Initial release date 1982 Publisher Mattel Mode Single-player video game | Developer Mattel Genre Action game Platform Intellivision | |
 | ||
Similar Astrosmash, Night Stalker, Space Spartans, Space Armada, Buzz Bombers | ||
Shark! Shark! is an Intellivision game originally designed by Don Daglow, and with additional design and programming by Ji-Wen Tsao, one of the first female game programmers in the history of video games. The player is a fish who must eat smaller fish in order to gain points and extra lives while avoiding enemies such as larger fish, sharks, jellyfish, lobsters and crabs. After eating a certain number of fish, the player's fish grows in size and is thus able to eat a larger selection of fish. However, while the larger fish becomes a bit faster, he is less agile than the small fish and has a harder time avoiding enemies.
Contents
Shark! Shark! was originally considered by Mattel to be a cute game for kids and unlikely to make strong inroads into the gaming community. However, the market caught Mattel unprepared when it fully embraced the game as a sorely needed Intellivision original. The game's popularity skyrocketed, forcing Mattel to quickly manufacture another batch of cartridges. The original cartridge run was only 5,600 units.
Ports
Shark! Shark! was made available on Microsoft's Game Room service for its Xbox 360 console and for Windows-based PCs in May 2010.
It was made available for the PlayStation 3 through PlayStation Home in fall 2012 in a collection titled Intellivision Gen2. In addition to players being a fish eating other fish trying try to take down the shark, their food and foes will both swim in a wide variety of new patterns.
Bugs
The bubble sound effects do not work correctly on the Intellivision II. The game is otherwise playable. This bug does not impact the original Intellivision console.
Occasionally, when pressing the sprint button, the player's fish will go in the opposite direction from that instructed—usually with disastrous results.