Silverball guide · JAWS
The gear you never use is the gear that pays
JAWS is an enormous machine with a dozen things running at once, and the single biggest decision in it is one most players make by accident: whether to spend the equipment you collect, or hoard it and sell it to Quint.
Gear, and the number that decides your game
Six pieces of gear can be collected at the right ramp: binoculars, oxygen tank, tracker, barrel hook, shark cage and dart. Each does something useful, and each is consumed by using it.
Once you have found all six, another shot to the right ramp offers a choice. Keep them, and take 15 million. Or sell the lot to Quint, where the payout is multiplied by how many pieces you have not fully used. One unused piece is a 3x multiplier and 45 million. Three is 8x and 120 million. Six is 25x and 375 million.
That is the game in one decision. A partially used piece still counts as unused, so a binocular you have spent once out of three is worth as much at the till as one you never touched. Every knot you tied during Quint's Challenge adds a further 50 million on top, outside the multiplier.
Two things to know before you commit. The cash-out cannot be multiplied by machete, so there is no point saving it for a big multiplier. And if you have used all your gear, draining removes it from your collection without the chance to sell at all. Selling also qualifies the hidden final bounty hunt for the Great White.
Machete is the shot multiplier, and it is earned three ways
Machete starts at 2x and is lit at a return lane by completing the left target bank while light machete is showing. It applies to the next shot you make after rolling through that lane, or after a ramp that feeds it.
The base value goes up permanently for three things only: completing any shark encounter, catching a bounty hunt shark other than the Mako on your first attempt, and completing night search multiball. Everything else that raises it is temporary, including the drop targets and Pipit.
Machete cannot be lit during a multiball unless Pipit hands it to you, but a machete you already have can be carried into one at its current value. That is worth planning around: light it, then start the multiball.
Hit the fin, or lose twice
Every shark encounter ends the same way. Make enough shots and the encounter jackpot lights at the fin drop target, paying a percentage of everything you scored in the mode. Beach Panic pays 50 per cent. Night Swim and Scars pay 35. Raft Attack pays 30, Pond Attack 20.
Miss the fin and a backup jackpot lights at the boat instead, worth roughly half as much. That is the small half of the punishment. The large half is that the backup does not award the permanent machete multiplier at all.
So the fin is not the last shot of the mode, it is the reason for the mode. A tidy encounter finished on the boat is worth much less than a scrappy one finished on the fin.
Boost the encounter before you start it
Encounters are started at one of five beach shots, but only after enough hits on the captive ball. Put one more shot in before you start and encounter boosts light, and they are worth having.
There are three levels, taken at the boat targets. The first adds fifteen seconds to the encounter. The second pays five million and lights gear. The third doubles the scoring for the whole encounter.
Boosts can also be progressed once the mode is running, but only if they were lit before it started, and they apply immediately when earned. On a Pro you work them at the captive ball as before; on a Premium or LE the shark toy comes up and stays up for the mode, and you hit it once, twice, three times for the three levels.
Flip-Lock: take a ball out of play on purpose
During any multiball, a ball held at the mini-flipper can be locked there by pressing the action button. The flipper stays raised for twenty seconds, and you play the multiball with fewer balls. That sounds like a loss and usually is not.
The sharks change what it is worth. Catch the Thresher and multiball scoring is doubled while a ball is held in the flip-lock. Catch the Mako and the timer runs longer. Catch the Tiger and the once-per-ball limit disappears entirely, relighting after five major shots.
Hold the action button rather than pressing it to release the ball early. With two balls in play, a second ball arriving in the lane triggers an automatic release and re-catch, which does not happen with three or more.
Closing beaches, and the hurry-up that pays for the others
Each of the five beaches needs three beachgoers rescued, found by hitting the shark tower targets around that shot. Close a beach and a hurry-up starts there, beginning at fifteen million plus three million for each Search or Rescue multiball played and 250,000 for each character combo collected.
Collecting it boosts every further lit shot at that beach by 20 per cent of the hurry-up value, which is the quiet reason to collect them rather than let them tick away. Machete multiplies what you collect but not the boost.
The fifth hurry-up is the one that matters. Its starting value includes the base values of the four you already collected, so a good run through the first four can turn the fifth into a fifty-million shot. A ball save runs while it is live, and ending it, collected or not, starts Rescue or Search multiball. Rescuing eight beachgoers also lights an extra ball.
Normally the beach boosts are wiped once Rescue or Search has been played. Catching the hammerhead holds them for the whole game, and restores any you had already lost.
Bounty hunts run in the background
Bounty hunts are not modes in the usual sense. They are untimed, they run underneath ordinary single-ball play, and progress is kept from ball to ball. Each of the four sharks gives you a shopping list of spins, targets, boat shots and chum bucket hits, and when it is done you reel the shark in at the fishing reel to start a multiball.
Doing it right the first time is what pays. Complete the multiball and you take the bonus reward: a machete multiplier from the Thresher, Hammerhead or Tiger, and light gear from the Mako. Revisit a hunt you failed and the shots needed are halved, but the bounty multiplier drops and the bonus reward is gone for good.
The perks are worth choosing between. Mako upgrades the fishing reel so it advances twice as fast towards later hunts. Thresher gives two attempts at each Quint's Challenge knot. Hammerhead holds the beach closed values. Tiger removes the flip-lock limit.
Quickshots are an extra ball and a habit
Roll through the right lane above the mini-flipper and the harpoon lane lights for a quickshot, provided it is not already lit to attach a barrel. Shoot the harpoon lane and then the fin drop target quickly to collect it.
The base is three million plus 200,000 for every beachgoer you have rescued, and the multiplier climbs by 1x for every completed quickshot up to 7x. Miss one and the multiplier resets to nothing, and the timer between the two shots gets shorter with every one you make.
Three quickshots in a game lights an extra ball, and every successful quickshot lights gear at the right ramp, which feeds straight back into the first section of this guide.
Where the cabinets differ
The Premium and LE have an upper playfield the Pro does not: the lookout tower ramp, the Orca's steering wheel and a wheel of five awards including a temporary 3x machete and shark ramps. Eight lookout tower shots light an extra ball there, and a lookout tower shot followed by the right ramp scores the Quint Combo. On a Pro, shark ramps turns up instead as a random award from Quint's Shack.
Fish Finder is qualified differently. On a Pro you simply hit the left target bank in single-ball play, three hits for the first award and one more each time after. On a Premium or LE a blinking arrow roves across the three unlit arrows and you must hit the one it indicates, lighting all three to qualify.
The shark toy handles encounter boosts and the bounty hunt weakening shot on a Premium or LE, where a Pro uses the captive ball and bash boat for both. The radio target on the Premium and LE upper playfield also spots one shot per mode, which a Pro has no equivalent for.
One honest gap: our source documents the Pro and the Premium and LE, and does not name the 50th Anniversary cabinet at all, which UK floors do carry. Nothing here is written against one.
Where this came from
Silverball wrote this, but not from scratch: it was compiled against the published rules below and checked against them, rather than written up from one person’s games. None of the wording is theirs. Machines get code updates that move the right shot, so a guide has a date on it for a reason.
- JAWS community rule sheet (author not recorded in our copy)
