Jurassic Park Classic Games Collection - Review

The 10-year-old in me was incredibly fascinated by everything dinosaurs, so when Jurassic Park was first released into cinemas, I felt like I was watching peak cinema. No matter how many times I watched the movie on VHS, I was always scared for Lex and Tim as they escaped velociraptors in the kitchen, even though I knew the outcome. Steven Spielberg knew how to create a compelling movie about dinosaurs, considering they were only on screen for a grand total of fifteen minutes of the entire two-hour movie.

Being that it was the 1990’s at the time, Jurassic Park had to be a behemoth of merchandise, which of course included many video-game adaptations of the movie. Magazines dedicated to different branded consoles argued over who got the best Jurassic Park game on their 16-bit series, with Nintendo fans arguing their first-person sections felt genre pushing, and the animations of the SEGA Mega Drive platformers and the ability to play as a raptor giving them the edge.

Reflecting upon all of this, it’s funny to think of how passionate people were to say how fantastic these games are, when in reality they’ve all mostly aged terribly. Most of the games have clunky gameplay, confusing plot-points and don’t follow the point of the movie at all. They all represent a very specific period in the 1990’s where games didn’t have to follow the movies at all and were simply made just to make money.

Looking at each individual game included in the collection, starting with the NES adaptation of Jurassic Park, it’s apparent that the horror-lite represented in the movies is difficult to represent in an 8-bit title. In its place, you’re given the task of collecting every raptor egg in each level, avoiding dinosaurs that have been shoehorned in at every possible corner. Tim and Lex both make minor appearances in “boss” levels where you need to keep them safe from a triceratops stampede and a T-Rex attack, respectively. The game plays well enough for a licensed game, but barely feels like a Jurassic Park game at all.

The Game Boy Jurassic Park game is essentially identical to the NES game, except the field of vision is much smaller, the controls aren’t as responsive, and only has the original green Game Boy palette. The game is awful, and isn’t spared by any additional features such as colour palettes for the Game Boy that are present in other retro collections. Just an awful, awful game.

The Mega Drive game was lauded at its time of release, mainly in part because it had very detailed graphics that strayed away from the cartoonish features of the Nintendo games. This game gave you two playable options. The first as Alan Grant, a weak human able to be eaten by just about anything as he tries to escape Isla Nublar. You could otherwise choose to play as a velociraptor that had somehow become hellbent on chasing down the evil Alan Grant and killing him. The game does have great animations reminiscent of early platforming treasures such as Prince of Persia or Another World. It is let down by clunky platforming issues and controls, as well as a nonsensical story that feels out of place in the Jurassic Park world.

The Super Nintendo version of Jurassic Park was my preferred 16-bit option of the time, as it played like an isometric Zelda-style game. You explored the island looking for ways to open new areas, collecting keycards and weapons that allowed you to explore the island of Isla Nublar until you could make it to the helipad and get off the island. The first person sections did give you the feel of unease as you tried to make it to different rooms within buildings without being spotted by dinosaurs. The limitations of the hardware meant that these sections were only seen through what looked like binoculars, obstructing a lot of the vision for what I assume was to help keep the framerate up. This is probably the best game in the collection, but overall it is let down by the first-person sections.

Then of course there are the sequels. Jurassic Park II: The Chaos continues from the Super Nintendo was a visually impressive game for its time. The game was rock hard though, as there is very little in the way of being able to avoid most of the dinosaurs that suddenly pop into the screen and attack you immediately. It does offer some variety in levels, but you’ll be hitting that rewind button more often than not in order to make any kind of progress.

Jurassic Park 2 on the Game Boy is a surprisingly good game. It’s a platformer, but has very responsive controls and feels more like the traditional platformers of the Game Boy days. There is a hint of exploration throughout the game to add a bit of spice to it. The game isn’t particularly long, but at least the team behind it had put in a solid effort to create a game that actually played well.

Jurassic Park: Rampage Edition is the final game in the collection, acting as a sequel to the Jurassic Park game on the Mega Drive. Again, you choose as either Alan Grant or a velociraptor. Dinosaurs and humans have seemingly joined forces as Alan has become much too powerful for this planet. He can now ride a gallimimus, kill other humans and destroy every fabric of why he became a paleontologist in the first place. The velociraptor can now do a sick spin jump like Sonic the Hedgehog, eat metal crates to become berserk and explore the ancient ruins of an unknown civilisation. I jest about the ridiculousness of this game, but at least the platforming is tighter than the first Mega Drive game.

As a whole, none of the games made for Jurassic Park back in the day really managed to recreate the feel of the movie. Alan’s either needlessly collecting eggs, blowing up helicopters or killing the very dinosaurs he holds dear to his heart. Alan’s entire purpose in the movie was to manage two children while on an island full of hostile animals much more powerful than he is. The Super Nintendo game is the only one to mention any of the other characters who exist in Jurassic Park, and even then they only offer Alan advice when he hits a radio tower.

As a retro collection, Limited Run Games did the bare minimum in both presentation and features. Working out how to control each game is up to you, as there are no scanned manuals or button overlays that explain how anything works. You can put a border around the screen, but it is the same one for each game and contains no art from the original games. There is a music player for each game, but this only highlights the fact that none of the games used the score from the original movie.

Filters are limited as well, with just a CRT filter for console games and a Dot-Matrix filter for the handheld games. Other retro collections contain Game Boy colour filters to add some colour to the their games, this collection doesn’t even let you play Game Boy games in black and white, instead only forcing you to play in the shades of green available on the original brick Game Boy.

The collection does include maps for the isometric games. This came in handy for both the NES and SNES games. The Game Boy game map just uses the same one as the NES game as it’s identical anyhow. There is also the inclusion of a rewind feature, but the length of time each game rewinds is entirely different. For the more unforgiving games, the game can rewind roughly three or four seconds, so any errors needs to be rewound instantly otherwise you’re out of luck.

Save states are available which can come in handy if you know you’re going to come into danger soon, or if you just want to save your game. This does improve a lot of the games somewhat as none of the games had any kind of save system (save for passwords in the Mega Drive games), even the Super Nintendo game that probably took around 15 hours to complete and had to be done in one sitting.

Playing the Jurassic Park games hit me in a way I wasn’t expecting. I thought so highly of some of these games as a child, and revisiting these has mostly left a sour taste in my mouth. I first thought it was simply because I’m no longer a child, and my tastes have changed somewhat over time, however this can’t be the case because I still feel the same when playing games from other retro collections. I think the reality is that none of these games were particularly good to begin with, and that’s accentuated by the fact that the inclusions in the collection itself are so bare bones that the whole package relies on just the games themselves and none of the history.

The Score

5.0

Review code provided by Freemode

The Pros

The SNES game holds up better than others

Dinosaurs!

The Cons

As a retro collection, it’s very bare-bones

Most games in the collection are bad