Tuesday, November 12, 2019

Eric Vs. 365 - Day 135 - Jurassic Park (Genesis)

Why the heck did 90% of licensed games on the 8 and 16-bit systems have to be the same bland terrible awful 2D platformer? Why?!? Well, I know "why", because they were easy and cheap to bang out and people would buy them, but why didn't anyone have more pride or gumption to at least attempt something different? Instead, our beloved childhood movies and TV shows were turned into generic platformers that barely resembled the license they were supposed to be. Even Jurassic Park, at least on SEGA systems, that is. Today we delve further into what has become a Jurassic Park game marathon with the SEGA Genesis version of Jurassic Park. Click to read more and watch gameplay.

It's wild how the Master System and Genesis versions of Jurassic Park are so, well, crap compared to the NES and SNES versions. I guess SEGA was happy just to have unique exclusive versions of stuff on its platforms, but boy do they suck. The Ocean Software Jurassic Park games for Nintendo were top down open world exploration games that actually made sense. The SEGA and Blue Sky Software MS and Genesis games, on the other hand, are the same boring 2D platformer as every other licensed game. And they have disappointingly little to actually do with either the Jurassic Park movie or book. 

You do get to play as a Raptor in the Genesis version, though, which does sort of maybe make up for some things. You play as Grant running from the raptor but can switch to playing as the raptor and stalking Grant as well. It's kind of cool in that regard and eating everything you see as a raptor is fun. Grant and the Raptor both control absolutely terribly, though, so any fun you do have is short-lived.


I also have to take issue with the way every Jurassic Park game, and not just this particular one, almost always centers on the characters just killing every dinosaur they see. I'm sorry, but Dr. Alan Grant, renowned paleontologist, isn't going to just shoot every dinosaur they come across with a rocket launcher. Maybe raptors. Maybe. But I really doubt he's going to shoot everything else he sees. There's always exponentially more dinosaurs in the games than actually could have existed in Jurassic Park, which is weird. I'd kind of like a more realistic and true to the books / movie take on Jurassic Park just once.

So, Jurassic Park for Genesis sucks. It's better than the Master System version, though, by a pretty wide margin. Still not as good as the NES or SNES games.