Representations of the shark are common in popular culture in the Western world, with a range of media generally portraying them of eating machines and threats. In some media, however, comedy is drawn from portrayals of sharks running counter to their popular image, with shark characters being portrayed as unexpectedly friendly or otherwise comical. The lists below give an approximate sample of the many forms of representation of the shark in popular culture.
Video games & pinball machines
Sharks variously appear in video games, arcade games and pinball machines. In video games, they typically appear either as playable characters or threats to the player.[4] Sharks also make cameo appearances in some popular games and game series. The 1975 movie Jaws and its sequels inspired several licensed and unlicensed games.
Pinball machines
Sharks feature prominently in several pinball machines including:
- Sea Hunt, a 1972 machine inspired by the 1960s television program, manufactured by Leisure & Allied[5]
- White Shark, a 1979 machine by Bell Coin Matic[6]
- Shark, a 1980 machine by A. Hankin & Co.[7]
- Shark, a 1982 machine by Taito[8]
- Atlantis, a 1989 machine by Bally[9]
Early video games
- Killer Shark by Sega is a 1972 electro-mechanical game where the player points and shoots a mock spear-gun at a projected shark that swims towards him. The game features on-screen in the movie Jaws.
- Shark Jaws is a single-player arcade game by Atari, Inc. that was intended to capitalise on the popularity of the film Jaws without being licensed to use the name
- Shark is a 1978 game for the Commodore PET in which the player controls a shark and must eat swimmers without being caught by a diver.[10]
- Blue Shark is a 1978 arcade game by Midway in which the player shoots sea creatures, including a shark while a timer counts down.[11]
- Terror at Selachii Bay is a one-player strategy game wherein the player provisions and skippers a boat hunting a shark using harpoons.[12]
- Shark Attack is a 1981 arcade game in which the player controls a shark and must eat scuba divers.[13]
- Jaws, a video game for the Nintendo Entertainment System.
- Shark! Shark! is a 1982 video game for the Intellivision, in which the player controls a fish and has to avoid being eaten by a shark.
- Shark Attack is a game by Apollo for the Atari 2600.[14]
- Alive Sharks is a 1990 shareware game for DOS in which the player controls a scuba diver who must collect sea creatures from the ocean floor while avoiding shark bites and jellyfish stings.[15] A sequel called VGA Sharks followed, and was updated between 1990 and 1994.[16]
- In the 1998 arcade game The Ocean Hunter, one or two players must fight off sharks and other sea creatures while searching for seven sea monsters, including a megalodon.
- 3D Shark Hunting is a first-person perspective shark-hunting simulator released in 1999.[17]
21st century video games
- Shark! Hunting the Great White is a 2001 first-person shark hunting simulator.[18]
- Dreamworks' Shark Tale game was released by Activision in 2004 for several consoles. The player is Oscar the fish, but sharks feature prominently in the game.[19]
- Jaws Unleashed, is a 2006 game for the PlayStation 2, Xbox, and Microsoft Windows.
- Jaws: Ultimate Predator, is a game for the Wii and Nintendo 3DS set 35 years after the events of the original 1975 movie.[20]
- The Hungry Shark series of mobile games allows the player to swim, leap and feed as a variety of real and imaginary shark species
- Derrick the Death Fin is a 2012 side-scrolling game in which the player controls a paper-craft shark.[21]
- Depth is a sharks vs. humans underwater combat simulator where players can choose to be a human or one of several shark species.
- Maneater, a video game for the Xbox one featuring a bull shark as the playable animal. While its species is a bull shark, the game features various evolutions and mutations for the shark.
Minor appearances in video games
