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Friday Flashback: Sewer Shark

Usually, Friday Flashback games are great titles that few people have heard of or look back nostalgically. This week, let's turn it around and look at an utterly terrible game that everyone inexplicably remembers. This game was stupid. It was borderline impossible to play. It had horrific (and hilarious) cut scenes. And yet, if you mention the Sega CD to the average gamer, this is the game that they think of.

When you hear Sega CD, you don't think Sonic CD. You don't think Lunar: The Silver Star. You don't think Ecco: The Tides of Time. No, you think Sewer Shark.

Oh, this game is bad. However, it's also freaking hilarious. The story is utterly nonsensical and told through FMV cutscenes with the poor man's Bill Paxton and Danny DeVito, David Underwood and Robert Costanzo. Fun fact about Costanzo: He also provided the voice of Detective Bullock in the 90's Batman cartoon. The cutscenes look like what would have happened if Wing Commander was shot in a dilapidated warehouse on a $20 budget. .

You're a Sewer Shark pilot, tasked with killing mutant ratigators in the sewers by Commissioner Stenchler, a cartoonishly greedy weirdo who lives on the surface of the planet. You, of course, live far below, and can only dream of eventually making it to "Solar City." Your co-pilot is Ghost, who has been shooting ratigators for some time. And what does he get for it?

A million pounds of tubesteak!

That's seriously what he says. No context, no explanation. Just "a million pounds of tubesteak!" and back to the game. It's really what makes Sewer Shark both terrible and awesome. The cutscenes are nothing but different characters yelling at you in some pretty creative ways, never making any sense. Like the American Laser Games light gun games of the early 90's, Sewer Shark's video is wedged firmly in so-bad-it's-good territory.

The gameplay, on the other hand, is complete garbage. It's confusing, unnecessarily difficult, and horribly conceived. You fly down nearly unrecognizable pipes, shooting blobs that supposedly represent your targets and trying in vain to recognize the few random cues the game offers to prevent instant death from crashing or explosion.

Sega chose this game as the pack-in with the Sega CD. They could have chosen Sonic CD, or Lords of Thunder, or Shining Force CD, but no. They went with Sewer Shark. And now, whenever people mention the Sega CD, gamers think about a Bill Paxton look-alike screaming in your face while your ship explodes for the hundredth time.