Jurassic Park
Arcade
Nostalgia Factor:
Despite being an enormous Jurassic Park fan, somehow this arcade game always eluded me as a kid. I only knew of one arcade that had it – the movie theater at the local mall. I remember seeing this glorious arcade unit (where you sat down in the Jeep from the movie as you played) while at the theater with my mom when we went to go see The Sixth Sense sometime in the late 90s. We didn’t arrive early enough to mess around, however, so one longing look was all I was able to give this game. We ended up coming back to this theater a few times later to watch other movies, but the Jurassic Park arcade unit was long gone by then. I’d had one, and only one chance to play this game – and I biffed it.
Well, here we are in the year 2022. This game initially came out in 1994, which means that a whopping 28 years has passed since it was released. I’m finally getting the chance to play it on my Retro Pie. Would the wait be worth it?
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Story:
I’m not quite sure if this game really has a story. You start out in one of the aforementioned Jurassic Park Jeeps. The whole point of the game is to just… drive around and blast dinosaurs? Apparently. At the end of the game, Grant and Ellie look on as the dinosaurs are captured and put back into captivity.
I’m not quite sure if this game really has a story. You start out in one of the aforementioned Jurassic Park Jeeps. The whole point of the game is to just… drive around and blast dinosaurs? Apparently. At the end of the game, Grant and Ellie look on as the dinosaurs are captured and put back into captivity.
Gameplay:
It became evident to me almost as soon as I started playing this game that I wasn’t going to like it. I like rail shooters. Virtua Cop, Time Crisis, those kinds of games are A-OK in my books. But this game? It’s a complete mess.
I’ll start with the basics. It’s simple. You could say it’s too simple. You have no control over the Jeep, you only control the aiming reticule on the screen. You hold down the button to fire a stream of machine gun bullets. Your gun can’t overheat. There is no reloading. Just hold down that trigger, that’s all you gotta do. The point of the game is to aim and shoot at the dinosaurs that pop up on the screen. You can shoot other things in the environment as well, such as signs, to uncover hidden items like health upgrades.
Good luck doing any of that. This has to be the worst-controlling video game I have ever played in my life. The aiming reticule is absurdly sensitive. If you aren’t pressing anything, it settles on an area of the screen just left of center. If you nudge the controller even the slightest direction the reticule just FLIES across the screen in that direction, and all of a sudden you find yourself mindlessly shooting into the corner of the screen. Try to correct it, and you’ll find yourself firing mindlessly into the opposite corner of the screen. You can’t slowly move the cursor around. No no. You can only move it in a lightning fast, herky jerky motion that makes it impossible to aim at anything. My main strategy as I played was just to hold the fire button and rake the reticule back and forth across the screen, hoping to hit an enemy by blind luck.
Now keep in mind that I’m playing an emulated version of the game on my home TV screen, using a standard video game controller. Maybe if I had played this game the way it was intended to be played – in the arcade, sitting in the Jeep, using the correctly supplied joysticks, I would have been able to control the aiming reticule. But I can’t review a game based on hypotheticals. I have to review it based on what I know. And what I know is that this game was nearly impossible to play.
Good thing I could just pump in an endless supply of virtual quarters. It didn’t matter how many times I died or how bad my aim was. Just put in enough quarters and the Jeep will take you to the end of the game, eventually. That’s one of my biggest gripes about this game. It’s mindless and it requires no skill to beat. If I put in enough quarters, can I just put the controller down for 20 minutes and still beat the game?
Ehhhhhhh. As much as I love Jurassic Park and as much as I liked the idea of zooming around the park in your Jeep, almost like you were in a roller coaster, I still didn’t have a whole lot of fun with this game.
It became evident to me almost as soon as I started playing this game that I wasn’t going to like it. I like rail shooters. Virtua Cop, Time Crisis, those kinds of games are A-OK in my books. But this game? It’s a complete mess.
I’ll start with the basics. It’s simple. You could say it’s too simple. You have no control over the Jeep, you only control the aiming reticule on the screen. You hold down the button to fire a stream of machine gun bullets. Your gun can’t overheat. There is no reloading. Just hold down that trigger, that’s all you gotta do. The point of the game is to aim and shoot at the dinosaurs that pop up on the screen. You can shoot other things in the environment as well, such as signs, to uncover hidden items like health upgrades.
Good luck doing any of that. This has to be the worst-controlling video game I have ever played in my life. The aiming reticule is absurdly sensitive. If you aren’t pressing anything, it settles on an area of the screen just left of center. If you nudge the controller even the slightest direction the reticule just FLIES across the screen in that direction, and all of a sudden you find yourself mindlessly shooting into the corner of the screen. Try to correct it, and you’ll find yourself firing mindlessly into the opposite corner of the screen. You can’t slowly move the cursor around. No no. You can only move it in a lightning fast, herky jerky motion that makes it impossible to aim at anything. My main strategy as I played was just to hold the fire button and rake the reticule back and forth across the screen, hoping to hit an enemy by blind luck.
Now keep in mind that I’m playing an emulated version of the game on my home TV screen, using a standard video game controller. Maybe if I had played this game the way it was intended to be played – in the arcade, sitting in the Jeep, using the correctly supplied joysticks, I would have been able to control the aiming reticule. But I can’t review a game based on hypotheticals. I have to review it based on what I know. And what I know is that this game was nearly impossible to play.
Good thing I could just pump in an endless supply of virtual quarters. It didn’t matter how many times I died or how bad my aim was. Just put in enough quarters and the Jeep will take you to the end of the game, eventually. That’s one of my biggest gripes about this game. It’s mindless and it requires no skill to beat. If I put in enough quarters, can I just put the controller down for 20 minutes and still beat the game?
Ehhhhhhh. As much as I love Jurassic Park and as much as I liked the idea of zooming around the park in your Jeep, almost like you were in a roller coaster, I still didn’t have a whole lot of fun with this game.
Graphics:
This game’s graphics are extremely mixed. At its best, this looks like a Sega Saturn game. 3D environments. Pixelated textures that probably looked good for their time but look horrible now. Some bright colors and some nice environments, but overall nothing too special to look at. At its worst, this game is an absolute joke. I remember the first time I encountered a raptor, a cartoonish 2D drawing of a raptor face popped up on my screen. I didn’t even try to shoot at it because it didn’t even register to me that it was an enemy, it looked so bad. I swear to god I laughed out loud when it swiped at me and did damage to my character. Why does it look like a cardboard cutout? Why is it smiling? So many questions.
This game’s graphics are extremely mixed. At its best, this looks like a Sega Saturn game. 3D environments. Pixelated textures that probably looked good for their time but look horrible now. Some bright colors and some nice environments, but overall nothing too special to look at. At its worst, this game is an absolute joke. I remember the first time I encountered a raptor, a cartoonish 2D drawing of a raptor face popped up on my screen. I didn’t even try to shoot at it because it didn’t even register to me that it was an enemy, it looked so bad. I swear to god I laughed out loud when it swiped at me and did damage to my character. Why does it look like a cardboard cutout? Why is it smiling? So many questions.
Sound:
I guess if this game does anything right, it is in the sound department. I don’t think any of the music from the movie made its way into the game, but the sound effects sure were. Hearing the roar of the T-Rex and the call of the dilophosaurus is always a treat for any Jurassic Park fanatic, I don’t care who you are.
Overall:
I didn’t like this game. I think my review up to this point has made that quite clear. It’s mindless, it’s impossible to control, the graphics are weird, it’s short. I just didn’t derive any pleasure from this. This is easily the worst Jurassic Park game I have ever played.
That said, I find it very hard to hate anything with Jurassic Park in its name. It’s the fanboy in me, and I am totally okay admitting that. Even though the game sucks, I still like the fact that it exists. This is an arcade game where you can sit down in the Jurassic Park Jeep, blast away at dinosaurs, take in the sights from the movie, hear some cool sound effects, beat the game in 20 minutes, and then never have to play it again. So I’m not giving this game an F. It sneaks by, just barely, with a passing grade. Do I feel guilty about giving this unplayable mess a higher score than Blaster Master Boy or Kool-Aid Man? Not in the slightest.
I didn’t like this game. I think my review up to this point has made that quite clear. It’s mindless, it’s impossible to control, the graphics are weird, it’s short. I just didn’t derive any pleasure from this. This is easily the worst Jurassic Park game I have ever played.
That said, I find it very hard to hate anything with Jurassic Park in its name. It’s the fanboy in me, and I am totally okay admitting that. Even though the game sucks, I still like the fact that it exists. This is an arcade game where you can sit down in the Jurassic Park Jeep, blast away at dinosaurs, take in the sights from the movie, hear some cool sound effects, beat the game in 20 minutes, and then never have to play it again. So I’m not giving this game an F. It sneaks by, just barely, with a passing grade. Do I feel guilty about giving this unplayable mess a higher score than Blaster Master Boy or Kool-Aid Man? Not in the slightest.
THE GRADE:
D-
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Jurassic Park (The review you're reading)
And up next:
The Adventures of Batman & Robin
for the Super Nintendo!
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