I was pretty sure I'd found the April Fool's gag in the latest issue of Electronic Gaming Monthly, except when I checked the cover and realized I was reading the May issue:
JAWS
PS2/XB * Majesco * August 2005
You only need to know two things about this killer-fish simulator to get hooked: You play as the man-eating shark, and the game has a "dismemberment engine." (Give your victims a good thrashing, and they'll disintegrate into bait-size bits) Foolish beach bathers may be the special of the day, but Jaws' makers encourage you to sample the rest of the menu: "Seals, dolphins, other sharks, killer whales - the list goes one," says Producer Sean Scott. "The game will be chock full of humans, creatures, boats, minisubs..."Jaws is not a scene-for-scene retelling of the classic flick (otherwise the final boss would be Roy Scheider's Chief Brody, and you'd have to explode on cue). Instead, the game is set 30 years after the movie, whose Amity Island setting has developed into a thriving, industrialized city. You become a wanted fish after you devour the son of a local CEO, who then hires a shark hunter to track and kill you. What follows is a series of story missions, as well as side adventures and a wide-open ocean bound to become your own all-you-can-eat buffet. Think of it as Grand Theft Auto of the sea.
"The style is free-roaming like GTA, Spider-Man 2, or Mercenaries," Scott says.
Ah, the stuff of nightmares.
Convinced this was a hoax, I checked out the Majesco Games web site (makers of BloodRayne and Bomberman). Sure enough, there's a page for the game under its "Development" section. And it's being developed by Appaloosa Interactive, who did Ecco the Dolphin. Looks like it's the read deal.
I am so playing the shit out of this game. Especially if there's a cameo by that punk Ecco.
Only by facing my fears will I be able to conquer them.
And I only take showers these days anyway.
Pete, I hope you're better at Jaws than you are at Madden. Otherwise, the virtual beach-goers in your game are pretty safe.
Oh, snap!
If the price of winning at Madden is sitting in front of the TV and practicing it 70 hours a week like you, I'll suck up the losses.
Duuude....that's gonna RULE!
The only thing that surprises me about this news is that it took so long for someone to figure out that a game like this was a mortal lock to be a top seller in the home videogame market.
Back in the early '80s when I was in law school and playing coin-op video games in order to avoid studying, the most popular coin-op video games at an arcade on Rush Street that my circle of friends frequented was a game that allowed you to control a shark which chowed down on skin divers. The soundtrack was a real hoot; Jaws-style ominous music in the background, punctuated by the scared shouting and blood curdling screams of the skin divers as you turned them into chum.
Second most popular video game involved controlling a little "Rat Patrol" type jeep where you had a machine gun to shoot enemy units--the ostensible goal was to make the world safe for the paratroopers which were drifting down to the ground by shooting the enemies who were trying to kill the paratroopers. But once we found that if we shot the paratroopers, they would let go of their parachutes and plunge to earth with a blood curdling scream.... well, you can imagine what we wound up doing when we played it.
..the most popular coin-op video games at an arcade on Rush Street that my circle of friends frequented was a game that allowed you to control a shark which chowed down on skin divers.
This one, perhaps?
AHH, but are you so playing this game, if there is a finned-monster-coming-out-of-the-bathtub-drain-scenario?
Put your money where your childhood fears are.