Jurassic Park

"Not a total Jurassic sized blunder but close"

Everybody remember all the marketing blitz for the original Jurassic Park? Like many popular films Jurassic Park was plundered,for all it's worth. Tee shirts, lunch boxes, underwear, books, toys, really the list could go on for miles. One highly used avenue was video games, since every platform of it's time had a version. One of said platforms was the Sega Game Gear, the exact game I'm reviewing today. Please keep all your hands and feet inside the moving vehicle, as I will now take you on a tour of Jurassic Park.

Gameplay: The game has two kind of stages the whole way through. (It goes in this exact order)

1. Driving stages
The driving stages have you zooming around the landscape side-scrolling style in a jeep. Your goal should you choose to accept it is to shoot any pesky dinosaurs that get in your way, also don't get hit too many times or else you'll crash.

2. Side-scrolling/plat-forming
The second kind of stages is the oft used side-scrolling/ plat-forming stages. Basically move forward blasting everything in your path, and expect occasional plat-forming.

Basically, that is pretty much it in a nutshell. Do driving stage, do side-scrolling/plat-forming stage, then rinse and repeat. The only thing that breaks it up a little is you square off against a boss at the end of a given segment. They are of course various dinosaurs from the film such as the Velociraptor, and Triceratops. One thing that annoyed me quite a bit has to do with facing off against my favorite dinosaur the T-Rex. In order to even go to his stage you have to complete the initial eight stages without using a continue! Granted, while it's not ultra difficult to do it still annoys me. One highlight is the game actually allows you to do the initial four zones in any order you desire.
That is a really nice feature if you just want to pop the game in to play a certain stage, opposed to having to play other stages to get to the one you like. Another downer is the selection of weapons, or should I say the lack thereof.
There is only three kinds of weapons a flame grenade gun, a horizontally shooting bullet gun, and lastly a wave gun.

Graphics: The graphics are better then I expected. The boss dinosaurs are highly detailed, but sadly the small dinosaurs lack detail. The jungles look lush, but you're badly drawn character looks out of place against the backdrop. I mean come on his face looks like a badly distorted square! One highlight was the lightning striking the water, since you can literally see the current travel through the water. Very nice! While the graphics are a mixed bag, it has enough of the goods to be better then I was expecting.

Sound: Much like the original GameBoy the Game Gear isn't the best system for sound. However, some of the pieces most notably the tune that plays during the intro are actually quite good. As far as Game Gear goes this title delivers above average when it comes to audio.

Control: I never experienced any problems with the controls.
However, it's such a simple control scheme that I doubt anyone could of messed up on.

Honestly, when it comes down to it the game is only a decent play. This game is just simply too generic to warrant more then a passing play. The Sega Genesis on the other hand has three great games based on the Jurassic Park license, Jurassic Park, Jurassic Park: Rampage Edition, and The Lost World. So, if you are looking for some great pre-32 bit days Jurassic Park games look no further.

Score:6/10

Reviewer's Score: 6/10, Originally Posted: 08/22/02, Updated 08/22/02