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"A prehistoric fetch-quest."

What do you get when you take a movie license and mix it with an NES cartridge? If you said "something to set my drink on," you got it. However, Jurassic Park defied the odds by offering something playable, which is no small feat in a world with Total Recall and Ghostbusters vying for the same shelf space. It's certainly no Contra, but Jurassic Park earns a mention by offering a fleeting, yet faintly enjoyable trek through locales filled with compys, raptors, spitters, and a variety of other creatures found most recently in Spielberg's film. Unfortunately, it falls prey to the same "find X items, unlock door, repeat" formula that's bored gamers since the dawn of time, resulting in a title that lives down its movie license pedigree but still manages to remain painfully mediocre, if not down-right awful on occasion.

The story, which pops up briefly between stages with a line or two of text, follows the book more closely than the film, but players looking to shoot things won't concern themselves with the thread-bare plot any more than they'll think twice about Dr. Grant transforming into Rambo for six levels. Call me crazy, but I don't recall the scene in the book (or movie, for that matter) where our hero becomes a shoot-first, ask-questions-later human tank and saves someone from a T-Rex by fighting it off with a semi-automatic weapon. And yet, if you replaced every instance of unloading on a dinosaur with hiding in a bush and hoping to God that it doesn't catch your scent, then Jurassic Park wouldn't be much of an action game.

Of course, most of the time, Jurassic Park's gameplay is so utterly boring that you'll wonder if you wouldn't have more fun waiting things out in the bush. What the entire game boils down to is this: Collecting dinosaur eggs and firing at whatever gets in your way. Why are we collecting eggs? Apparently, the only way to open a locked door in Jurassic Park is to find enough eggs to satisfy the Door Gods. Search high and low for however many eggs they deem necessary and a door will magically open somewhere in the level. Go through the door and you'll find a new area with more eggs to collect and another door to open. That's it; nothing more. Better get your egg basket ready, because it's always Easter in Jurassic Park!

Quite frankly, there's just no variety to be found in this game whatsoever, barring the occasional boss fight (which, granted, does provide for a welcome change of pace). Annoying little distractions, like floating down a river on a raft that refuses to go straight or navigating the needlessly-large buildings without a map, crop up from time to time and always manage to frustrate more than they entertain. You can even switch ammo types, but does that really qualify as variety? In fact, why not just toss that out along with the ability to jump, because Jurassic Park never requires you to jump over anything! Why even bother giving you the option when there's absolutely no point in which you'll need to use it? Christ, this game mystifies me.

And, speaking of useless gameplay mechanics, I've yet to mention my "favorite" part of Jurassic Park: the mystery boxes. As the name suggests, these boxes (marked with an ever-so-mysterious "?") contain a variety of different things. You could find some health, temporary invincibility, or even a free life. However, you are more than likely to come face-to-face with a box that explodes and takes away half, if not all, of your health. There are entire areas (near the end of the game, no less!) that contain nothing but these explosive mystery boxes. I would like to know whose idea it was to sprinkle faux power-ups that actually damage you into this game. Whoever it was, I hope they fall into a deep pit, and the only way out is to pick between two boxes. The catch? Both boxes explode in their face and kill them.

Verdict: Jurassic Park is proof positive that one-dimensional gameplay plus a lack of interesting secondary goals will always equate to something unremarkable. What we have here is another lame, dime-a-dozen action title on the NES that cashed in on uninformed gamers by exploiting its profitable movie license. The graphics are decent, and the music's forgivable, but the entire experience is so bland that there's no reason to bother. Every time you start to think, "Hell, maybe this game isn't so bad," it forces you to fight through another raptor-infested building, just to collect 9 more goddamn eggs. At the end of the day, Jurassic Park is nothing but a predictably repetitive Commando rip-off. If you can finish it without falling asleep or just flat-out giving up, kudos.

Reviewer's Score: 4/10, Originally Posted: 01/16/07, Updated 09/04/07

Game Release: Jurassic Park (US, June 1993)