WELCO METOT HENEX TLEVEL - Sewer Shark

Publisher: Sony Imagesoft Developer: Digital Pictures Released: 1992

“Welcome to the sewers, punk! The guy you’re replacin’? He had that same tough-guy smirk on his face that you do! ‘Til he hit the wall…they’re out there blottin’ him up with handiwipes! But the Ghost here, I always come back for more!”

Ghost’s opening dialogue in Sewer Shark counts as one of the most memorable moments for me as a Sega CD player. Played by David Underwood, this tough-as-nails guide through the ratigator-infested sewers of the game became a kind of defacto spokesperson for the system. Almost everyone had heard him tell them to “Relax! Pretend it’s a game! Maybe it’ll even be fun!” in television ads for the console add-on.

Like Night Trap, the other Digital Pictures developed FMV game to hit shelves during the Sega CD launch, Sewer Shark started life as one of the original games for Hasbro’s doomed ControlVision console. The system was designed to employ innovative new VHS tapes where multiple streams of video would run simultaneously and could be switched on the fly. At its heart, Sewer Shark was a simple shooting gallery, but with the full motion video directed by John Dystra (one of the effects gurus on the original Star Wars) it became something so much more.

As has been reported on endlessly in recent years, the Control-Vision was cancelled, the rights to Night Trap and Sewer Shark bought up by Tom Zito, and the tapes mothballed until sometime in 1990, when Sony came looking for games to put on their new Nintendo PlayStation.

Of course, the partnership between Nintendo and Sony didn’t work out so great. Luckily Sega was getting ready to launch its own CD-ROM add-on for the Genesis in 1992, and a new relationship was formed. Sega and Sony would split the cost of updating the VHS games for the more modern format. Sega would release Night Trap. Sony would release Sewer Shark under its Sony Imagesoft label. Sony definitely got the safer end of that deal.

From a purely objective point of view, Sewer Shark isn’t very good. It’s a mix of gallery shooter and simon-says, where the player spends their entire time chasing various, difficult-to-see enemies around the screen firing wildly, while doing their best to alter their heading based on directions fed to them by Catfish, a nav robot voiced by Robert Weaver who gives directions in groups of three. Early on it’s OK to miss a few of these turns, but after about five minutes a missed junction will result in certain death as the Whole Hawg (you craft) slams into a dead end.

Along with the shallow gameplay comes an awful, grating soundtrack that represents some of the worst Genesis sound quality you’ll ever hear. With the CD drive so busy streaming all that low-res video it can’t also spit out redbook-quality music.

But Sewer Shark remains one of my favourite FMV games of all time. Compared to Night Trap the shallow gameplay was easy to understand from the word go, so the frustration factor was low. And the multi-track video switched so smoothly that your brain never really noticed it happening, unlike the slight delay when switching between feeds in Night Trap.

Plus the performances are great. Robert Constanzo (Total Recall, Die Hard 2) chews up the scenery as antagonist Commissioner Stenchler, while Underwood’s Ghost spends the whole game shouting extremely memorable, cheesy lines at you, giving you ridiculous new callsigns like Dogmeat and Ratbreath, telling you to shoot the tubes and man up whenever things start going wrong.

Yeah, that’s mostly nostalgia talking, but I don’t care. I’m always up for a game of Sewer Shark.

Along with Night Trap, Sewer Shark feels like a trailblazer within the Digital Pictures library. The success of these two games were the jumping off point for the developer to create its later titles, which definitely saw a jump in quality. These two originals were already years old when they first hit the Sega CD, so they have a distinct look and feel that you don’t get with later Digital Pictures releases.

Sewer Shark reportedly sold about 100,000 units before Sega eventually made it the pack-in game for the remodeled Sega CD 2. It would also make its way to the 3DO system in later years, giving players a chance to see the video a bit closer to its original VHS quality. Here’s hoping that Sewer Shark is destined to get a modern remake alongside Night Trap, Double Switch, and Ground Zero: Texas. It’ll be a day one purchase for yours truly.

Shoot the tubes, Dogmeat!