Jurassic Park: The Super Nintendo Video Game based on Jurassic Park: The Movie based on Jurassic Park: The Book.

Welcome to my nightmare.

I never owned or played this game back during the 16-bit heyday but recently came across a copy and the other night decided to finally have a go at the little bastard. The idea was to drink a ton of beer and with the help of our old friends over at gamefaqs, actually try to complete the entire game in one sitting. The following post is a brief visual re-enactment of how it all went down:

Here we go.

At the start, the magic of Mode-7 graphics provide a cool little rotating island in the ocean that fades into the screen above. I tried to find an image or video clip of it but you can check it out by using your imagination.

Sam Neill in all of his pixelated glory.

So after hitting start, there’s a digitized voice that says “Welcome to Jurassic Park.” This is a nice welcome and as it turns out, also a warning of the horrors that await you. Walking around a bit, you’ll find some ammo and guns and stuff lying on the ground but you have to press a button to pick them up instead of being able to, oh I don’t know…walk over them? At first this bugged me but I realized it’s because you can only carry 2 different weapons at a time and it would suck during the heat of battle if your powerful weapon flipped out for a shitty one during your evasive maneuvers. It makes sense in general I guess, but it’s a detail that could easily be improved on if the game had the decency to include an inventory screen that would allow you to map your weapons. That’s right: You’ll never know how much ammo you’ve got stashed away or how many eggs and I.D. cards you’ve collected because this gun-heavy action adventure game failed to include an items menu.

Spit or swallow?

Roaming around a bit reveals that the control isn’t very good as your character moves in an almost Star Tropics level of stiffness (the first one, it got a lot better in Zoda’s Revenge). Upon fighting the first dino’s you encounter (a small pack of Compy’s), you’ll quickly realize that:

1. The enemies in this game are super fast.

2. You can basically throw diagonal aiming out the window.

and 3. You already want to turn the damn game off.

Hey, either of you guys seen a couple of kids running around here?

And just like that! Barely a few screens into the game, a couple of Velociraptors hop out of the trees like some kind of nightmare surprise party and shred yer ass apart real quick. You haven’t even had enough time to sort out which weapons are the ideal ones to carry or gotten used to the incredibly umm, stubborn controls before a dinosaur is shitting you out. I think it’s time to head into the visitor center to take a look at the fancy first person stages.

Hey, these graphics are kind of neat.

OHHOLYFUCKWHY!?

Apparently these levels are compatible with the SNES mouse that came with Mario Paint but if I’m ever drunk enough to see how that works, I’ll probably wake up in a jail cell. These parts of the game do allow you to pick up ammo and health just by walking over them and you can max out your weapons by exiting and reentering the buildings over and over again. Not that you could ever tell when you’re full because again: No inventory screen. Anyway, the first person stuff is a nice addition for variety sake but still running on SNES hardware which means getting any kind of real enjoyment out of it will require plenty of patience and understanding. As a kid who’s only experience with Doom was a red SNES cart, I actually did kind of like this aspect of the game.

Daddy Mac'll make ya...

After finding an egg and an I.D. card on the roof there’s nothing left to do but head back outside and into the jungle again. The FAQ I was following told me that I needed to start collecting more eggs in an area to the west and after heading there, my buzz had settled in comfortably and my patience was wearing thin. Specifically with the aiming. After spending the next hour or so getting manhandled by more Raptors and electrified to death by these randomly placed electrifier things I’d had enough. And then this happened:

OH GOD!!! thank you.

Which was as good a time as any to throw in the controller and resume dicking around on the internet. Now to be fair, Jurassic Park does have some good stuff going for it. The vibrant graphics in general are nice and detailed and the animation is pretty good. Well, aside from Grant’s jump that makes him look…shall we say, “special.” It’s just that visual pleasures aside, no inventory screen, the lack of a map and extremely “specific” controls made the game a chore to deal with. In fact, the best part of the experience was when I realized I hadn’t paid any money for it.

Will I ever take another crack at Jurassic Park for the SNES? Nope, but I’m glad I did at least once if only to check that box off my bucket list.