It’s fairly obvious to even the casual reader of this site that I’m an enormous fan of all things prehistoric. If I could do it all over again, I’d live somewhere else and go to school to be a genuine paleontologist. This next sentence, then, shouldn’t surprise you: my favorite movie is Steven Spielberg’s antediluvian Jurassic Park, a film in which a highly anticipated theme park is forced to delay its grand opening due largely to a power outage. I saw the film when I was but a lad of just 10 years, and my enthusiasm for the film knew no bounds. After that, I quickly began accruing a substantial mass of toys, comics, tie-in books, posters, and various other paraphernalia related to my newly minted favorite film.  Among these acquisitions was, as one might assume, the Ocean-developed NES game. I would also come to own the Game Boy version and the Game Boy version’s sequel (“The Chaos Continues”). Despite the game’s laundry list of faults, I enjoyed it immensely as a child.

But I thought Samuel L. Jackson went to turn the power back on?

You play as Alan Grant as he battles to escape Isla Nublar. This involves shooting dinosaurs, going into blind underbrush where, of course, dinosaurs lurk, and collecting keycards with which to unlock doors. Interestingly, you have to find and destroy dinosaur eggs in order to earn keycards, and each level begins with a mission given to you by Mr. DNA (who, as you’ll recall, is “in your blood”). During your Mesozoic walkabout, you’ll have to survive a Triceratops stampede, restore power to the island, and reboot the park’s computer systems. Somewhere near the end of the game, Alan decides to destroy all the raptor nests on the island—reminiscent of the book’s plot—using grenades. You’ll find yourself traveling down a river while avoiding Brachiosaurus heads (must be a deep river), exploring what appears to be an active volcano, helping Lexine survive the game’s only encounter with Tyrannosaurus, and caught completely off-guard by rogue Dimetrodons and stegosaurs.

Dinosaurs tended to lay their eggs in unusual, arbitrary places

The game is notable in that it took full advantage of the NES’ ability to display the color brown. Almost everything in the game is one shade or brown or another: Alan himself, most of the dinosaurs, the ground, some of the vegetation, and the buildings (and their interiors) are the color of (healthy) poop. Alan himself is capable of moving in eight directions, jumping weakly, and shooting things. He has different guns that require unique ammo types that vary largely based on strength alone. The island’s dinosaurs have found an interesting way around the Lysine Contingency: they consume bullets of all types, which as we all know are very high in lysine. Whenever Alan manages to shoot down a rampaging raptor or scuttling compy, their gut contents are invariably preserved, shielded from damage by the enormous meat-sack surrounding them. Since he is in the field without support, Dr. Grant must make use of these acid-etched bullets to refresh his weapon stock. Ick.

The game’s menagerie of prehistoric beasties is, for the most part, totally invincible to damage. Something about that West African frog DNA turned most of the island’s dinosaurs into Wolverine-like mutants. Of the dozen dinosaurs (and one pelycosaur) you’ll encounter, only three can be killed: Compsognathus, Velociraptor (actually Deinonychus), and “Dilophosaurus.” The rest are wholly immune to your projectile-based weaponry. Two of them—Stegosaurus and Dimetrodon—simply rush out of the brush and stampede over you without warning, killing Alan instantly. The game’s single killable boss, Tyrannosaurus rex, never actually dies. From what I recall, you just empty its invisible HP gauge, which takes like ten minutes, and it just kind of bumbles away, leaving Lexine free to be irritating for an hour and a half before miraculously saving the day thanks to her knowledge of obscure computer software. Tim, the Human Piece of Toast, doesn’t fare any better as,left to his own devices, he can’t even manage to notice, much less avoid, a gaggle of Triceratops despite the clearly marked paths between animals. He’s like a parakeet, kept in a cage since hatching, yet suddenly let loose in the wild; the usual concepts of “danger” do not apply.

Compsognathus, as this game shows, looked kind of like a walking fetus

Of course, it’s not all wine and roses at InGen, and the game definitely has problems. Typical of so many NES titles, Jurassic Park lacked a battery save, but Ocean also forgot to include a password system. The game isn’t super-long, but still, by 1993, developers should’ve figured out how to cram one of these things into their games. By modern standards, the game is considerably unforgiving; Alan has very limited HP, a set number of lives, and while you can continue once or twice, Game Over takes you right back to the title screen. The game’s most abundant ammo type is pretty terrible, and as the game goes on, ammo-draining raptors become more and more common, to the point where you’re facing raptors exclusively while snuffing out their nests. Item boxes include med packs, ammo, and temporary West African frog DNA. Unfortunately, you might also get an automatic death or grievous injury—like the Poison Mushrooms in Super Mario Bros.: The Lost Levels. Thankfully, the item boxes are not randomized, so you eventually learn which ones to avoid.

While there’s probably no hope that the game will ever see renewed life on the Virtual Console, I certainly would appreciate the opportunity to re-play it, if for no other reason than to see how much muscle memory I retain. I recall beating the game many times in my childhood through plenty of blood, sweat, and tears. Of course, there were plenty of other Jurassic Park games: a graphically superior version for the SNES, a graphically inferior version for the Game Boy, a graphically in-between version for the Amiga, and a completely different side-scrolling platformer for the Genesis in which you could choose to play as Alan Grant or a Velociraptor. If even one of these games somehow made it to the Virtual Console or Virtual Handheld, it would be a Jurassic dream come true.

"Mr. Hammond, after careful consideration, I've decided NOT to endorse your park"