Games - Snapjaw

	Games - Snapjaw

A Snapjaw is a minor video game enemy from the arcade game Donkey Kong Jr. Since then they have been sighted in other video games, nearly all of which were Mario games. They seem to have betrayed Mario, going from one of his only troops to his enemies. Falling fruit is a usual way to defeat them, and they might fear the Kongs, based on Snapjaw's frantic appearance in his cameo on the Game Boy Camera, a possible reaction to the Kong's head. They usually are depicted having a hinged mouth consisting of two sharp-toothed metal pieces, one of which is larger than the other and has eyes on it. They were probably designed to look like bear traps, going along with the 'caged-animal' theme of Donkey Kong Jr. It is unknown whether Snapjaws are living creatures, plants, robots, or something else.

Snapjaws in Donkey Kong Jr.

This is the first game to feature Snapjaw, a basic enemy on level one. They could go down vines ,and while a blue Snapjaw would fall of the screen when it fell off of a vine, a red Snapjaw would continue going up and down on a vine. In the Game and Watch port of this game, Snapjaws would simply be thrown by Mario and waddle across the platforms. The only way to actually defeat them was with falling fruit, in both versions of this game. In this game, snapjaws look a little bit like a miniature version of the future Mario enemy Chain Chomp, with a broken chain on the back of their hinged mouth.

Snapjaws in Donkey Kong '94

Appearing on level 2-4 (A remake of level one of Donkey Kong Jr.) and most likely other levels, Snapjaws earned a more dragon-like appearance in this remake of Donkey Kong.They were depicted in the black-and-white screen of the Game Boy as black, and instead of having a chain dragging behind them, the have a small, pointed-up 'tail'. They can be defeated with falling fruit, or possibly hammers.

== Snapjaw's cameo on the Game Boy Camera accessory == From the menu, go to VIEW, then pick SHOW. This menu is decorated with Donkey Kong Jr. things, and a frantic Snapjaw is your cursor! This might actually be considered a controllable instance of Snapjaw, since you can move him up and down to select what you want to do in the SHOW menu, but this Snapjaw is just a cursor. He could have been replaced with an arrow mark that isn't worth naming. See Donkey Kong cameos

Snapjaws in Mario vs. Donkey Kong

In this game, Snapjaw's appearance changes rapidly, he looks more like a plant than anything else. The former 'metal parts' of Snapjaws become much more round plant-like parts, and the screw that hinged these parts together becomes a large, red spherical part (a berry, possibly). Their teeth look less sharp and metal-cut, but more thorny. They also have spines on their back in this game, reminiscent of the scales of some dinosaurs. During the cutscene after defeating Donkey Kong in DK Jungle and Credits II (after defeating Donkey Kong in DK plus) you can see large renders of them, which bear a striking resemblance to Yoshi, who does not appear in this game. In the fights with DK in DK jungle and DK jungle plus, a palette-swap (but otherwise identical) version of Snapjaws appear as a 'weapon' DK throws. These Snapjaws might not be Snapjaws at all, but a new character for modern Mario plotlines. A lot of characters did modernise from Donkey Kong '94 to Mario vs. Donkey Kong, but most went from introduced-for-this-game characters to already-existing characters which the same scoring and weaknesses, not vice-versa. They follow the same scoring as in Donkey Kong '94, but it seems to be easier to get your hammer on them in this game.

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