Museum of the Game ®

International Arcade Museum® — Killer List of Videogames®

Shark Attack

Description

You control a great white shark who attacks scuba divers armed with spear guns. Devour all divers and avoid all spears. Levels are numbered and indicated by flashing skulls. Shark Attack was the first Video Game to have Quadrofonic sound.

This game was licensed and also manufactured by Game Plan.

It was also licensed to the company Game World by Pacific Novelty of L.A. in the U.S.A.

Shark Attack was produced by Pacific Novelty in 1981.

Pacific Novelty released 8 machines in our database under this trade name, starting in 1980. Pacific Novelty was based in United States.

Other machines made by Pacific Novelty during the time period Shark Attack was produced include: Deep Death, Thief, Mr. F. Lea, NATO Defense, Pop-A-Ball, and Pop-A-Ball II

Specs

Name	Shark Attack
Developer	Pacific Novelty (United States)
Year	1981
Type	Videogame
KLOV/MOG #	9508
Class	Wide Release
Genre	Platform
Monitor	Orientation: Horizontal Type: Raster: Standard Resolution Color: Color
Conversion Class	unique
# Simultaneous Players	1
# Maximum Players	2
Game Play	Alternating
Control Panel Layout	Single Player
Controls	Joystick: 8-way Buttons: 2 - ThrustMunch
Sound	Amplified Mono (one channel)
Cabinet Styles	Upright/Standard
Control Panel	Shark Attack Control Panel Image

Video Clips

Shark Attack (Pacific Novelty 1981)

Shark Attack KLOV/IAM 5 Point User Score: 2.98 (3 votes)

Fun Factor: 4.20

Overall Like	4.50
Fun (Social)	3.50
Fun (Solo)	4.50
Collector Desire	4.00

Technical Rating: 2.83

Gameplay	3.00
Graphics	3.50
Originality	3.50
Sound/Music	4.00

Personal Impressions and Technical Impressions each account for half of the total score. Within the Personal Impressions category, Like carries a little more weight than the other factors.

Images

Trivia

According to Bernie Stolar, who was president of the company at that time, Universal Pictures wanted a licensing fee for the game, stating that it infringed on Jaws. Universal took Nintendo to court claiming that Donkey Kong infringed on King Kong. Hoping to avoid a law suit, Stolar explained to Universal that Pacific was a very small company and could not afford a licensing fee. Universal agreed to allow him to make his first 1,000 machines without paying a fee. He supposedly made 999 machines and never made the 1,000th.

Cabinet Information

According to Bernie Stolar, who was president of the company at that time, Universal wanted a licensing fee for the game, stating that it infringed on Jaws. Universal took Nintendo to court claiming that Donkey Kong infringed on King Kong. Hoping to avoid a law suit, Stolar explained to Universal that Pacific was a very company and could not afford a licensing fee. Universal agreed to allow him to make his first 1,000 machines without paying a fee. He supposedly made 999 machines and never made the 1,000th.

Miscellaneous

A cassette player inside the machine (with a looping cassette tape of actual "screams") would play every time you ate a diver.

VAPS Arcade/Coin-Op Shark Attack Census

There are 15,264 members of the Video Arcade Preservation Society / Vintage Arcade Preservation Society, 9,669 whom participate in our arcade census project of games owned, wanted, or for sale. Census data currently includes 166,973 machines (7,000 unique titles).

Uncommon - There are 7 known instances of this machine owned by Shark Attack collectors who are active members. Of these, 5 of them are original dedicated machines. 2 of them are only circuit boards which a collector could put into a generic case if desired.

Wanted - There are 2 active VAPS members currently looking for Shark Attack.

This game ranks a 1 on a scale out of 100 (100 = most often seen, 1=least common) in popularity based on census ownership records.

This game ranks a 3 on a scale out of 100 (100 = most often seen, 1=least common) in popularity based on census want list records.

Rarity and Popularity independently are not necessarily indications of value. [More Information]

Flyers

Technical

It was unique for its time in that it had high fidelity speech and sound effects. At the time of the games manufacture speech and sound effects were very primitive due to the limited memory capacity of computer technology. To generate the high quality audio, actors were hired to create a sound track for the game unique for the time and the audio track was played back via either a cassette player or 8-track player using a continuous loop cartridge. The game used 4 channels of audio where two were generated using General Instruments PSG sound generators and the two tracks from the tape player were switched in accordance to the action in the game.

Manuals

Foto-Finder® (Books)

Arcade Treasures Kurtz (ISBN 088740619X) Page: 113; Color photo
The Encyclopedia of Arcade Video Games Kurtz (ISBN 0764319256) Page: 112; Color photo Price guide: No
Encyclopedia of Arcade Video Games Kurtz (ISBN 0764319256) Page: 112; Color photo

eBay Listings

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