Thunder Jaws (Arcade) Atari 1990

I first heard about Thunder Jaws on the Retrogaming Roundup's "It Came From MAME" segment.

The show's host, So Cal Mike described the the game as being 'a sequel to "Rolling Thunder" with big boobed lizard girls'.  Being a big fan of Rolling Thunder I decided that was worth checking out, so I booted it up in MAME last night.

Wow, this game, let me tell you.  It does have big boobed lizard girl mutants:

But it doesn't stop there.  The game is a jumbled mess of bodacious late 80s jargon, secret agent tropes like robotic sharks, and punk rocker thugs:

Playing the game it is easy to see why So Cal would compare the game to Rolling Thunder.  First off all the game has Thunder in the title.  So the assumption that this game is a sequel is warrented.  Also the first side scrolling level is lifted almost whole cloth from Rolling Thunder.  Just take a look at these side by side screen shots:

Thunder Jaws Level 1

Rolling Thunder First Level

I mean, just look at that.   The character design and animation is fairly poor in Thunder Jaws compared to Rolling Thunder, but the similarities are hard to ignore.  Rolling Thunder is a Namco game and Thunder Jaws is an Atari game.  But they are so similar that I thought, maybe the license changed hands and this is a spiritual successor.  Unfortunately there isn't much information online about Thunder Jaws, but since Namco continued to make rolling thunder sequels and ports it is likely that the Atari game is simply a derivative knock off.  

I contacted an old colleague of mine who used to work at Domark.  Domark, was basically the UK arm of Tengen or Atari or some such, it's a bit convluted, but the long and the short of it is that Domark produced several of the micro computer ports for Thunder Jaws.  The Amiga port actually looks pretty sweet:

According to him this game was worked on by developer Rusty Dawes who worked on a slew of classic Atari arcade games including Cloak and Dagger, Paperboy, and I Robot.  So I did some digging and although I don't see any explicit references anywhere on the net it appears to me that Thunder Jaws is running on the same hardware as the same as the hardware used in the rushed to market Batman tie in game also released by Atari.  The similarity is remarked upon in  this video review of  Thunder Jaws:

But for a quick reference here is an animated gif of Batman levels:

You can note that the stage design, character size and UI are almost identical to Thunder Jaws.

But really, Rolling Thunder isn't just an iteration (or a derivation) of Batman.  Both games share a lot in common with the aforementioned Rolling Thunder as well as Sly Spy (known as Secret Agent in Japan and Sly Spy: Secret Agent in Europe).  In fact Sly Spy had it's own water level:

complete with scuba divers and sharks, and of course a huge robotic shark boss:

So yeah, looks like these sorts of game have lots of tropes.  Another trope is the 2 level playing field allowing the player to jump from the lower level to the higher level at will.  Even the idea of enemies coming out of doorways is shared between all these games.  This sub genre of the side scrolling shooter has been labeled a "walk about" shooter, but could also be called a "bi level side scrolling shooter" and can be seen in evidence in several games including Konami's Sunset Riders:

As well as Sega's' Shinobi: 

and to a lesser extent, Sega's Altered Beast:

Earlier games also had split level action used ladders to allow the hero to move from bottom to top.  Good examples, include Capcom's Ghosts and Goblins :

And Konami's Rush N Attack:

So as you can see Thunder Jaws was basically the end result of several well worn arcade tropes blended together with a healthy dose of T & A and a dash of Californian surfer dude mentality that dominated the Atari arcade group in the late 80s.   I'm going to try to track down some more specific information about this herky jerky fever dream of a game, but until then I will leave you with this great box art from the Atari ST conversion published by Domark:

Bonker's arcade in San Fran has seen better days.

I'm going to cut and paste my Yelp review of bonker's arcade, because I thought you might enjoy it:




My friend and I stopped by this arcade,because we were staying up the street at the Hilton during a software developers conference.

Whenever I'm in a new town I always try to search out any nearby arcades just to get a feel. I saw the great old "bumpers" arcade painting in the second story window with a classic Pac Man Mural and I figured this place might have a few classic arcade games.

When you first open the door you are greeted to a narrow, dank, dimly lit stair way leading up to a landing that is half filled with random broken furniture and dusty boxes.

We opened the door and looked up and both of us paused. Our fight or flee instincts kicking in big time. Before heading up we poked our head into the italian food place that is right down stairs from Bonker's. The dudes in the Italian place just laughed and said "don't bother". But then one of them cautiously said it was "OK". This must be some use of the word OK that I was not previously aware of, as there is nothing "OK" about bonkers. Bonker's is to the world of Arcades what the downtown Sacremento Greyhound bus terminal's 2nd floor men's room is to the world of Day Spas. Meaning that it isn't anything even close to the definition of OK.

But we were intrigued by this guys qualified endorsement and figured that we had nothing better to do so we pushed aside the slightly agape door and headed up.

Upon reaching the top floor we were greeted by a sight that was as terrifying as it was surreal. On the floor near a dusty assortment of inoperative frankenstiened arcade cabs was a man who could not possible weighed less than 350 pounds. He was completely passed out face down on the floor. At least I hope he was passed out. I didn't really want to nudge him.

The only other two individuals were a 65 year old chinese woman who was smoking and leering at us as if she was waiting for us to whip out or badges and hall her in to the INS. And a bleary eyed transient who was playing some sort of slot machine game that was housed in an old Rastan Cabinet.

The assorted cabinets and pinballs were impressive, but the only ones that were "operative" were either hacked together mah jong games in classic arcade cabs or had screens so burned in that it was hard to tell if they were even on or displaying the game the marquee claimed them to be. None of hte pinballs were on. Several of the pinball tables were in various states of disassembly and one corner of the shop was completely given over to someone's bicycle work bench.

We silently and slowly turned around and headed out without saying a word. The place was deadly silent as we headed downstairs. None of the machines had audio and no one spoke. It was the creepiest two minutes of my life, and I've spent several new years eves bartending at a cat house in Nevada...so I've seen my share of scenes that would disgust and horrify even the most jaded of street thugs.

Speaking of street life, we were passed on the stairway down by a Amazonian woman in tight shorts and a tank top. I'm not sure which game she was on here way to play...but it led me to believe that Bonker's is a poorly envisoned front for either prostitution or drug dealing. Or most likely both.

Do not be tempted to go to Bonker's. It looks pretty promising from the outside, but the inside is little more than a sad shell of what may at one time have been the best arcade in China Town.

Death Race. The first game to corrupt America's youth and corrode our great society.

So my buddy from the college days has a pretty great weekly video podcast called the Totally Rad Show. The show has made him a fairly internet famous, even allowing him to rub elbows with some of my heroes from the world of games industry journalism.

At any rate, I was on the phone today with my brother who was also a friend of Jeff's back in the old days. Anywhoo...my brother and I were talking about a recent episode of Jeff's show in which they discussed the recent 'drivin and shootin' film Death Race.

In their review they were talking about how it would be such a great video game. Actually Jeff invited me to see this movie with him, and it's too bad that I didn't go or else I could have made the joke that I'd been saving for just such an event. Which is basically that I'd say "not another video game movie!"

But this is a pretty obscure reference, which I'm not even sure Jeff would have understood, despite the fact that he is about the only other person I know of who can keep up with my constant nerd references and inside jokes.

So OK...keep up. Back in the 70s Roger Corman, famed horror film producer put out a little flick called Death Race 2000. This is the same flick which I would assume inspired the recent Death Race I haven't seen the newer version, but it's a safe bet to assume it's basically just "asplody" than the original but still just as "fun".

But we're getting ahead of ourselves here. Back in the 70s a little company called exidy created an Arcade machine based on the film which was simply called Death Race. By today's standards the game is primitive, basically imagine Atari's Gran Trak 10 with little stick Zombies for you to drive over:




However, Exidy helped to add to the game's gruesome atmosphere of the game by housing it in an arcade cabinet covered with creepy images of zombies, hot rods, and skeletons:



Long before the days of Mortal Kombat and Night Trap helped bring about the ESRB or Grand Theft Auto poured us some "Hot Coffee", Death Race was appearing on 60 minutes. Exidy tried to subdue the Parental outcry by claiming that the stick figures weren't humans but rather "ghouls", but eventually the game would have to be recalled.

So now flash forward to 2008. Ryan sees a preview for the new Death Race and thinks to himself, "ha it's another damn video game movie! too bad no one would get that joke." But maybe now, maybe my dear readers...you to can make that joke when you start seeing the film's DVD release being advertised at midnight on Spike TV. And like me you can look around hoping in vain that someone else will "get it".

Until then enjoy this video from the you tubes of some hot AZN CHIK and a NECK Bearded Bro playing death race around the :59 sec mark:

Silver Lining...

Like many of my fellow retro game fans I was pretty upset that the Classic Gaming Expo 2008 was recently canceled. I've never been to the expo, but given that it's in Las Vegas and I have a big pile of vacation time that I've accumulated I had planned to go. Everything I've heard about the show made it sound totally awesome.

Well, my disappointment has been tempered by the recent update to the California Extreme Website which states that the show is indeed happening again this year! The dates of the show will be July 19 - 20, 2008 in San Jose and tickets are on sale now!

This show is a little more indie...and it's in the heart of Silicon Valley so from what I understand it's a little more on the "keepin it real" tip. I'm going to try to talk Keller and Wilson into going to this.

The trick of it is that it's the weekend before comic-con so it looks like I have a busy July in the works. I'll keep you posted as the fathers of the industry make their inevitable announcements that they'll be in attendance.