Bonus Episode - Best Game Ever: JAWS

Paul Melio argues Jaws is pinball's greatest game through design brilliance and personal journey.

Synopsis

Paul Michael Melio delivers a passionate defense of Jaws (2024) as the best pinball machine ever made, analyzing its design philosophy through personal experience introducing new players in Sweden and Chicago. He explores how Jaws achieves kinetic 'woohoo moments,' fair difficulty scaling, excellent shot variety through left-right flow, and seamless progression mechanics that appeal to both newcomers and experienced players. While acknowledging flaws like long video clips and a problematic Wave Ramp entrance, he concludes that Jaws represents exceptional collaborative design work from Keith Elwin, Rick Naegele, Elizabeth Gieske, Michael Barnard, and Harrison Drake.

Highlights

• Jaws is currently ranked #5 on Pinside's greatest of all time list
• Keith Elwin designed the Jaws whitewood around the toys themselves, making geometry bespoke to the showstopper elements
• Nearly every lane in Jaws returns to in-lanes in some form, making higher-scoring shots more dangerous
• The Wave Ramp entrance has spacing issues that make it rattly and difficult to hit smoothly despite being correctly measured at two inches like Whitewater's Spine Chiller
• Keith Elwin explained in a making-of video why the shark cannot eat the ball: the open mouth repositioning would look bizarre and function awkwardly
• Jaws has shark towers (stand-up targets) between every lane that close beaches and create constant progression even on missed shots
• Paul and his wife purchased a Jaws 50th Anniversary machine with a down payment after Expo
• Video clips in Jaws are 'eerily long' and stop gameplay flow, an issue Jersey Jack pinball has solved better by punctuating rather than showing full clips

Entities

• Stern Pinball· company
• Expo· event
• Jaws· game
• Logan Arcade· organization
• Pinside.com· organization
• Rok in Odinplan· organization
• Trident Pinball· organization
• Wedgehead Pinball Podcast· organization
• Colosta· person
• Elizabeth Gieske· person
• George Gomez· person
• Harris Drake· person
• John Norris· person
• Keith Elwin· person
• Mark Ritchie· person
• Michael Barnard· person
• Paul Michael Melio· person
• Richard Dreyfuss· person
• Rick Naegele· person
• Ty Ueda· person
• Wedgehead Pinball Podcast· person
• Jaws 50th Anniversary· product