LJN Toys has as colorful a reputation among retro videogame fans as its rainbow logo. Maybe that’s even more the case these days thanks to folks like the Angry Videogame Nerd, who over the years has recorded a number of videos talking smack about that developer’s releases. And for good reason, because some of their games aren’t a whole lot of fun to play. But in the past few years, I’ve started to respect them for their attempts at creativity with the material they’ve been given, and instead of being another voice in the chorus of trashing, it’s been way more of a rewarding experience going back and appreciating some of their better works.
Jaws is one such game. Thinking back on how tough it must have been to come up with a concept for a movie franchise of that magnitude with the limited technology at the time, it’s amazing how it ended up turning out. Sure, you can finish it in 15 minutes, but if you want, there’s stuff to do in it to multiply that playtime, as that game follows the same concept as the studio’s spin on Friday The 13th: gearing up before fighting the big baddie. In Jaws’ case that comes from collecting a whole bunch of seashells and spending them on the Orca’s firepower.
As a lowly diver, most likely Hooper – Richard Deyfuss’ character from the movie – you’re armed with a bow gun and can only take one hit, with three lives to call your own before game over. So that firepower upgrade comes in really handy when squaring off against the great white one, who unlike other sea life you come across, from tinier sharks, manta rays, and jellyfish, the big guy can take a beating. And after you lower its life bar to zero, you still have to stick him with your boat in one of gaming’s most awkward minigames, a typical NES challenge in the vein of landing your plane in Top Gun.
Fast-forward to 2026. With Limited Run Games’ Jeremy Parish at the helm in redesigning the game, the company has put out Jaws: Retro Edition, which includes along with the original LJN version and a few extras, an entirely new rendition of Jaws, full of improvements to its gameplay and, most importantly, much more to do, giving it way more replayability. At its core, it’s still the same overall experience, but with a broader array of upgrades at your disposal, playing up the bare RPG mechanics of the original, now allowing you to not only get your power up, but your speed and energy as well.
That’s right, you can take more than one hit in the revised edition of Jaws, and if you thought killing the shark once wasn’t enough, you get to do it four times, with each chapter lightly focusing on each movie sequels’ story, wherein you visit and have limited dialogue with their characters when you stop by the two docks on the map and spend your cash on upgrades. There are also a number of little side quests you can undertake in order to get useful knicknacks to help you on your journey, like a better way of tracking Jaws and the ultimate weapon you’ll need to finally take him down.
Now, let’s not kid ourselves here. For as much as these additions help stuff more playtime into Jaws, it’s still no award-winning game. Sure it can be considered fairly creative for what LJN managed to come up with for the source material, honestly a much better attempt than even more recent releases like the Xbox era game that had you play as the shark, an amusing but still unoriginal go at it, this NES obscure gem remains the usual licensed so-and-so title.
Regardless of which version you choose to play in this Retro Edition, Jaws is something you’re likely to sink a few minutes in now and then. Still, as a curiosity piece, it’s a great one. The bonus material included could’ve been much neater than it ended up being in the final release, though. It only includes scans of the original manual, box, and a music player.
Looking back at the LJN releases that I’ve played over the decades, Jaws is easily one of the best and it was the perfect choice for Parish’s efforts at bringing back to the retro scene in this fashion. While other of their products like Back to the Future – for as much as I adore the films – are ridiculously awful and deserve no rescuing of such kind, maybe there’s more to be looked into out of the ones that almost struck gold back in the day.
