Back to the Shrine


Put your Jaws cart in the NES, you know the drill, and taa-dah: a neat-o title screen! Press the start button, smart guy.


You start off at harbor #1 (the first of two) in the overworld map. Before moving, notice the junk at the bottom of the screen. Score (obvious), shells, power lvl, and the power of Jaws. What we'll be focusing on first are the shells. We need to collect 5 to begin with, and a lot more later on. SO- let's now embark on our journey, shall we? Move your ship about and explore a little. Within time a message will come up saying that you: "Hit Something" or that you "Hit Jaws." Either way, you'll be transferred to one of two underwater stages: shallow or deep.


Welcome to the wonderful world of sea life. Countless numbers of sting ray, jelly fish, and baby sharks roam across the screen, swimming almost identical to the others. Ok, so I didn't say that Jaws was in fact "realistic" (fact: you will not die from touching jelly fish) but get used to this picture because you'll be seeing a lot of it. Now it's time to do that voo-doo that you do so well: shoot, shoot, shoot. Press the B button to shoot spears at the enemies around you (don't worry about running out of them, somehow you have an unlimited supply inside your scuba suit.) After hitting rays twice and once for jellies, they may drop one of three items: a star, a crab, and a shell. The stars and crabs are only for adding bonus points to your score, what we need are shells. So start your collecting! (NOTE: If you hit Jaws, just make sure to swim away from him. It's not too hard to do, just watch out for other swimming fish. Don't even bother to fight.)


During your deepwater encounters, if you score enough points during one scene, either by collecting items, killing many fish, or shooting at Jaws or baby Jaws; you'll be greeted with the bonus scene. Now you will take into the skies in a plane to bomb synchronized swimming jellies for gaining more shells as your bonus (where's EPA when you need them?).


Hopefully you haven't died TOO many times (if you have, I pity you) and you have finally collected 5 shells from fish. Good job, sir. Now make your way to harbor #2 (look at geography for exactly where) and sail into the harbor. Congratulations, you've aquired a completely useless Jaws tracker! Really, there's no use for it since you can see Jaws' fin when you're close to him. Anyway, you got it, and you've also lost 5 shells for it (for reasons unknown, merchants in this game prefer shells over money?) Now that you've gotten your nifty new toy, it's time for some more shell hunting...uh, yay! (NOTE: The next step is not required, you may want to skip it.)


(OPTIONAL) So now you have about 20 some shells in your inventory, right? Good. Now make your way into harbor #2 again, and mysteriously a submarine appears near harbor #1! (This is the coolest thing you get in the game, so be glad you have it.) Now in underwater stages, you will have the "oh-so-neat" sub with its missles, instead of spears! Plus, if you get hit, instead of losing a life and having to start over, you'll just be degraded to your original diver form. Very handy. (NOTE: If you lose your sub, just look around a bit on te overworld and it may be in one of two places.) (NOTE 2: This step can be skipped, and collecting 20 shells all at once at lvl 1 it is possible to gain it. You can also get it by gaining up to lvl 5, look below for how to lvl up.) **The sub is not needed to beat the game, it's just a little help in doing so.

Now that you've obtained a sub, or not, it's time to lvl up a bit to take on Jaws later (your final goal lvl is to be 4 or 5). When you have 3 shells in possession, swim back to harbor #1 to raise your power lvl to 2. The next lvl requires 5 but if you have others you cannot simply go back to the same harbor, you have to alternate harbors #1 and #2 to get new lvls. (Ex: raise your lvl at harbor #1, then to #2, then #1, etc.)

When searching for more shells at higher lvls, you'll see clearly that the game is getting harder. Schools of sharks, up to 5, can come from two different sides of the screen and jellies appear in greater numbers and can now move slant ways. There are also the rare incidents of rays swimming twice the normal speed! My one advice is to STAY AWAY FROM SHALLOW WATER! It's never good to have 2 sharks coming at ya with schools of jellies flying around with hardly anywhere to go. LVL 4 requires 7 shells and lvl 5, 10. (If you want to get to lvl 6 it's another 15 and lvl 7 is 20.) When you DO get your power lvl up to 4 or 5, it's time to begin your search for the main boss. You know who he is. And you're finally ready for him!

So you've hit Jaws! Now it's time to take him on! When you begin, you'll start out in the boat. Press B or A, depending on what side Jaws is, to throw bombs at him. When he hits your ship you're then thrown into the water. If you've ever tried to take on Jaws in lower lvls you would have noticed that he hardly took any damage at all, and to top that off, when the scene's time was up, Jaws would gain 1/3 of his strength back! Well, it's time for revenge and since you're at such a high lvl, he'll be a shove over. Just keep filling him with spears until his power is all gone. AWESOME JOB! YOU'VE BEATEN THE GAME!

Nope. Just kiddin :D This is actually the trickiest part of the entire game. Remember you only have 3 "strobes" to use, so 3 tries and that's it. What you gotta do is line Jaws up to the top of the "mast" and then push A when he's close. He'll then come up from the water and start spinning, when you see his white belly that's the time to push B quickly and it should make a bloody hole into the giant fishy. Buh-bye! Now you've finished the game.