| Manufacturer: | Sega |
| Developer: | Sega |
| Genre: | Light gun game |
| Board: | Mechanical light projection |
| Year: | 1972 |
Despite the fact my release schedule means my Classics are now published at the beginning of the month instead of the end, I wanted to do another creepy classic for Halloween. So this month I've gone for Sega's first ever "video game", Killer Shark, which is celebrating its 40th anniversary this year. This eerie, deep sea, shark-killing light gun game did the rounds in arcades and midways for two years, when in 1974 it made a brief appearance in Spielberg's classic Jaws and Sega suddenly had a hit on their hands.
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| A Killer Shark cabinet, as featured about an hour into Spielberg's horror classic, Jaws |
"The secret behind the on-screen shark animation is similar to the ancient zoetrope animation wheels. A series of shark illustrations were printed onto slides and placed sequentially on a circular disk. Light was then projected onto the disk, projecting the shark slides onto a mirror. The mirror reflected the shark image onto a frosted glass cabinet screen. The space between the slides created a flickering effect similar to a film projector. When the player's eye absorbs the light from one frame just as the next appears, it created the appearance of a moving image."The result was the shark actually had a slightly spectral appearance, which in my opinion only added to the game's atmosphere. Gameplay considered of trying to shoot the shark with the harpoon light gun. When you hit the shark the animation changed to one of the animal bleeding and thrashing about as it died. It was simple, but effect -- so effective that Sega made a follow up called Sea Devil, which was basically the same game with a manta ray. Hey, if it ain't broke, don't fix it.
With the exception of the game's brief appearance in Jaws, footage of the actual game is hard to find. What I did find was this video, which despite not being in English, does show you the how it worked.
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