Rolling Thunder-jaws
- MISSION BRIEFING: Madame Q: Beautiful, Brilliant, but totally Insane...
Attack her laboratory on Paradise Isle, destroy her mutant army, and find her underwater city...
ThunderJaws is a 1991 arcade Run-and-Gun action game released by Atari for arcades.
A rogue scientist-turned-terrorist leader and Evil Genius mastermind named Madame Q seeks to control the world, by ordering her private army to abduct captives for her, sending them into Madame Q's underwater lair where her laboratories will convert innocent civilians into various mutant abominations. Building her own army of mutated freaks, Madame Q will stop at nothing to reshape the surface into her liking...
Two secret agents are sent to infiltrate Madame Q's underwater hideout, to thwart her diabolical plans, battling their way through Madame Q's private army consisting of terrorists, robots, and mutant creatures, rescuing captives before they can be subjected to the villainess' experiments, and take on the Madame in a final confrontation.
Gameplay-wise, ThunderJaws is more or less another Rolling Thunder or Special Project Y clone, but set underwater. Gameplay alternates between kicking ass on foot or scuba diving, across 12 levels containing various bosses.
Going in for a dive into hostile territory:
- Arm Cannon: The Punker enemies have these grafted to both their arms, which they use to shoot at you.
- Bat People: The Bat-women enemies, are, well, human women converted into mindless bat-human hybrids. Who dangles upside-down on ceilings while in a dormant state, only to swoop downwards to attack when you're near.
- Beauty Is Bad: The game's intro cutscene featuring the villainess, Madam Q, describes her "as beautiful as she is insane(ly evil)". And she's a ruthless villainess who subjects innocent captives to be forcefully transformed into mutated abominations to serve her.
- Boss Tease: Madame Q will taunt you via a giant monitor screen in her base's command center. You encounter her in person halfway through, but she had a forcefield around herself and there's nothing you can do to stop her from bailing out. You finally face her at the exit of her lair, where she consumes a mutant potion turning herself into a monster as a Final Boss.
- Covers Always Lie: See that cover above? Good luck finding a man-eating giant shark in the game - the closest there is, is the submarine boss whose front is designed based on a shark, but it's nowhere as large as the poster claims and doesn't attempt to bite you at any point, using it's mouth to dispense smaller sharks instead.
- Evilutionary Biologist: The game's Big Bad, Madame Q, runs a deranged cell of crazed scientists who transforms people into half-animal abominations to shape the world into her own image.
- Evil Living Flames: The Flame Dancer enemies, genetically-mutated creatures which are somehow made of fire.
- Fire-Breathing Weapon: The Flamethrower is one of the obtainable weapons which can incinerate mooks, humans and mutants alike, with ease. Hilariously enough, it can be used underwater.
- Gameplay and Story Segregation: The game's designers seem to have forgotten to take into account that their backup weapon, a flamethrower, shoots... well, flames. In a game where half it's stages are set underwater. And coded it into a functioning firearm in all situations, leading to bizarre instances where flamethrowers can be collected and used underwater. Or on Flame Dancers and Lava Lords, monsters respectively made of fire and lava.
- Harpoon Gun: You're granted this weapon by default, since you start the game underwater. Enemy mooks tends to use harpoons as well, even during shootouts on dry land.
- Jet Pack: You can collect hover-packs that allows you to float around for several seconds, either to avoid projectiles or access hard-to-reach areas. Should you lose a life, you'll get a hover-pack by default for a short time.
- Living Lava: The Lava Lord enemies, sentient lava blobs assuming a humanoid shape in volcano levels.
- Lizard Folk: Human-lizard abominations are among the enemies created by Madame Q's science department. Once killed, they leave behind a tail that twitches a little bit before it fades away too. In the first stage, there's actually a glimpse of Madame Q's mutation chamber where it turns out these humanoid lizards all used to be human women before they're forced into mutation cells.
- Mutant: Most of the game's non-human and non-robotic enemies are mutated abominations, converted into assorted monstrosities by Madame Q's scientists. From lizard-women to bat-folk and manta-humans, all of them designed to serve Madame Q.
- Piranha Problem: Schools of piranha are one of the underwater enemies you might encounter, alongside sharks. Part of the game's use of Artistic License – Biology, since piranhas are not adept to living in saltwater conditions unlike sharks, but then again they might be genetically modified considering the amount of mutant monsters you fight.
- Robot Dog: A horrifying example in the Bionic Wolf, canines put through Unwilling Roboticisation by Madame Q, who appears as guard dogs in her compounds.
- Sea Mine: Floating naval mines are a hazard in various underwater locations.
- Sentry Gun: Underwater sentry turrets are defense installations built to deter intruders. They'll fire at you on sight.
- Sinister Stingrays: The Manta Guy enemies are another result of Madame Q's mutations, human-manta Fish People who guards her hideout's underwater perimeters.
- Spread Shot: The Tri-Shot, which fires three harpoons in an arc.
- Stationary Boss: The boss fought at the volcano base's exit is a giant stone gorilla face set in the wall, with a single arm that tries lashing out until you shoot it to oblivion. Expectedly it can't move around much as it's literally built inside the structure.
- Strapped to an Operating Table: There's a room containing three of Madame Q's unfortunate captives, all of them women, put through Shameful Strip and strapped to a vertical dissection table about to be converted to Madame Q's mutant minions. You're given the option to release them after killing all the mooks in the same room (by pushing a lever), the women will run off before returning to congratulate you after you defeat Madame Q.
- Tentacled Terror: When confronting Madame Q as a Final Boss, she will deliberately inject a sample of the mutation chemicals into herself, turning into a floating, octopus-human abomination as her preferred One-Winged Angel form.
- Threatening Shark: Present in underwater levels, trained by Madam Q's henchmen to attack you on sight. The game's final cutscene reveals them to be robotic, however.
- Turbine Blender: In one infiltration level, you try entering Madame Q's hideout through an underwater pipe which has a spinning turbine in the way. You'll need to time your advance precisely to avoid getting grounded by the fan.
- Underwater Base: The entirety of this game is set in one owned by Madame Q, the first stage being an infiltration where you dive underwater while avoiding her divers and sharks before finding an entrance. You spend most of the game alternating on foot and underwater to disarm several of Madame Q's operation centers beneath the seas.
- Underwater Boss Battle: One of the harder underwater stages caps with one of these at the end, where you'll battle a huge submarine boss with a shark motif on it's front. Said submarine can dispense torpedoes and sharks as an attack.
- Unique Enemy: The final level have a single corridor where you're attacked by Man Eating Plants, resembling the classic Venus-flytrap in pots, but only in that one area.
- Your gameplay was most bodacious!
