we talk about the final scene let's just talk about progress in this game because you have to essentially it's an endless loop of collecting shells, docking at ports, gaining power, and then finally hoping for strobe lights.

29:31 I mean this is the thing. I'm going to sound like a broken record but they must have seen when they were making this game. I really think there's a lot of stuff for a good game here but they must have seen that there's that this is that it's like an unfinished experience. It's a very small game. It should be something like you you get all the shells and you go to one port and that port is done and then there's another port far away with maybe something guarding it or maybe some way you have to get around it or even a boss battle. I mean even if it's another just harder random encounter. I mean anything. Or like a secret boss like you know like Final Fantasy has secret bosses. Like it's like the Kraken. You have to you have to fight Omega Weapon.

30:10 That's perfect. That's so good. Before you hit. Before you hit Jaws. But I mean okay even if it's not boss battles just have you can get to level nine have nine different ports and you have to find them or just have something to do. Or even when you dock in the ports maybe like the option to like chatter you know at like the local bar with people about like where they've last heard Jaws is. And then you can also like recruit them on your shit. Okay wait now we're playing Sinai with ports. I thought that's what you were going for. Well I would have said that if I was like and then you can marry like a local woman and then take over the governor. I was going to mention pirates. Sam you've been quiet. Any gameplay suggestions?

30:49 I'm trying to think of a way that you can loop this to make it like an endless arcade experience because I feel like there's some way to do it that way as well. You know or have it like two player where people are like fighting for ports to get stronger. I'm not exactly sure how it would work.

31:05 Again it's not I mean you could have somebody play as Jaws but that's I mean. I feel like that would be pretty easy though. Yeah. This game is pretty easy. We've talked about all the different stages of play up until we haven't talked about the final stage but the fact that I beat this game. I beat this game. You're right.

31:25 is astounding because I don't think I've beaten any of the other games if they I mean at least like if they loop I don't consider that beating because like obviously I just played the beginning part of the game. But I couldn't beat Castlevania. I had to stop. I had to stop fighting Dracula. Yeah. But I almost beat that one. I beat this game. I pretty much I came very close to beating this game and I'm sure we'll get into what happened when we talk about the final scene. But something happened and then I was just like all right I'm not doing that again.

31:57 But you know to mention that I beat this thing I mean like it was rewarding to feel like I beat this in a way but the problem is. It was just too small and short. Wait but also the only reason why you beat this was because you grinded to hell with the shells and then just had the appropriate power level. Yeah. If you had to do like a level one Jaws run don't do that first off. I don't think you can. You can but it's like it's like 10,000 hits. I was level four.

32:23 It took a while. It wasn't that far. I think the game will just say okay you're done and then because I mean I think it's a timer thing. Wait but no I'm saying just Josh's health regenerate though? Josh's health does not regenerate. It does. Yes it does. When you're not in the screen with him. It goes back to full. It slowly starts to go back so if you catch him right away it might not be all the way back.

32:42 Gotcha. Okay. See so I don't remember that because I did at level one break him down to the two and then I ran to him pretty shortly after that and he still had the two down. Yeah. I think if you get into another random encounter beforehand I think. Gotcha. Okay. So maybe that's what it was. But yeah obviously once after that like after I realized like oh this isn't worth it I just completely avoided Jaws altogether using the radar thing.

33:05 And just grinded to power nine and then just wrecked havoc. In the speed run that Sam and I watched I think it was the same one. Uh huh. I think he got to level two or maybe even. I think three. He got to level three. Yeah. Uh huh. And he got the boat. Not the boat. He got the mini sub. And then he just went and found Jaws. He didn't get any more strobes or anything.

33:30 Uh huh. And it was it looked pretty easy. Yeah. He just. Yeah. Did you guys use the mini sub to fight Jaws? I didn't. I was. I didn't even try without. I was just like. Oh wait no I was the mini sub. I just didn't use any of the uh the bombs because I didn't know I could use them. See being on power nine you really don't need the mini sub at all. Yeah. I played the game almost as if you were like a god. You know like you're the scuba god you came down there.

33:55 I can't remember how many exact shots it was but it was not many. Yeah. It wasn't like it wasn't like one hit equals one bar but it was pretty cool. See for me it was a. It wasn't. Yeah. No. It was a little bit of a time consuming battle but you know it was for me it was just shoot at him as he's coming at me because he doesn't really do that much. He swims back and forth. Yeah. Swim at him as he's coming at me and then when he gets too close to me go over him and just drop the bombs on him and then turn around and shoot at him as he's swimming away like over and over again but. Yeah. It wasn't too bad. While he does try and aim for you if he misses he's not too like mad about it. I mean he's a shark. He's not that smart.

34:35 He just continues on. I guess like even if you left for a while and then came back to him he doesn't know you're the same guy from earlier attacking him. He'd be like what's up with everybody attacking me? And once he gets off screen he turns around there and he's like oh where'd he go? He turns around and then he starts coming back and passes you again and turns around and he does that over and over again.

34:54 Sean? Yes. What happens after Jaws' power level is completely extinguished? Well the game sort of freezes up for a second and his power bar will flash for a little while and then you get transported to the final scene which is another unique viewpoint which is kind of like first person from the mast of your ship and you just see him in this faux 3D. I think it's the same kind of like 3D we've been seeing in like racing games. He's coming up towards you and you have to time a strobe so that he sort of breaches in front of you and then you have to time just ramming your ship into his chest.

35:37 Yeah. And then if you do that and it's kind of a tight window of opportunity there then you win the game. You just gotta do it once right? Just do it once. Just once. So that's where I was. I thought that when I was hitting the strobe when he was coming out of the water that was because I was hitting him. Didn't realize I had to then ram him.

35:56 Yeah. So then afterwards when I only had 3 strobes afterwards when it stopped and I would have to go fight Jaws again that's when I realized what you had to do and I was like okay I get it. Yeah. I'm not going to go fight Jaws again because it took me so long because I was only level 4. So I was like alright. So I stopped and I just watched the ending on YouTube. That's the real problem with the regeneration system is now you have to spend time to get some strobe lights and he's going to regenerate and you're going to have to play this whole game again. You're going to have to start and get zero essentially.

36:23 Sam did you get to the final scene? I did not. That's okay. No no I was just wondering. But I did watch it on YouTube to watch. And what was your general opinion of it? Well the speedrunner was really good at it but I don't know. It seems like it kind of it's weird because there's nothing really preparing you for that or you know guiding you to have to have any idea of what to do. Yeah I'm conflicted too because it's really cool that they built out this unique final boss fight thing that's unlike anything else in the game and has a pretty cool way of dealing with like making Jaws feel big and using that like pseudo 3D thing.

36:58 So I like all that. But then I thought about your thing too is like I only knew because I looked up the guy ahead of time. But if you don't know what exactly you're supposed to be doing. I mean granted it's in the manual. But if you don't know exactly what you're supposed to be doing or you're just outright not prepared to do the thing. Because to Sean's point it is like the timing matters. Like it's a little tight. So if you're not exactly prepared with what to do and you don't have a lot of strobe lights on you. This could be like a make or break it game moment for you. But to counter that I think that this game whether it does it well or not is designed to not really.

37:34 Like you're not supposed to do it on their first try. I don't think so. Well yeah. I mean that makes sense too. It's supposed to be a longer game than we made it. So you're supposed to learn from your mistakes I guess in that regard. I think that's the whole point of the game though. The whole point of the game is this. I feel like it's very minimal content but it's just artificially lengthened.

37:54 You know. And you're lucky that after your random encounter it didn't say you need 25 gems or wait 30 minutes for your next random encounter. You know. Like. This could have been micro transactions. Yeah. But still it doesn't make it. I don't know. It's a great point. I completely agree with you on this. There's no content. There's just like barriers. You know. That's how I feel about it. Yep. You're going to love a game called Dragon Warrior. I guarantee it.

38:21 Anyway. That's been the entire gameplay for me. Does anybody have any additional thoughts they want to add? The end seems pretty cool. Yeah. They've got this cool little like you know. Now it seems very vaporwave. But it's just you know 80s style. Like a. I'm sorry. Anyway. The plane that I assume just got back from a jellyfish bombing run flies past a very picturesque vista of a coastline and then it just sort of like stays there. And that's the game. Doesn't it say something? I can't remember. It says Jaws. I don't know. Oh it says the end in the corner. Yeah. And that's what you're. You know you did it. You bested Jaws and you can do it again if you want by pressing start. Very nice. All right. Let's go into the essential games list.

39:22 It sounds exactly the way I did. And more of that. I was trying to make the essential games list. See. I was trying to make that seem like scary. Scary. Yeah. It is scary. Yeah. The essential games is terrifying. I'm as scared as you were when you were reading the back of the box. The essential games list is so scary because nobody knows what we're about to do. No one has any clue. You know like we could make Jaws essential and you could send me all the fan mail in the world and I won't change it.

39:51 But we are also pretty responsible voters. So with that in mind everybody just give me your general thoughts and a vote. Joe? So I think like the reason that I keep getting mad about this idea that like the map is so small and there's so many things that that they didn't flesh out is because I really do think that this this was a cool idea where it could have been like it could have been implemented in a different way where you really felt like I need to get stronger. I need to go unlock this and do this. And it's kind of like you set your own level of difficulty when you fight Jaws by how much you're willing to to set up before that.

40:27 But then it just doesn't deliver on that. And that's why I'm kind of fired up about it because I was very excited when I first started playing it thinking like this this is a cool idea. It could be fun. It could be a way of like Sam said kind of artificially lengthening a game that doesn't have much to it. But in a way that's still fun. And it just it just fell short on that. You know, it was an OK experience for like a very short game, but disappointing in the end. So no, not essential.

40:55 Sean? So, yeah, I think that this is a very nice proof of concept, like a tech demo for what the game should have been, because I also think that this game had a lot of potential just in the way that it sets itself up in the macro sense, because in the micro, it's just very tedious.

41:13 If they had different ways to go about the action sequence, if the map was bigger, if you had a little bit more to prepare for with the final scene, this could have been great. But alas, it is not. So no, it is not essential. But I like where they were coming from.

41:34 Sam. So kind of going off what you guys were saying, I think that it isn't a pretty original concept for a game that we've seen. You know, it's for our first random encounter game. So that's interesting. Um, but like I said before, it just feels artificially lengthened and it feels like there's all these, you know, frameworks of gameplay that are there, but the gameplay itself isn't that fun. And you just find yourself shooting stingrays for most of the time that you're playing. And when you think Jaws and you think shark and, you know, the most adventurous time you can have fishing, uh, jumping into the water and shooting a stingray isn't really what comes to mind. You know, uh, I think they could have done a lot more with it.

42:20 Um, but it is not essential. It's sort of like where, when you're in like a, a top down RPG, uh, where you can do all these cool things, but you end up just like killing rats in a cave to grind. Yeah. But that's the whole game. That's the whole game. Yeah. That's a good analogy.

42:39 All right. And, uh, I will just say that this game didn't need to exist, but they knew it was going to make a lot of money. So they made it. I really like that Jaws, the way they handled Jaws in this game. I thought he was a pretty like bad-ass villain. And the fact that you can just approach him from the very beginning of the game is something pretty cool. It makes me think of like in Breath of the Wild, you can just go right to Ganon at the end and it's like, cool. But there's so many things about this game that I don't like that I would never put it on the essential games list.

43:10 I'll definitely give it credit. Like Joe said, how it's trying at least something different. Sean brought up a great point earlier about how we're going to play a lot of movie games that are just like, oh, that's just like Streets of Rage, except for with the different, you know, sprite art, you know? So thank goodness they tried something different. It's just a shame that they really only met us like 20% of the way there, you know?

43:34 The speed run of this game that Sam and Sean are referring to, I didn't watch it, but I have to imagine, what did he beat in like 10 minutes? Three. Three? Oh my God. Three minutes and 50 seconds. Oh my gosh. Yeah. I mean, I didn't beat it in 10 minutes, but, you know, just the fact that the game is so short and that it's artificially, you know, inflated to have a long runtime just because you're grinding for things and these shells, this artificial now like shells are what give people power in the Jaws universe.

44:02 Like, I didn't get that at all. I just sleep. But, you know, these are the rules of LJN's law. I imagine that, okay, so you get the shells and these are special shells that have somehow lodged themselves into all of the, I'm sorry that I'm going off book right now, that lodged themselves into all of these fish and you bring them to this master craftsman and his brother and they live at these two different ports and he crafts you this like adamantium like

44:30 armor that also goes into your harpoons. Only goes into your harpoons, right? Only goes into your harpoons. Because you still only one hit and you can kill. Yeah. And that's what the shells are for. Okay. Here's my take on it. There's a thing called a cone snail, which is one of the most venomous animals in the world, right? So if we imagine that these stingrays are somehow eating these cone snails and then, you know, somehow the venom still stays in there, that's what they're putting into the...

45:01 Worth noting that whether you're level one or level nine, it still always takes two hits to kill a stingray. That's true. If you don't get any stronger with the stingray, you just get a little better at fighting Jaws. So it's not really power that you're gaining. You're gaining knowledge of how to fight Jaws. The stingrays know how to fight Jaws. They each have a little bit more information on how to fight Jaws. And killing them gives you the information. All right. New theory. Shells are just nice shells, right? But there's some people on the islands or on the mainland who have knowledge of how to kill the shark, you know, how to kill Jaws. And they'll trade you that knowledge for some shells because they really like shells.

45:43 So, you know, this is what it really is, though. Okay. Is that you, you, the first, when you first set out, there's a guy, you know, in the port that's like, hey, I'm a little stronger than you. I'll fight Jaws if you bring me some shells. When you get to the port, you switch with that guy. Oh, it's a different guy. But then when he's leaving, another guy's like, hey, I'm a little stronger than you. Bring me enough shells, you know, until you get to the level nine guy who is the strongest guy who recorded the most shells. Okay. I'm sorry, Mike. Every time. Well, it turns out. So not essential. It turns out the real friends are the jellyfish we bombed along the way.

46:19 Yeah, not essential, but, you know, if you're a Jaws fan, what's going on with you? What else are you into? I haven't made one of these in a while. I do have a straight thought that I thought of when Sean mentioned that this felt like a proof of concept. That while I was playing, I did actually, the thought crossed my mind that this feels like when I used to be a PS1 guy, when I would have those demo discs.

46:46 Yeah. Like, this feels like a game I'm playing on a demo disc that I'm like thinking, wow, this is a great game. I can't wait to play the real game, like the full game. And this feels like it's just like the, oh, check it. This is the commercial for the game. This is the pizza hut thing. This is the little thing you could taste before you play the full game. Yeah. So if this were what I'm imagining is the full game, I'd probably like it. Okay. Cool.

47:09 And that's all the time we have for this episode of Nostalgia. I hope you guys really liked what we had to say about Jaws. We'll be back at it again next Friday with another game. We post the list of all the upcoming games onto Twitter. So just check that list out. I think we do like four episodes out and stuff like that. As you know, we'll have, we'll have everything up on the website, www.nostalgiacast.com, as well as all the past episodes, my thoughts, nobody else's. And, um, and I'm Michael Esposito. You can find me on at Esposito Film on Twitter. And I'll talk to you soon.

47:52 We'll be right back.