In my opinion, few arcade-manufacturing companies in history have been more hit-or-miss than Atari Games, an entity whose lineage and ownership between the mid-80s and mid-90s practically requires an event program to follow. They fielded timeless classics like Gauntlet, Paperboy, and Cyberball 2072. And they had flops like the sub-par Batman and absolutely horrific Guardians of the Hood.
Today’s game, 1990′s Thunderjaws, is one of those that goes into the flop category. It’s several inches above the bottom of the barrel where Guardians of the Hood sits, but as a game inspired by the likes of Rolling Thunder and Code Name: Viper it completely fails to approach its source material. Your unnamed spy hero approaches several different bases from the underwater in search of Madame Q to put an end to her plots of world domination through mutation and forced augmentation of human beings--and probably a lot of cloning based on the limited enemy variety.
The underwater portions of the game are actually fairly passable, with smooth, fast movement and solid action. But things start to fall apart as soon as you set foot on land. Thunderjaws suffers from all the clunkiness of Batman, except without the license to sell it. Animations are stilted, controls are stiff, and the overall look and sound feel dated. The music sounds only a couple notches above what you might hear in Marble Madness and I’m baffled how Toobin’ managed to have smoother animation and sharper graphics quality. At the end of each stage, you rescue a handful of women who, of course, seductively surround you as a reward. But the jilted nature of their movement causes them to slither more like snakes than move like actual people. Which is an apt parallel for Thunderjaws; it’s like expecting a game and then finding a (not even cool) snake.
