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Unbelievable though it might seem, Thunderjaws just has to be a cross between the films Thunderball and Jaws. The plot fits too neatly.

You, a daring secret agent type, must swim - while avoiding sharks - to the evil underwater lair of the terrifying Madame Q. Once you get to this lair - or rather, series of lairs since there seem to be rather a lot of them separated by watery bits - you must rescue several scantily clad girlies, who then, in traditional girlie style, hug you a lot. Thunderjaws starts off in the water. You are ejected from a sub and, armed only with an infinite number of harpoons, must kill all the sharks and enemy divers in the area.

You paddle to the right until you reach a door. Shoot it and you're inside the first complex. Here you can get out of those wet things and, with only a vest and that useful harpoon firer to protect you, you start to massacre the inhabitants of the recently peaceful undersea kingdom.

Guards, half-metal dogs and female punks attack you with monotonous regularity, and, once you've got far enough, you can pick up an Uzi, a flamethrower or some other more effective weapon to use on them. The best strategy is to hole up for a while in a defensive position, kill anyone at all who gets close to you, then move quickly into the next safe haven. If you use this technique, you shouldn't really ever be seriously threatened by the rows of hideous mutants and punks lining up to take a pot shot at you.

Eventually you meet an end-of-level guardian you is tougher to kill. With any luck, you've still got the flamethrower or an Uzi, in which case it's a much easier job to get rid of the biggie. Blast him away and it's back into the water for the next bout.

The idea is a little barnacle-encrusted, but it might have worked if the game ran faster. Instead, it jerks along at a rate comparable to continental drift.

The sprites are fairly large, but this doesn't excuse the poor update rate. It's painfully slow and rather easy - the first time you play a game, you wouldn't expect to get to Level Three. But you get that far here - with Thunderjaws, you can buy it at 10am and have finished it by lunch. There are a few good spot effects - the explosions are pretty and there's a lot of blood clouding the water in the sub-aqua levels. But this just isn't enough. If only, if only it was faster and less jerky...

1. Traditional shoot-'em-up interspersed with watery segments.
2. Nicely drawn sprites, but they're redrawn far too infrequently as in Pit-Fighter.
3. Too easy. You'll have it completed before sun-up, that's for sure.