Publisher: Sega
Developer: Sega Multimedia Studio
Release: 1993
Nowadays when you get similarly licensed games across multiple platforms, they’re usually the exact same experience, give or take a few technical issues like frame rate or loading times. One of the great things about the 16-bit generation, though, is that was not necessarily always the case. Multiple viable platforms competing for every market point and loads of successful first- and third-party publishers lead to loads of variety. Even though games like Shadowrun, Alien 3, all kinds of Disney properties and Jurassic Park appeared across multiple consoles, they were all completely different games.
For all the different versions of Jurassic Park that appeared in video game form in 1993, the Sega CD version is by far my favourite. This point-and-click adventure takes place directly following the events of the book and film. As an employee of InGen, you are tasked with heading back to Isla Nublar following the incident at Jurassic Park. Your goal is to find the eggs of seven key species on the island and transport them to an incubator back in the Visitors Center. But you have to be quick – you only have 12 hours to complete your task, and it appears that Biosyn has hired some mercenaries to do the exact same job. They’re heavily armed, they’re on the way, and they’ve been instructed to stop you.
While Jurassic Park is a point-and-click game, the action is all realtime and can get really intense during particular sequences. Dinosaur attacks are especially harrowing. Nothing like a single-button menu system and a slow-moving cursor when a velociraptor is bearing down on you at top speed. And while the game falls into many of the same formulas we’ve seen before – find this keycard to open that door, travel to these spots in a specific sequence to trigger the next event – the ever-present time constraint adds a nice level of immediacy to everything. Not only are you limited to 12 game hours (time moves at a faster rate during travel from one spot to the next), but any gathered eggs will slowly deteriorate until you get them to the incubator.
Screenshots don’t do this game any favours, but I’ve always thought it was one of the better looking games on the Sega CD. It feels like the colour palette takes the limitations of the system into account and the whole thing comes off looking both realistic and stylized. I also think the dinosaurs look great and animate beautifully. The limited use of full-motion video here all looks pretty sweet, excepting the pre-rendered Visitors Center levels. The game touted footage from the actual set of the film, too, but I’m guessing those are just the seconds-long transition videos during travel.
Speaking of which, it’s time to nerd out on Jurassic Park for a bit. One of the things I like about the Sega CD game is the fact that it seems a more based on the book than the film – Doctor Harding’s contributions to the story seem to be reflected a bit more here than they were in the film. Also, there’s a whole segment in the game where the player has to visit the huge raptor nest on the island, something the film doesn’t even really mention although the end of the book centres around it.
But then again, the island was destroyed at the end of the book. Also, the Visitors Center is looking mighty clean and organized for a place where a bunch of raptors took down a full-sized T-Rex.
But anyway…
Another bit I absolutely love about the game is the various information kiosks throughout the island. Access these and you’re normally rewarded with little featurettes on the various dinosaurs hosted real-life paleontologist Dr. Robert T. Bakker. In fact, Bakker was instrumental in popularizing the theory of dinosaurs as warm-blooded creatures, which was pretty much the entire basis of the original Jurassic Park novel. He was also a consultant on the first film as well as for the dinosaur designs in this game.
Jurassic Park on the Sega CD was developed by Sega Multimedia Studio, which was part of the rapid, massive expansion happening at Sega America during the salad days of the early ’90s. Unfortunately, Sega Multimedia Studio only ever produced one more game – Wild Woody – which was one of the last (and most obscure) games on the Sega CD. It was disbanded in 1995.
Nonetheless, their first effort was one of the best, most unique games on the Sega CD.
