Today’s youth are likely oblivious to how big a deal Jurassic Park was back in 1993. It wasn’t just a blockbuster at the cinema – it was an inescapable beast, taking the cover of magazines no matter the subject, and filling shops with all manner of licensed merchandise. The most recent comparable cinematic event is Avengers: Endgame, but whereas that was the end of a franchise, Jurassic Park was just the beginning.
This of course meant Jurassic Park video games were inevitable, with every format with a pulse in 1993 gaining a tie-in. Well, apart from the Atari Jaguar. Today’s youth may also be unfamiliar with the gaming landscape in the early ‘90s. Despite the SNES and Mega Drive having many hardware similarities, they’d often receive bespoke games, particularly of licensed titles. The first Jurassic Park games to be unleashed are an ideal example. UK based Ocean handled the Nintendo (and home computer) versions, while SEGA bagged the license for their own formats, with Bluesky Software handling development of the two Mega Drive games.
The Jurassic Park license didn’t come cheap. It was the most expensive license Ocean had ever acquired, costing millions. With Jurassic Park fever refusing to settle (even the toy line gained a second series) both SEGA and Ocean released more games the following year that were only loosely connected to the movie. Coincidentally, both took the form of side-scrolling run ‘n gunners.
This new collection from Limited Run brings together seven of SEGA’s and Ocean’s titles, all based on the original movie. Sorry, Lost World fans. It includes the NES, Game Boy, and SNES versions of Ocean’s top-down egg collecting adventure, Jurassic Park II for SNES and Game Boy, SEGA’s movie tie-in for Mega Drive, and its follow-up Rampage Edition – a completely different game, despite the name.
While there are no development documents or interviews present, there is a music player for each game, along with a choice of screen sizes (native and full), an optional border, a rewind tool, and the ability to save anywhere. The open-world adventures now have a map too, although this is just a static image – it can be zoomed and adjusted but doesn’t show your current location.
Ocean focused a lot of time and money on their SNES tie-in, and even now this is something easily noticeable. It pushes the SNES quite hard, with some Mode 7 effects and first-person shooting sections similar to Wolfenstein 3D. It’s also clear that it came from a time when games were designed to offer value for money, being purposely difficult so that they couldn’t be completed in a matter of hours – it’s quite an unforgiving experience, as well as confusing, with not much in the way of guidance. The NES and Game Boy versions follow the same blueprint of collecting eggs and finding key cards, also being viewed from a top-down perspective, but feature smaller areas and stampede sequences based around avoidance. Visually, both are crude with stilted character animation. The NES version appears to be merely a colourised version of the GB iteration too, only with more screen real estate and improved sound. I guess by 1993, the NES market was a mere afterthought.
SEGA went down the side-scrolling action game route for their tie-in, harnessing the buzzword of the time – digitized sprites, a la Mortal Kombat. Ignoring the license itself, the graphics – along with the ability to play as a raptor – were the biggest selling points. The backdrops still look pretty good today. To play, it’s a bit finicky – lots of leaps of faith, tricky platforming sections, and areas where it’s hard to tell the background and foreground apart. Playing as a raptor remains entertaining though, if only because of their comically high jump and ability to eat smaller dinos to regain health.
Rampage Edition lives up to its name, being one of the collection’s highlights. It’s a run ‘n gunner that sports a bright comic-book style aesthetic, and there’s a focus on destruction with heavy weaponry – including a flame thrower. The digitized sprites are gone, allowing for far more fluid animation, and the ability to play as a raptor remains. It’s a very entertaining experience, with one mission even giving chance to ride a dinosaur while taking down helicopters with a machine gun. While far removed from the first film tonally (chocolate bars act as health kits, even for the raptor) it excels as a fast-paced action game and is all the better for ditching the movie’s storyline. It’s just a shame there’s no blood and gore, which I assume was down to a constraint of the license.
Ocean’s extended Jurassic Park universe resulted in two games known as Jurassic Park II: The Chaos Continues, released in 1994. In the SNES version, we see a shift to playing as the bad guys – you’re in control of a Biosyn mercenary, out to complete a number of objectives while armed to the teeth. This too sports a more comic book style aesthetic, complete with a cartoony intro. Five missions are available from the outset, but try as I might, I couldn’t make much headway in any – the difficulty level is brutal, with enemies swarming the screen and enemy soldiers that take several hits to kill. Visually, it’s reasonably accomplished – as you’d expect from a 1994 SNES game. But ultimately, a lot of patience is required to see it through until the end.
This leaves us with Jurassic Park II on Game Boy – a side-scrolling action platformer with a focus on finding keycards to exit a level. These can be found from as low as the ocean floor, to as high as the treetops. It mixes up the action often too, with a couple of auto-scrolling T-Rex chase sequences – now made much easier with the rewind tool. Even the bosses are fun to defeat, each having attack patterns to learn. It’s a surprisingly enjoyable experience that doesn’t do a great deal wrong aside from being quite short. I was able to finish it in around 30 mins but was constantly entertained.
As a whole, this collection is a little uneven – which is perhaps to be expected, considering it contains seven games from two developers, spread over four formats. I expected Ocean’s SNES game to be the highlight, but instead ended up enjoying Rampage Edition and the Game Boy’s JP II a lot more – although I could still appreciate the effort both SEGA and Ocean put into their original 16-bit tie-ins.
While these aren’t the best games their respective systems had to offer, I’m still glad Limited Run was able to acquire the rights for these games and release them on modern platforms, showcasing them in their best light. Adding the Master System/Game Gear version of JP may have sweetened the deal, but regardless, I think most people will find the majority of the collection worth revisiting.
Limited Run’s Jurassic Park Classic Games Collection is out now digitally on all formats. Physical versions are also available.