JAWS: The Text Adventure

September 21, 2013 7:31 AM

In 1975, the blockbuster movie Jaws was released. The series culminated in 1987 with a fourth movie, Jaws: The Revenge. The NES game Jaws (online) was released that same year, incorporating elements of both the original and fourth movie. But you probably don't know about the game that Mirrorsoft commissioned in 1984 from the husband-and-wife coding team, Dave & Sara Crud. They made a ZX Spectrum movie tie-in for the original film, only for rights holders to back out and leave it unreleased for nearly three decades ... UNTIL NOW! Or at least that's the backstory MeFite malevolent wrote. [via mefi projects]

More details from malevolent:

It's built from scratch in HTML5, with graphics and sound as authentic as I could get them. There are multiple ending, hidden features and references for fans of both old adventure games and the movie.
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If that's not enough old video game versions of Jaws for you, here's Jaws: The Computer Game (online) for the Amiga (1989) and Jaws Unleashed (Wikipedia; 2006), which was re-created as an Atari 2600 game for online play.

posted by filthy light thief (13 comments total)

Hah, that was fun.
posted by knapah at 7:45 AM on September 21, 2013

This will inevitably result in an AskMe starting with "Should I eat it?"
posted by HuronBob at 7:53 AM on September 21, 2013 [1 favorite]

Who thinks Spielburg is going to have a limited theatrical release of a 3D conversion of Jaws sometime in 2015, presumably for the 40th anniversary, but if you sit through the end credits, he's spliced in at the very end the scene from Back to the Future 2 where Marty walks by the 2015 version of Hill Valley's theater & gets terrorized by a holographic shark which he later brushes off saying "still looks fake"?
posted by radwolf76 at 7:55 AM on September 21, 2013 [4 favorites]

I love this.

It should be noted that the hypothetical Commodore 64 version was better, though.
posted by Artw at 8:12 AM on September 21, 2013 [2 favorites]

I liked the way they retconned the scuba tank explosion.
posted by jenkinsEar at 8:13 AM on September 21, 2013

And have to mention The Onion's seminal rereading of the film's key theme
posted by fallingbadgers at 8:21 AM on September 21, 2013

79% the highest I can get. :C stupid plutonium
posted by Potomac Avenue at 9:16 AM on September 21, 2013

People! People! Can we not all come together in the spirit of peace and harmony and face the true enemy? I mean of course the posh kids and their stupid BBC B Microcomputers.

They probably have a 3D vector graphics version of Jaws...
posted by Artw at 9:20 AM on September 21, 2013 [1 favorite]

Repeating my sentiments from the Projects thread, this really is great. The peculiar limitations to how the Spectrum handled colour always make detailed graphics in that style so distinctive too.

It should be noted that the hypothetical Commodore 64 version was better, though.
I'd like to state for the record that I only favourited this post because the HISTORY'S GREATEST MONSTER flag is broken. Again.
posted by comealongpole at 9:31 AM on September 21, 2013 [1 favorite]

PERFECT KILLING MACHINE
posted by kittens for breakfast at 10:01 AM on September 21, 2013 [1 favorite]

Hipster film franchise tried 3D before it was cool.
posted by radwolf76 at 11:05 AM on September 21, 2013

Get water. Eat bitches. Eat people smoking trees.

Yo.
posted by Samizdata at 11:19 AM on September 21, 2013

> Get boat

:You're gonna need a bigger boat.

> Get bigger boat

:There aren't any bigger boats around!
posted by ShutterBun at 10:22 PM on September 21, 2013