How Many Jurassic Park Video Games Have Been Made?
The movie Jurassic Park came out in 1993. It wasn’t long before game developers hitched a ride on the huge success of the movie by releasing Jurassic Park video games. In fact, the first games were released at the same time as the movie hit the theatres, a common practice nowadays. Since then, there have been 25 game releases to coincide with each film of the Jurassic Park franchise.
The first games were fairly simple by today’s standards, but at the time some of them were quite advanced. Most followed the actual plot of the story pretty loosely, as gameplay was limited in terms of what characters could actually do and how and where they could move. The first movie came out along with six different video games:
-Jurassic Park for NES and Game Boy: isometric gameplay (a 3D environment with 2D graphics…like The Legend of Zelda) that followed the plot of the film somewhat
-Jurassic Park for SNES: similar to above, but also incorporated a first person perspective and one of the first ever video games with surround sound capability
-Jurassic Park for PC:DOS and Amiga: isometric and first person, and much better artwork and screen resolution
-Jurassic Park for Sega Genesis and Game Gear: side scrolling platform game (like Super Mario Bros.)
-Jurassic Park for Sega Mega-CD: point and click, first person with time limit and puzzles
-Jurassic Park, arcade version: a rail shooter, also by Sega, that was the first arcade shooter to use 3D environments
Both the film and the games were a huge success, so when Jurassic Park was released on VHS (remember VHS?), a second generation of Jurassic Park video games came along with it:
-Jurassic Park 2: The Chaos Continues for SNES and Game Boy: both versions were original stories, and much harder than the first version
-Jurassic Park Interactive for 3DO: Some RPG features, simulated PC interface and video segments with look-alike characters
In 1997, DreamWorks made their own game to go along with the second film, The Lost World: Jurassic Park, for Sega Saturn and Playstation. It was a side scrolling platform game with a 3D environment, but there were a lot of flaws with character control. Another version came out for the Sega Genesis and Mega Drive that was much better, with vehicles and a GPS mission map and way better graphics. Other games based on the second film were:
-The Lost World: Jurassic Park for Game.com (a handheld console)
-Jurassic Park: Chaos Island for PC (strategy game)
-The Lost World: Jurassic Park arcade version, by Sega
-Jurassic Park: Trespasser for PC: first person shooter, a ’sequel’ to the second movie and only playable because the modders eventually took over
-Warpath: Jurassic Park for Playstation: also by DreamWorks, a dino-on-dino fighting game
Jurassic Park 3 saw an explosion of games between 2001 and 2005. Three PC games were released, two of which were for children. Five games came out for the Game Boy Advance alone, and had good graphics and gameplay. The best game of this time was Jurassic Park: Operation Genesis for PC, Xbox, and Playstation 2. It’s a sim game, where you get to build and manage your own dinosaur park and create dinosaurs.
Three Jurassic Park movies…25 Jurassic Park video games. At least the games improved over time, even if the movies didn’t!