Jurassic Park is a movie that needs no
introduction…but you’re going to get one anyway, because that’s how the
format of this video series works. Based on the 1990 novel by Michael Crichton,
the film about a dinosaur theme park was almost guaranteed to be a smash hit. The book was
already a best seller, Steven Spielberg was attached to direct, and Jeff Goldblum was willing
to unbutton his shirt. It was primed for success. And success is exactly what it found. If you were
alive in 1993, you saw Jurassic Park in theaters at least twice. And if you died in 1992, you were
very, very jealous. The movie was so successful, it made all of the money in the world. The world
then printed more money for the sole purpose of giving it to Jurassic Park as well.
The film had everything: dinosaurs, dinosaur spookums, dinosaur
stinkums…what else could anyone want? Well, we all know the answer to that,
don’t we? Video games! And oh, boy, did we get them, both for the first film and for
its several sequels. Which…aren’t nearly as good. They have their fans, but so do serial killers.
Regardless of the quality of the source material, we will indeed be ranking every
Jurassic Park game from worst to best. The rules are simple. In fact, I just told
them to you. Exceptions include pinball games, mobile games, LCD games, and so on. However, for
the first time, we will be including official browser games. We’re doing this for a couple
of reasons. First, because there are only two of them. And second, so that you can see how
utterly worthless they are and will better understand why we’ll never cover them again.
Also, a bit of video-game trivia: Crichton created his own game called Amazon in 1984.
It’s not on this list because it has nothing to do with Jurassic Park, but look for it on our
list of Every Game Developed by Authors While They Were Bored Ranked from Worst to Best,
which I’m sure you can expect any day now. Let’s rank ‘em.
I’m Ben and I’m Peter from TripleJump…and welcome…to Every Jurassic
Park Video Game Ranked From WORST To BEST. #38: Scan Command: Jurassic Park (2001)
PC Do you know what I love most about self-checkout
kiosks? Trying to find the barcodes on each item and scanning them into a temperamental reader
that can’t tell the difference between an avocado and a bag of gym socks. Pure bliss.
If you love that experience as much as I do, and you also love dinosaurs hitting each
other, then you will want to get your hands on Scan Command: Jurassic Park. This game
takes all the fun of scanning household objects and combines it with the thrill of dinosaurs
who probably won’t react to anything you do. Each time you scan a barcode, you are ostensibly
powering up your dinosaur, making it more equipped to win fights with other dinosaurs, who presumably
don’t have cupboards as well stocked as yours. Critics were not impressed, with their complaints
having more variety than the actual game did. They reported issues with the scanner not
registering barcodes, bleating loudly each time it failed. They raised concerns of needing so
many barcodes that you’d spend more time scouring your house for them than actually playing the
game. And, most entertainingly, one complained of the scanner being so unresponsive that he
could never be sure if the game had locked up. #37: The Lost World: Jurassic Park (1997)
Game.com Say what you will about the Game.com…
No, really. Say it, so I can nod along, secure in the knowledge that I am not alone in my suffering.
The Lost World: Jurassic Park allows you to choose between two of the characters from the film: Sarah
Harding and Roland Tempo. You may remember them as being the character Julianne Moore played,
and the character Julianne Moore did not play. You’d think the choice would affect gameplay,
what with them having conflictinginterests, but it just changes which mess of pixels will blur
across your screen as you wonder why you aren’t doing literally anything else with your time.
The action unfolds across driving and platforming stages. I’m telling you this because you’d
likely never know it yourself, being as the Game.com has roughly the graphical capabilities
of a malfunctioning menu board at McDonald’s. The game also came out for the R-Zone…I think.
I’m not sure if it was meant to be the same game as this one or if it was specially designed
for children whose parents hated them.The commercial made it look as though your eye is in
constant danger from being plucked out by a T-Rex, but the only gameplay footage we could
find suggests that the game is about one rectangle trying to squeeze past another
in a narrow corridor without seeming rude. #36: Jurassic Park: Paint
and Activity Center (1994) PC
Some sources claim that Jurassic Park: Paint and Activity Center was
intended to appeal to fans of Mario Paint and Kid Pix. I think it’s more accurate to say that it
was intended to suck as much money with as little effort out of fans’ wallets as possible. The game
barely exists. And, yes, I’m taking into account that this was designed for very young children.
Actually, why was this designed for very young children? The movie was PG-13. Certainly nobody
over the age of 12 would want to play this. Nobody over the age of zero would want to play this.
The highlight is a set of 16 stories, which feature voice acting in the same
way that when you sit near a strange man muttering to himself on the bus, your ride
to work features voice acting. These are less stories than they are disconnected slideshows
with disengaged narrators who mispronounce words often enough that they clearly shouldn’t
be trying to teach you the names of dinosaurs. Also, we understand that the art in
coloring books needs to be simple, but if we didn’t already tell you this were
a Jurassic Park game, would you have thought this were Laura Dern or He-Man? It’s dreadful
and I’m angry that you made me talk about it. #35: Dinosaur Stampede (2018)
PC If we can count on anyone to bring us
a great Jurassic Park game, it’s the people behind the most embarrassing
crumbs you will find in our sofas: Doritos, whose scientists were so preoccupied with
whether or not they could bring us a browser game, they didn’t stop to think if they
should bring us a browser game. Dinosaur Stampede features clips from the
then-recent Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom, such as a riveting scene in which Chris Pratt
approaches the camera. We then cut to some Flash-style cutouts that somebody’s nephew strung
together into a simple obstacle course. Your job is to move a gyrosphere either up or down to avoid
obstacles while dinosaurs close in from behind. And even though they clearly do have dinosaur
graphics in the background, the ones pursuing you are represented by a Road-Runner-styledust cloud.
You can also boost, if you’d like to run blindly into hazards, or brake, if you’d like to be eaten
by prehistoric monsters. Whatever’s your poison. Real prizes were up for grabs, but we’d imagine
that it’s probably more fun to add some Jurassic World merchandise to your cart on Amazon than
it is to play this repeatedly in the hopes of eventually winning a baseball cap. It wasn’t much
fun, but, on the bright side, it’s now extinct. #34: The Lost World: Jurassic Park (1997)
Game Boy The Lost World for the Game Boy has a plot.
That’s about all I can tell you for sure. You play as a character so bland, he almost
seems like a placeholder sprite. Seriously, this game might as well have started life
as a sequel to Pitfall for how generic it is. The goal is ostensibly to find eggs
or disks or DNA, depending on the level, but the more immediate goal is to see how long
you can go without shutting the Game Boy off and asking God what you did to deserve
this. My personal record is 11 seconds. The levels are large and mazelike, with no clear
indication of where to go or why you would want to go there. The controls are fine, but you
jump at a strange, unnatural arc, which makes it difficult to tell which gaps you can clear
and which gaps you can’t, which leads to a lot of unwelcome backtracking. The foretracking is bad
enough; making us backtrack as well is just cruel. Every so often Harvey Keitel calls you up
to plead with you to keep playing the game. Sorry, Harvey. This isn’t the first time I’ve
disappointed you and it won’t be the last. #33: Jurassic Park Explorer (2007)
DVD It’s another ranked-list first
as we finally tackle a DVD game! We haven’t covered any topics
that had official DVD games, at least that we know of, so it’s not as
though we’re actively avoiding them. Although, starting now, we might do just that.
Jurassic Park Explorer came with both a DVD and a game board, and you’d be forgiven for
thinking the latter has anything to do with the former.The instructions tell you to take turns
rolling the dice and moving your piece around, but there’s no goal on the board. All you do is
land on spaces that tell you which minigame to select from the DVD menu. You could do that
by rolling the dice without a board at all, or you could just play the minigames in
sequence and see who wins the most rounds. The DVD has a measly seven minigames,
which include mazes, matching puzzles, guessing which dinosaur you see through the fog,
and even text-only trivia questions. It’s about as low-effort as something can get
while still technicallyexisting. Strangely, the box suggests that you can “play at
home or in the car,” but we can’t imagine too many people bought hybrid DVD/board games with the
intention of playing them in moving vehicles. #32: Trespasser (1998)
PC I bet you expected this to be at the very bottom
of this list, didn’t you? Believe me, I wish it were. Trespasser is not a good game. It deserves
its reputation, which is only marginally better than the reputation of brain-eating amoebas.
You play as a character named Anne, but it feels more like you play as a marionette made
of spaghetti. The controls in this game – and the way in which your character responds to these
controls, as though she’s still unused to having a human body – went on to inspire games like Octodad
and Surgeon Simulator. The difference, of course, is that those games knew that this was ridiculous.
Trespasser wants you to take it seriously, then puts you in control of a Gumby figure
that’s been forgotten in the back of a hot car. Trespasser provides a full gaming experience
without a HUD, which sounds like a better idea than it is. The only way to know how much
ammunition you have left is to listen for verbal cues, so good luck picking those out
during a firefight. And you check your health by looking ata tattoo…on your…come on, guys. I
know young boys are the target audience here, but even they would think this is gratuitous.
It’s not all bad, though; Trespasser was singled out by Computer Gaming World for a special
award. Let me just check to see what that was…oh dear. Right. It is all bad; ignore me. #31: Jurassic Park III: Island Attack (2001)
Game Boy Advance Games are supposed to be fun, right? I’m
not forgetting something here, am I? Like, the point is that they’re meant to bring you
some degree of joy? I just want to make sure, because Jurassic Park III: Island Attack
nearly has me convinced otherwise. Island Attack is an unresponsive, repetitive,
tedious slog through the worst game design concepts imaginable, from pounding repeatedly on
crates to get the items inside, to making blind jumps on a tiny screen, to trying desperately
to get your grappling hook to latch on to something – anything – even once, for god’s sake.
The plot of the game is that the developers hate you and want to drain every ounce of enjoyment
from your life. It’s up to you to bite the game cartridge in half and spit it into a roaring
garbage fire. Failure to do so results in the bad ending, in which you continue to own this game.
It looks like somebody fingerpainted it in the medium of animal vomit, it controls like
your thumbs are issuing mild suggestions rather than commands, and it sounds like
somebody leaning on a novelty car horn. Playing it is every bit as much fun as waking
up to discover that you’ve been buried alive. #30: Jurassic Park III: Dino Defender (2001)
PC Dino Defender is often considered
to be an edutainment game, partly because its developer – Knowledge Adventure
– almost exclusively made edutainment games, and partly because it’s as bad as
edutainment games typically are. And yet there’s very little that can be
considered educational about Dino Defender. You control the little robot from Power Rangers
– you know, the one who didn’t do anything other than say “ay yiyi” and sing about Jesus.
You walk back and forth across empty levels, throwing a switch now and then. Periodically
you will encounter dinosaurs who look to have escaped from somebody’s box of Colorforms.
The game’s focus on puzzle platforming can sometimes remind you of Oddworld…at least in
the sense that it makes them ask themselves, “Why am I not instead playing Oddworld?”
The lack of challenge is forgivable in a game aimed at young children, but the lack of
inventiveness is not. Ask any child what they’d like to do in a dinosaur game, and “manage circuit
breakers” is likely to be quite far down the list. Progress in the game does unlock printable trading
cards, however, which I mention only because “printable trading cards” might be the
single most 2001 phrase in all of gaming. #29: Jurassic Park III: Danger Zone! (2001)
PC Danger Zone! was developed by…Knowledge Adventure?
Again? Come on; I barely escaped the last one with my sanity intact. This one takes the form of
a board game, and some of the sequences do indeed quiz you on dinosaur facts, but being
quizzed on something isn’t the same thing as learning about something, so I don’t think
Danger Zone! can be called edutainment, either. Players take turns moving around the board,
failing to understand what the minigames expect of them, and then asking their parents
if they can be sent to bed without supper. It reuses some graphical elements from Dino
Defender as well, just to ensure that you wouldn’t be able to successfully forget that game.
Obviously,something like this will only be fun in multiplayer, but Danger Zone! has an upper limit
of two players, making this computerized board game significantly less versatile than most
actual board games. Considering the turn-based nature of the experience, there’s no reason that
support for three or more players couldn’t have been implemented. Not that you’d ever find
more than two people who want to play this, but still. It’s the principle of the thing.
Ah well. At least I made it through this entire entry without quoting Kenny
Loggins. You’re welcome for that. #28: Jurassic Park (1993)
NES, Game Boy When Jurassic Park released in theaters, its
special effects were staggering. It was among the most visually impressive movies that had
ever been released, and nearly all of it still holds up today. It’s puzzling, therefore,
that instead of making any attempt at visual spectacle in the first home video game, the
developers drew it in Microsoft Paint. I admit, the NES was far from a graphical powerhouse, but
when Kirby’s Adventure looks better than Jurassic Park, it’s pretty clear somebody isn’t trying.
The game looks sort of like The Legend of Zelda with dinosaurs, which as a description is far
more fun than anything the game actually provides. Instead of being played by Sam Neill, Dr. Alan
Grant is played by a litter of cats in a bear costume. It’s your job to walk in circles,
wondering where to go. Along the way you’ll collect dinosaur eggs and mystery boxes, which
are as likely to kill you as they are to help you. The game was also ported to the Game
Boy, just in case your main complaint about the NES version was that you could
see where you were going. Of the two, we actually recommend this version on the grounds
that the game is easier to drop into the sewer. #27: Jurassic Park (1993)
SNES Is the SNES version of Jurassic Park the same
game as the NES version? We went back and forth on this one, and if you disagree with where
we landed, just pretend we’re talking about all of these versions in one long entry.
Either way, this version is better, but it’s sure not better enough to matter.
Many areas of the game are identical to the NES version, and plenty of others are similar enough
that they don’t warrant discussion. But there are a few tweaks that take advantage of the hardware,
such as the first-person indoor sequences. Those are clearly noteworthy, as implementing
an entire genre shift each time you enter a building is an impressive feat, especially on a
16-bit console. But these levels lack anything resembling fun, they’re difficult to navigate, and
the game runs at the speed of actual evolution. Why rank it higher, then? Well, it’s
not as if the NES version was any fun, either, and this does – technically –
feature some degree of visual spectacle, which suits a Jurassic Park game. Also, the
graphics and sound in general are superior, so…playing the game is still like being in hell,
but it’s a part of hell with nicer wallpaper. #26: Jurassic Park (1993)
PC For flip’s sake, is every Jurassic Park
game going to belike this?! In fairness, this version of Jurassic Park looks like
a straight port of the previous twogames we discussed, but it is different. For instance,
you start the game on some dirt instead of grass. That’s…something? It also contains unique levels
and sequences. The visual similarities were an unfortunate development during…development.
Ocean Software paid handily for the rights to develop Jurassic Park games, and certainly that
led them to cut development costs wherever they could. That’s why these games look the same;
it’s easier to take something you’ve already made and adjust it for different hardware
than it is to build something new each time. And so when the team working on the PC
game saw the versions for Nintendo systems, they adopted the visuals and mechanics more
or less wholesale. This is unfortunate, because the PC development team allegedly had a
lot of their own, unique ideas. Many of them are in evidence in the finished version, such as a
few sequences lifted from thenovel that did not feature in the movie. Left to their own devices,
the PC team could have come up with a different approach entirely. Instead, they inherited a
framework and did their best within it. But, hey, at least the first-person sequences are
better here. That’s something, right? …right? #25: Jurassic Park Interactive (1994)
3DO Interactive Multiplayer How do you convince people to buy a console that,
when adjusted for inflation, sells for more than $1,300? If you answered, “With an exclusive
Jurassic Park game,” you might be right. If you answered “With an exclusive Jurassic Park minigame
collection,” however, you are definitely wrong. I’d say that Jurassic Park Interactive were
developed with a “quantity over quality” mindset, but I honestly think that quality never
entered into it at all. These are barely connected reskins of older games, only
clunkier, uglier, and with longer loading times. Just what we always wanted, eh?
You’d think fans of Jurassic Park would have wanted…you know…a Jurassic Park game,
rather than a version of Asteroids in which you shoot at giant floppy disks. The game
couldn’t even use the actors’ likenesses, allowing forsome serious “you’ve captured their
stunt doubles” energy each time they’re on screen. There are a few sequences that are bigger
than minigames but still not quite full games. Half-games, maybe? Half-arsed games, more like!
Anyway, these include shooting dilophosaurs – or dilphs, for short – while nothing happens;
driving away from a T-Rex while nothing happens; and navigating a maze full of velociraptors
while you wish they would kill you in real life. #24: Jurassic Park 2: The Chaos Continues (1994)
SNES Despite the name, Jurassic Park 2 was not based on
the second Jurassic Park film. You’d be forgiven for thinking that it was, being as they’re both
equally terrible, but it was purely coincidental. At first, the game seems to have some decent
variety, with six missions available at the start, each of which has a distinct explanation of
what needs to be accomplished. Then you’ll load of any of those missions and be faced with the
samerun-and-gun platforming in a maze. Four of the six missions even drop you into exactly the same
environment with exactly the same obstacles. This would be less of a problem if the game were fun,
but with its placement this far down the list, how much fun do you think it is?
The controls are fine, at least, but that’s about the closest we can get to a
compliment. The repetition is off the charts, the difficulty is absurd, and you only
get one life. When you die, which you will quickly, I’m pretty sure it qualifies as a
mercy killing. Also, the cartoony intro is completely at odds with the actual game, and Alan
Grant for some reason acts like he’s auditioning for a starring role in the next Contra. The
chaos may continue, but I certainly won’t. #23: Jurassic Park: Dinosaur Battles (2002)
PC Jurassic Park: Dinosaur Battles is one weird
game. You do technically play as a person, but you’re ultimately controlling dinosaurs
in a sort of Fight-Club scenario. And if your issue with Jurassic Park was that there
wasn’t a dinosaur Fight Club – or if your issue with Fight Club was that there weren’t
dinosaurs – I suppose this is the game for you. The plot centers around the work of Dr. Corts, who
spent her career cloning and controlling dinosaurs who would battle each other to the death.
I don’t know much about her intentions– I don’t even know if she called the project
“Dinosortnite” – but the upshot is that when you stumble across the fruits of her labor, you
too can clunkily control a handful of dinosaurs with skills you unlock through DNA sequencing.
The dinosaurs don’t look that great, the animations of each fighter rarely feel like
they’re happening in response to the other, and there aren’t enough playable dinosaurs to
keep things interesting. Also, for a game about a dinosaur fight club, the developers missed
an obvious multiplayer opportunity. Instead, it’s you vs. the A.I. in the fight of a
century. The fight to stay awake, that is!! All of that said, it is weird
enough to justify a look, and at least tries, which isn’t something
we can say about most of these games. #22: Jurassic Park Institute
Tour: Dinosaur Rescue (2003) Game Boy Advance
It may have a strange name that gets even stranger when you realize that it’s just a minigame
collection, but Jurassic Park Institute Tour: Dinosaur Rescue makes at least partial sense: It
was tie-in merchandise for a Japanese exhibition developed with the assistance of paleontologists.
The Institute Tour exhibition itself seems to have gone over well – I confess I did not
travel through time andacross the ocean in order to attend a lecture in a language I
don’t understand– but the game is every bit as tacky and disposable as souvenirs traditionally
are. Dinosaur Rescue consists of five minigames, none of which are about dinosaurs being
rescued, dinosaurs doing any rescuing, or “dinosaur” and “rescue” being
even conceptually related in any way. These games involve avoiding stampeding dinosaurs,
collecting meat, and engaging in fitness boxing with a Tyrannosaurus Rex. One thing you’ve
certainly noticed, of course, is that the game is absolutely adorable, with everything having
a sort of cuddly toy aesthetic. This lends it a huge amount of personality and helps it
to stand out for its style alone. But that’s literally the only thing this game has going for
it. There’s not even a framing device; it’s a menu screen with five very basic score-attack games as
options. It’s an interesting curio, but not worth digging up. Wait, have I used that joke
already? I haven’t? That’s actually surprising… #21: Warpath: Jurassic Park (1999)
PlayStation Michael Crichton reportedly starting writing
what would become his novel – Billy and the Cloneasaurus– in 1983, meaning that it
took seven years of careful research, revision, and rewriting before the book hit
shelves. He couldn’t have known that it would become a pop-culture juggernaut. However, he
also couldn’t have known that it would lead to a game as bad as Warpath, so it balances out.
Warpathis a game in which two dinosaurs hit each other. That’s it. You can pick the dinosaurs
who hit each other, you can pick the location at which they hit each other, and you can
pick the precise way in which they will hit each other. It’s a one-on-one fighter that
is about as lazy as a tie-in video game can be, short of simply not putting a disc in the case.
If it were a competent fighter, it might at least serve as a fun novelty. However,
there’s nothing to Warpath: Jurassic Park. It’s as basic as a fighting game can possibly
get, with two dinosaurs smacking each other around “quite unrealistically,” according to
the Jurassic Park wiki, in an observation that was clearly typed by someone with
their nose pointed directly into space. #20: Chaos Island: The Lost World (1997)
PC Chaos Island: The Lost World is a
strategy game with dinosaurs. I repeat, Chaos Island: The Lost World is a strategy
game with dinosaurs. What more could anyone possibly want? I mean, “a better one”
is the answer, but still. Nice idea! It’s unfortunate that Chaos Island isn’t as great
as its concept, because it had a lot going for it. Not least being the fact that the actual cast
of The Lost World film returns to do the voice acting. This includes big names, such as Julianne
Moore, Vince Vaughn, Richard Attenborough, and fly-daddy himself Jeff Goldblum. And the central
concept of the game – breeding and managing a squadron of fighting dinosaurs – is excellent,
with a simplified RTS approach that fits the all-ages appeal of Jurassic Park very well.
It falls down in the execution, though, as the game doesn’t become interesting and never
really poses a challenge. You essentially sic your dinosaur friends on groups of hunters and
watch as the latter are gorily devoured, which is fun the first few dozen times it happens but
loses its luster the next few dozen. It’s not a bad game, but for all of its potential it ends
up feeling disappointingly underrealized. There’s a great game in its DNA, but that DNA needs
some serious resequencing. Speaking of which… #19: Jurassic Park III: The DNA Factor (2001)
Game Boy Advance This is not a game in which Simon Cowell scours the
nation for the next best dinosaur A plane transporting jars of DNA (…right…)
is struck by lightning over a dinosaur island (…right…) and it’s your job to run around,
collecting the individual nucleobases of DNA. (…right.)
I mean, that’s a plot for a Jurassic Park game, I guess. DNA was in the movie. Actually,
come to think of it, DNA is in every movie. Mind blown. Anyway, you get to choose
between two characters, Mark or Lori, with the difference being that you’ll either regret playing
as Mark or Lori. You scamper around collecting nucleobasesthat are roughly the size of your head,
which is definitely a bit larger than they are in real life. Seriously, if your nucleobases are the
size of bowling balls, see a physician immediately. No part of The DNA Factor is fun, least
of all attempting to navigate long, boring levels that occupy several planes without
any sense of depth, making it difficult to judge what’s ahead of you as opposed to
what’s in the foreground or background. It does contain some important
Jurassic Park lore, however: We learn that the scientists didn’t do anything
impressive by reconstructing dinosaur DNA; they just played Puzzle Bobble with adenine, cytosine,
guanine, and thymine. I’m on to you, you frauds. #18: Jurassic Park (1993)
Mega Drive What did every child love about Jurassic Park?
Why, all of the scenes of adults talking quietly to each other, of course. But some very strange
childrenevidently preferred the dinosaurs. I don’t understand it, but here we are. BlueSky Software
attempted to cater to this no-doubt miniscule demographic with their Jurassic Park game for the
Mega Drive, allowing them to play as an actual dinosaur…as well as Sam Neill with arthritis.
The game offers two different campaigns, with the real effort obviously going to the one in which
you are a velociraptor on a killing spree. This is the better of the two modes, mainly because it’s
shorter. The game’s graphics have not aged well and the soundtrack appears to have been composed
by a flatulent Roomba. In addition, it’s just not much fun. Playing as a raptor and shredding little
people is cathartic enough for a few minutes, but the blind jumps and awkward controls
quickly get very old. 85.8 million years old, if you wanna get cretaceous about this.
Playing as Dr. Grant is a bit better in the sense that he doesn’t go flying off
like a misfiring rocket when you’re trying to navigate tight platforms, but it’s still
not great. He doesn’t so much jump as he does become briefly weightless. It’s better than what
Nintendo fans got, but so is undercooked chicken. #17: Jurassic Park – The
Ride Online Adventure (1996) PC
When developers make amusement-park-ride tie-ins, we usually get…well, versions of the
ride. Maybe you’ll have to collect magical cupcakes along the way, or some such thing,
but Jurassic Park – The Ride Online Adventure charts very different territory. The game is a
first-person point-and-click adventure, similar to 1993’s The Journeyman Project. Superficially
similar, I mean; I don’t think The Journeyman Project was made to promote a log flume.
It has an interesting premise, at least:The designers of the real-world ride were evidently
cloning real dinosaurs on the side. And, yes, the premise of the ride is also that those
dinosaurs are real, but I mean that the people who designed the fake dinosaurs that were meant
to be taken as real dinosaurs also cloned real dinosaurs. Did I say the premise was interesting?
I must have meant “difficult to explain.” As you click around and get mauled by terrible
thunder lizards, you’ll uncover some interesting backstory, including the fact that
a human woman gave birth to a raptor and that the park employees evidently enjoy
dinosaur roleplaying in the bedroom. Again, did I say interesting? I must have meant “deeply
troubling for an amusement park’s browser game.” #16: Jurassic Park (1993)
Mega-CD Jurassic Park on the Mega-CD is a decent – if
hideous – point-and-click adventure that does have some effort invested in it. The story takes
place after the first film, in which the dinosaurs wigged out and killed everyone. You play the
role of a scientist tasked with rescuing the remaining eggs, so that dinosaurs may continue
to wig out and kill everyone. A noble pursuit. Many sources claim that the game has a real-time
12-hour limit, but that’s not entirely accurate. Yes, if you do stand around doing nothing
for 12 hours you will fail the game – and I’d be impressed by your patience – but moving
from place to place on the map and performing various tasks will drain the timer much
more quickly. This makes the oblique puzzles even more frustrating. Not only will you need
tofind items, but you will need to figure out when, where, and how to use them…with the
clock ticking down every second. Also, in spite of the fact that a mouse
peripheral was released for the Mega-CD, Jurassic Park is not compatible, leaving you
slowly dragging crosshairs around with a D-pad. It’s not a particularly fun game, and there’s
no question that pixel art would have looked much better than the grainy animations we
got instead, but it’s at least more than a string of barely interactive FMVs. God knows
the Mega-CD had more than enough of those. #15: The Lost World: Jurassic Park (1997)
PlayStation, Saturn The ability to play as a velociraptor in the Mega
Drive Jurassic Park game was an enormous selling point. It was such a selling point that people
bought it even though the game sucked on toast. It makes sense, then, that The Lost World contains
not just a playable dinosaur, but three of them!...as well as some people you’ll only bother
playing as so that you can get to more dinosaurs. It’s not a great game, and it’s more than a
little disappointing that in the 32-bit era, Jurassic Park games were still following 8-bit
game design.One of the intentions was to let players feel what it’s like to be on both sides
of the gun; you’d learn what it’s like to be an animal in the crosshairs, and learn what it’s
like to know that pulling the trigger is your only chance of survival. And the game succeeds
in this area, at least as far as it demonstrates that life stinks as both a person and a dinosaur.
In 1998, the PlayStation version was re-released as a Special Edition, giving fansa playable
Tyrannosaurus Rexfar sooner. This was good, because it meant you could give up much earlier
without worrying that you missed anything cool. #14: The Lost World: Jurassic Park (1997)
Mega Drive In The Lost World, you are Roland Tembo, played
by the late Pete Postlethwaite in the film. As in the film, hunting is a major drive for the
character, and that feeds into the gameplay; you have the option of either gunning down
dinosaurs or tranquilizing and capturing them. The former is certainly easier, but the latter
leads to greater rewards, in terms of health and powerups. It’s a simple system, but it goes a
long way towards adding some thought to what could otherwise have been a simple dinosaur massacre.
For the Mega Drive, the game looks and plays great. On-foot segments offer vehicles to keep
things moving briskly, and the chase sections – in which you both give chase and are chased – are
frankly incredible for the hardware. All of which sounds great, right? Right! The answer is right.
Sadly the gameplay itself lets things down, being as repetitive and tedious as we’d
expect from low-effort licensed games. Missions consist of simply walking around
to find NPCs or blowing up generators, almost completely squandering the potential that
the game built for itself. In short, The Lost World for the Mega Drive is not a low-effort
game, but ends up feeling like one anyway. #13: Jurassic Park: The Game (2011)
PlayStation 3, Xbox 360, PC Hey, remember when Dennis Nedry dropped the
shaving cream can full of dinosaur embryos? Well, we’ve got the story of what happened
to the shaving cream over here! See? Nobody cares. For a story that takes place
during and after the events of the first film, you’d think that Telltale could have
picked a better focal point than something the audience stopped caring about
the moment Spielberg cut away from the scene. When Telltale is doing great work – such as with
The Walking Dead or Batman – the strength of the writing carries the experience far beyond however
many or few buttons you’ll press along the way. With Jurassic Park, though, that writing rarely
rises to the level necessary for us to care. There’s also an annoying tendency for characters
to hold each other back from escaping the island. While the story does provide a number of
conflicting objectives, none of them convincingly suggest that they wouldn’t at least want to
escape from the dinosaurs that are eating them. Surely they should be able to work together
at least that far. Cutting social commentary or hacky writing? You be the judge.
But, hey don’t take our word for it, or the word of any other critics. It’s the players
who matter, and they really seemed to enjoy it, giving it a wealth of 10 out of
10 ratings! Ohh. Oh. Nevermind. #12: Jurassic Park III: Park Builder (2001)
Game Boy Advance Jurassic Park III: Park Builder is easily lost in
the shuffle. It was neither the only Jurassic Park game in which you manage the park itself, nor was
it the only Jurassic Park game released by Konami for the GBA in 2001. They released threegames
in the same year based on the same film. As such, it’s easy to view Park Builder
as an also-ran, but it honestly deserves another glance. Not a long glance, mind you;
again, there were other park management games in the series and all of them were better, but
considering the hardware, it’s really not bad. It’s extremely simple, with little to do other
than plop down structures and upgrade them, but it’s also deceptively challenging, with money
running out quickly and it being very difficult to turn things around once your finances start
draining. It does a great job of teaching children that their dreams are untenable.
You can’t even make a profit when you miraculously resurrect prehistoric species, Jimmy;
do you really think that your lemonade stand is going to be any different?
Might as well start learning about NFTs now. #11: The Lost World: Jurassic Park (1997)
Game Gear The Game Gear version of The Lost World
is the best retail game with that title, which is saying next to nothing, I know, but I’m
trying to be positive here. It’s a perfectly fine little platformer. And I do mean little, as you
can complete the game in less time than takes you to sneeze. Still, it controls decently
and its levels are rarely obnoxious. Also, in a truly inspired idea, you can tranquilize
dinosaurs and climb on them to reach other areas. That’s so perfect that I can’t believe
more of these games didn’t do it. Actually, looking back at how little
thought went into those other games…I can believe it. I’m sorry I lied to you.
The graphics look nice, even if the game doesn’t always make the best use of them. For
instance, I genuinely have no idea how this boss is doing this with his legs. Still, though,
it’s fun for the 20 minutes or so that it lasts. (What? I have long sneezes.)
The music is also pretty good, but it does slow down along with the rest of the
game where there is too much happening on the screen, making it sound like the digital
musicians all forgot the tune at once. #10: Jurassic Park: Rampage Edition (1994)
Mega Drive In spite of its title – which makes
it sound like an expanded or enhanced version of the previous Jurassic Park game
– Rampage Edition is a completely different game that serves as a sequel. At the same
time, however, it’s clear that developer BlueSky took the opportunity to correct
much of what they got wrong previously. That game released two months after the film
debuted in theaters, so it’s probably not much of an exaggeration to call it a rush
job. Rampage Edition came out about a year after the film, giving the developers more
time to…you know…figure out how to make it. The result is a game that revisits a
few of the previous game’s core ideas, and executes all of them better. The controls are
better, the level design is better, and the music is…well the controls and the level design are
better. The graphics have also aged better, going for a more colorful style with thick, comic-book
outlines. You still get to control either a velociraptor or Dr. Grant. Why is Dr. Grant back
on the island? Don’t ask; he doesn’t know either. If BlueSky really were trying to give us “Jurassic
Park for the Mega Drive, but better,” they succeeded. I just wish they’d gone for “Jurassic
Park for the Mega Drive, but good” instead. #9: Jurassic Park: Operation Genesis (2003)
PlayStation 2, Xbox, PC Have you ever watched Jurassic Park and thought,
“I could run that place better than John Hammond”? If not…why not? That guy did a terrible job of
things. The only way you could run it worse is if you led your guests directly into a dinosaur’s
mouth and told them to tickle its uvula. Regardless, Operation Genesis gives you a chance
to build and manage the enterprise yourself, Zoo Tycoon-style, with the ultimate goal of
earning a five-star rating. Which, to me, seems pretty unnecessary. You’ve got the only
park on the planet with living dinosaurs. Does anybody care if the Michelin Guide only gave it
three stars? It’s not like customers can say, “Oh, we’ll try Cretaceous Circus instead.”
“Let’s try Mesozoic Municipal Recreation Area.” Anyway, now that I’m done venting my
spleen at a park-management game from nearly two decades ago, I can say that
Operation Genesis is actually quite fun. It even has a Site B mode that allows you to
let dinosaurs run free on a different island, likely confusing the hell out of the
local wildlife. That’s a nice way to give dimension to these creatures beyond
them serving as simple park attractions. #8: Jurassic Park 2: The Chaos Continues (1994)
Game Boy It’s surprising enough when a Game Boy game
is better than its console counterpart, but when it’s this much better it’s miraculous.
As in it literally counts toward the canonization of the developer as a saint. Jurassic Park
2: The Chaos Continues for the Game Boy is perfectly competent, which means it’s
approximately six thousand times better than the SNES game. It’s a fairly standard platformer
but…well…that’s a good thing. There’s none of the confusion that saturated the maze sections
of that game, with things being clearer and more straightforward here. Strangely, it’s
also less repetitive. That’s a second miracle, guys; one more and developer Ocean is
officially a saint in the eyes of the pope. The game features boss fights and auto-scrollers
that keep things interesting without ever becoming too difficult. And while the necessity of
collecting keycards to open level exits sounds tedious, it’s really not too bad. In fact,
keycards can be close enough to each other that you wonder why they bothered putting them in
the game at all. It’s less of a scavenger hunt than it is a breadcrumb trail.
Actually, come to think of it, it looks and sounds better than the SNES game as
well, which is…oh, wow, a third miracle. Okay, it’s official. Call the vatican. We need to
make arrangements for the Feast of St. Ocean. #7: Jurassic Park (1993)
Master System, Game Gear One of the better Jurassic Park games tends to
be one of the most overlooked, as well. This, honestly, makes sense; the SNES and Sega’s own
Mega Drive had eclipsed the Master System in every respect, and the Game Gear wasn’t exactly
where one would expect to find a great licensed game. And so when most kids in 1993 asked
their parents for a Jurassic Park game, they almost certainly asked them for
something significantly worse than this. The Master System and Game Gear
versions are basically identical, with the former obviously having the superior
presentation. The hardware limitations of the latter do lead to some issues, such
as sprite flickering and the fact that the driving sequences seem to have you
controlling an Adidas shoe. But either way, it’s a good platformer that controls well and
offers more variety than one might expect. It’s also pretty short, however, with a
leisurely playthrough taking maybe 45 minutes. Collect all of the Jurassic Park icons, though,
and you’ll unlock a special fifth stage. Yes, five whole stages! This one ends with a boss
fight against a purple tyrannosaurus, making this the second Worst to Best video to feature
Barney. That’s two too many, if you ask me. #6: Jurassic Park Arcade (2015)
Arcade The name may put you in mind
of Sega’s 1994 Jurassic Park arcade game, and that’s almost certainly
deliberate, but 2015’s Jurassic Park Arcade – developed by Raw Thrills – is more of
a spiritual successor, incorporating aspects of multiple films. Raw Thrills actually purchased
a1994 cabinet and played it for inspiration, enamored by that game’s sense of pacing and
momentum. They picked a great game to study, but the resulting mashup of Jurassic Parks past
– J... Jurasshup Park? No, that's rubbish – feels profoundly underwhelming. Its intentions are good and its graphics are
certainly fine, but many of the Raw Thrills employees had never worked on a rail shooter
before and struggled to bring their ideas to life. There were also troubles with the
engine and, evidently, with cohesive vision, as members of the development team each had their
own concepts of how the game should turn out. It is nice that the ultimate goal of the game
is to capture dinosaurs rather than kill them. Of course, in order to capture the dinosaur at
the end of each mission you’ll end up massacring hundreds of others along the way…ah well. Can’t
make an omelette without breaking a few dinosaur eggs, am I right? I am not right, otherwise human beings
would never have survived the invention of the omelette. #5: Jurassic Park III (2001)
Arcade Sega’s two arcade games went out of their
way to make clear that you were firing “tranquilizer darts” at the dinosaurs rather than
live ammunition. You weren’t murdering dinosaurs; you were knocking them out. That dinosaur
isn’t dead; he’s just resting his eyes. You haven’t exterminated a species; they went on a
cruise and are having a lovely time, I promise. Jurassic Park III – developed by Konami –
offers no such comforting illusions. Yeah, you’re mowing down living history with hot lead;
what of it? And…that’s really all you’re doing. The previous arcade games weren’t exactly
bursting with variety, but they kept things moving quickly along, eliciting exactly the sort
of “don’t blink” tension that makes otherwise gimmicky shooters work so well.
Jurassic Park III, by contrast, often has you standing motionless while
dinosaurs plod over to you. It’s fun enough, but a sense of repetitiveness sets in early
and never quite leaves. When you’re killed, there’s not the same need to keep pumping
money into the machine to keep the high going; you instead feel like it’s
time to try a different game. None of which makes Jurassic Park III
bad. Konami knew how to make arcade games, and this is a perfectly competent
experience. But compared to Sega’s outings, which both had more love invested into them and
had better source material, it falls a bit short. #4: Lego Jurassic World (2015)
PlayStation 3, PlayStation 4, Wii U, Xbox 360, Xbox One, 3DS, Vita, PC
Don’t let the name fool you, especially if you were underwhelmed by Jurassic
World; Lego Jurassic World actually covers the first four films in the series, reimagined as the
things that make you howl and scream profanities when you step on them in the middle of the
night. As such, fans of any of those movies are likely to find something to enjoy here, and
the cartoonish, slapstick versions of events keeps things from ever feeling too familiar.
Too familiar in a narrative sense, that is. Lego games of this era leaned upon a kind of template,
and that template is indeed familiar. Still, it’s a sturdy one, and it’s hard not to feel
charmed by the little plastic dinosaurs walking through little plastic trees on their way to eat
your little plastic intestines. It’s adorable! If you’ve watched our Every Star Wars
Video Game Ranked From Worst to Bestlist, you’ll know that Darth Vader is Chewbacca’s
father. You’ll also know that Lego games on handheld devices are usually quite different
to their console counterparts. Here, though, the vast majority of the experience is intact on
the 3DS and Vita, which is impressive, and the small amount of content you’d lose with those
versions is made up for by their portability. Actually, it’s also on the Switch now, so
scratch that. Sorry to have wasted your time. #3: Jurassic Park (1994)
Arcade In 1994, Sega released the first Jurassic Park
arcade game, and as the company had extensive experience with both rail shooters
and vehicle-based arcade cabinets, the game they produced was perfectly within
their wheelhouse. Two players could sit within a miniature Ford Explorer and get bumped
and bounced around during the adventure. “Hold on to your butts”? More like,
“Hold on to your lunch,” am I right? I am not right, because the vehicle’s motion
was within the accepted parameters of comfort and was unlikely to disorient anyone, let alone
induce severe episodes of nausea or emesis. That should keep our legal team happy The game was a tie-in to the first film,
but actually served as a sequel story. You and a friend take on the roles of
doctors Alan Grant and Ellie Sattler, who survived the disaster on Isla Nublar in
the film, but apparently regretted that they didn’t shoot more dinosaurs on the way out. They
return, heavily armed, in order to rectify this. It’s a genuinely great game, and it
does a wonderful job of keeping the “family-friendly monster movie” atmosphere of
the film intact, with fun jump scares and chase sequences. It might not be the best Jurassic
Park game – and it was a bit expensive to play – but it deserves high marks for actually
being…y’know…a game that is good. Fancy that! #2: The Lost World: Jurassic Park (1997)
Arcade Sega’s arcade game tie-in for the first
film was an arcade smash, and a deserving one. The company then got to reimagine the
film’s sequel in a similar vein, and it’s difficult to say whether or not it’s superior.
It’s certainly better in some ways. The previous game was a rail shooter that lacked the literal
shooters, using a joystick instead. The Lost World has light guns, making for a more exciting
experience. It also looks quite a bit better, though that’s not to imply that the first game
looked bad. The Special Edition cabinet – which was exclusive to Japan– introduced even
more improvements, such as a larger screen, advanced hydraulics, and a gust of air that would
hit you in the face when the dinosaurs roared, which is the cutest thing in history.
Sega was a bit disappointed in the game, promising that scrapped levels and features
would be restored for the Dreamcast port. That never came to pass, as the Dreamcast fared
about as well in the world as actual dinosaurs did. But whatever else it could have been, the
version of this game that we got is excellent. Superior to the first one or not,
it’s still definitely worth playing. And apparently it is superior. Just look at the rankings
Philip has the authority to make decisions like that apparently #1: Jurassic World Evolution (2018)
PlayStation 4, Xbox One, PC With a lot of these “Jurassic World” games,
we’re all okay with the fact that they’re actually “Jurassic Park” games with some
gyrospheres added, right? Right. Several games have attempted to give fans the opportunity to
run exciting, fatal dinosaur parks of their own, but none have been better than Jurassic World
Evolution. The game takes things just a step further, with park management being one part
of theexperience, and the ability to explore your own park being another. Never before
has it felt so good to own a dinosaur park, right down to the inevitable escape of the
beasts and the devouring of innocent tourists. Critics, a bit surprisingly, were divided on
this one. Some of them called it too simple, some called it too complicated. Some called it
too difficult, some called it too easy. It’s a genuine case of there being no “correct” way to
make a game like this, but I’m happy to applaud developer Frontier not only for the work they did
ahead of release, but for the support they offered afterward, in the form of patches and updates.
The DLC even featured an original-film cast reunion, with Sam Neill, Laura Dern, Jeff
Goldblum, and B.D. Wong reprising their roles. Conspicuously absent is Richard
Attenborough, who excused himself on the grounds that he died four years prior. Typical. "Spared no
expense", my arse! Those who tuned into E3 2021 – and those who were smarter and just watched some highlights
later – will have seen a trailer for Jurassic World Evolution 2, and it has every chance of
being still better. Even if it isn’t, though, it’s worth being grateful for what we’ve got.
As we’ve seen…this could have been much worse.
