Jaws Unleashed
Microsoft X-Box and Playstation 2
2006

There are not many titles that allow you to play as the antagonist. Jaws Unleashed, a free-roaming action game, fulfills that adolescent wish. Exactly how bad-ass is Jaws? Well, the tutorial alone teaches players to kill divers, attack swimmers, and destroy beach piers. By the end of the game, a themed water park  is destroyed, an oil pipeline and refinery collapse into the ocean, and even the Mayor of Amity Island is no more. Not a bad day’s work for a carnivorous marine fish. No wonder sharks are at the top of the underwater food chain.

The great white killer is equipped with sonar capabilities and is perhaps the only gill-bearing aquatic sea creature equipped with a head-up display (HUD).

Jaws can do more than just bite with his mighty and numerous rows of teeth. He can ram objects with his snout and whip targets with his mighty caudal tail. Jaws can perform a corkscrew attack as well as leap out of the water into the air and smash back down as a “body bomb.”

Hard to believe that this game was developed by Appaloosa Interactive, the same company responsible for the fish-friendly Ecco the Dolphin series.

 

Check out more of these in Michael Thomasson’s Book Downright Bizarre Games book available at Good Deal Games and make sure to sign up to get Old School Gamer Magazine for free by clicking here!

 

 

Michael Thomasson Michael Thomasson (63 Posts)

Michael Thomasson is one of the most widely respected videogame historians in the field today. He currently teaches college level videogame history, design, and graphics courses. For television, Michael conducted research for MTV's videogame related program Video MODS. In print, he authored Downright Bizarre Games, and has contributed to nearly a dozen gaming texts. Michael’s historical columns have been distributed in newspapers and magazines worldwide. He has written business plans for several vendors and managed a dozen game-related retail stores spanning three decades. Michael consults for multiple video game and computer museums and has worked on nearly a hundred game titles on Atari, Coleco, Sega and other console platforms. In 2014, The Guinness Book of World Records declared that Thomasson had “The Largest Videogame Collection” in the world. His businesses sponsor gaming tradeshows and expos across the US and Canada.  Visit www.GoodDealGames.com.