Shark Tale | DJcube

Behind every little fish is a great white lie.

NA release: 29th September 2004
EU release: 1st October 2004
JP release: 3rd March 2005
Developer: Edge of Reality
Publisher: Activision (NA/EU), Taito (JP)
NGC Magazine Score: 40%
Mods Used: Widescreen Hack

Dreamwork’s cheap knock-off of Finding Nemo came complete with an horrific looking fish with Will Smith’s face as the main character. It tells the story of a fish that accidentally kills a shark, pretends he’s a shark hunter and fakes a battle with a friendly shark to keep his fame. Although in the game, you do actually beat up some ferocious enemies.

The levels take the form of a few different types. The main one is a sort of 2D sidescroller, with you changing directions using crossroad signs. You swim round, circling objects to collect them. They’re quite tedious and maze-like, with you often having to look for objects. Some of these also add stealth into the mix, and I never figured out how these actually work, only that if you press the hide button every now and then, you’ll be fine.

Other gameplay styles include a DDR-style dancing minigame, which is rather long and tedious. The game itself has quite a few songs for it’s soundtrack, and not just in the dancing sections. It’s not just the film soundtrack, either, but additional songs like U Can’t Touch This and Bad Boys (Will Smith isn’t doing well for his video game adaptations on GameCube). Another gameplay style is a punch-out style fighting for the main bosses and the last is a racing game where it feels like most of the track is the same each time.

But not a single one of these is fun to play, and the game’s instructions are strange. The simplest stuff is explained far too much while other aspects of how the game works are not explained at all. It’s just all round a poorly put together game.

Poor

There’s a stealth section that should take you all of 30 seconds to beat. There are racing levels where the only way you’re likely to lose is if you put the controller down and forget to pause the ‘action’ while you take a well-earned toiler break. There’s even a dancing game, and everyone knows that developers who make dancing games that you play with a D-pad deserve to be punished. With sticks.
Martin Kitts, NGC Magazine #103

Remake or remaster?

Nothing for this.

Official Ways to get the game

There’s no official way to get Shark Tale.